Ek 'Guzaarish' Hai Bas Itni Si....

Sanjay Leela Bhansali is in a league of his own. When you start your career writing a movie like '1942 A love story'....move on to making the very touching 'Khamoshi' after 2 years....prove that you are not a one movie director by releasing the absolutely beautifully made 'Hum dil de chuke sanam'...and then further hone yourself with 'Devdas' and 'Black'.....not only you but the world then knows what you are capable of! Except for Sawaria, each movie made by this man has been nothing less than iconic. And when you take an actress like Aishwarya Rai who has been repeatedly slandered for being such a plastic heroine and make her deliver absolutely breathtaking performances like these, you know you have got to give the director some credit!

Guzaarish comes with the heavy expectation load of Black on its back. Another Bhansali film with the main protagonist severely disabled (in this case, a quadriplegic - paralysed from the neck down) and the dark hues that characterize his films of late. But no, like each of his films, this one stands firmly on its own two feet, refusing to be compared to any other and stands tall.

Hritik Roshan plays the very successful magician who loses his best friend, career, mobility and almost his life in a magic act gone wrong. Refusing to let life beat him down, he becomes a radio jockey, a favourite of all in Goa. He is taken care of since the past 12 years by Aishwarya Rai Bachhan who plays his nurse. Hritik does an exceptional job with his role, portraying the helplessness of not being able to move or live with dignity inspite of having an especially sharp mind. Look out for a particular scene involving a fly and also the way he sits on his wheelchair...the way his shoulders stoop, make him smaller than he really is. Phenomenal. Aishwarya chooses to hold her own and delivers a performance par excellence. Part nurse, part friend, part secret lover...she is the outside world to him. Dressed in beatiful long skirts and dresses, often with a tasteful scarf, she not only looks pretty, but acts and even dances with elan. Some other performances worth a mention...or even more are by Hritik's friend Devyani who is also his lawyer, his doctor played by Suhel Seth, Rajit Kapoor as the prosecutor and many more. But equal credit as the main protagonists must be given to Aditya Roy Kapoor, an upcoming actor and VJ who plays Omar Siddiqui, an amateur magician who wishes to learn magic from Hritik.

Set in Goa, the film gives a glimpse of the portugese town unlike ever done before. The stately but delapitated villa in which Hritik lives, the lush green fields that they drive through...all of this allows the viewer to see this beautiful town through the eyes of a local and not a tourist.

The only flaw in the film is a stretched out farewell party thrown by Hritik for his friends that seems like a deliberate tear jerker. But you forgive Bhansali of these 10 minutes for the other 99 minutes of pure genius that he lets you be a part of. It is not a sad portrayal of a disabled man's life. Instead, it is almost a celebration of the life he lives, his quick humor and wit bringing more smiles than tears.

Dont think twice. Watch it.

Rating: 4 on 5
Paisa Wasool Moment: The scene with the fly

Without you

You are the jigsaw piece
That makes me complete
You are the melody
To which my heart beats
Your smile
Keeps me warm all night
Your breath
Gives my soul respite
Days stretch out without you
Nights seem to last forever
No sense
No purpose
Till when we’re together
Life without you
Just seems so still
A test of love
Seems god’s will

The Deathly Hallows doesn't live up to it!!

I've been avoiding writing this review. It seems like a sort of a betrayal. To an era of loyalty and of pure reverence of the wizarding world. So I take a deep breath and here I go, hoping now that the ministry has fallen, they dont send me off to Azkaban as a traitor.

Potter films are expected with a fevered anticipation perhaps never seen before. With each book, the mania for this magical beautiful world increased and made the producers, actors and ofcourse Rowling very rich people!! But it was justified as each book outdid the earlier one with the grand finale spiralling into a lovely piece of work which tied up the entire series together closing loops and ends that dint quite fit before making it the best book in the entire series in my opinion.

Unfortunately, the movie couldn't match up. I feel the same disappointment I felt when I saw Goblet of Fire. The book provides so much fodder and such a lovely base to characterize but the films just couldn't match up. They tried hard, I give them that, but they couldn't reach the pinnacle.

Perhaps because there was so much to tell, which the very thick book takes its time weaving, the film seemed to be edited in a manner that it was hacked and then stacked together. Scenes changed too fast, were not easy to comprehend and continuity seemed to break much too often.
I do believe that Draco is one character who has grown into his role and must be given his due adulation. No other character except for the 3 on their camping trip seem to be given much prominence in this film, though Dobby did get some minutes of well deserved prime time. And yes, I could really have done without that completely random scene in which Harry and Hermoine start dancing together in their tent right after Ron has left, seemingly to celebrate their freedom from him at last!!!

All in all, if you've read the books, you would probably enjoy the film living out each scene and seeing it played out before your eyes for the last time but one. But if you are a fan of the films and havent read the books, I have a feeling you may leave that hall with a sense of frustration and need to google up how things fit in and who said what why. Watch it, but dont go with stars in your eyes.

Rating: 2.5 on 5

DON'T WORK. BE HATED. LOVE SOMEONE

Similar to Steve Job's speech....long but a good read...

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Written by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988), was the guest-of-honour at a recent NTU convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.

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I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.
On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.
Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.
And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.
Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.
The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.
You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.
The good news is that they’re wrong.
The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.
I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.
You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.
Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.
So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.
Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.
I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.
After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.
Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.
That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.
If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.
LIFE'S A MESS.
What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.
Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.
What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.
Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.
RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO GET A JOB. INSTEAD, PLAY.
The most important is this: do not work.
Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.
Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.
There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.
People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.
Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.
I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.
So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.
Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.
Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.
In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.
BE HATED.
I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.
It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.
One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.
LOVE ANOTHER HUMAN BEING.
The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.
I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.
Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.
Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.
Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.

You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.
You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.
Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.
Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

‘Secret Daughter’ reviewed

 

One of my all time favourite books has been ‘Sister of my heart’ by Chitra Bannerjee. It’s heartening to know that it wasn’t a one-off gem by an Indian author. ‘Secret Daughter’, by Shilpi Somaya Gowda is written with a similar empathy and understanding of human relations. I personally despise books that use the English language as a baton to tom tom in front of the reader convincing him/her of not being intellectual enough to appreciate it. Thus, I could never really find myself singing praises of Salman Rushdie and the likes (oh no, how uncool am I??). What attracts me to a writer is the ability to communicate emotions in a manner that they find their way straight to the heart of the reader.

Secret Daughter is the story of a girl born in a village in Maharashtra. To save the life of her unwanted girl child, her mother secretly gives her up for adoption where she is taken in by an Indian/American couple. The story traces the lives of the 2 mothers and this secret daughter that ties them. Not only does it delve deep into the psyche of an adopted child, it also intermingles that with the yearning of a person trying to find roots when they were growing right under her feet.

Secret Daughter is a tale that touches the heart. It is beautifully crafted, wonderfully narrated and begs to be read. Get yourself a copy.

 

Rating: 4 on 5

The beauty of change

My uncle loves to keep reminding me time and again – the moment you feel complacent that your life is perfect and don’t want things to change, they will. You can not stop that. Just accept that they will.

In my humble few years in adulthood, I have realised the truth in those words. As children, we are insulated by the love that surrounds us and we believe that people mean what they say and clearly demarcate between friends, acquaintances and foes. As we grow older and not-so-wiser, we slowly become jaded. Things, yes. Circumstances, definitely. They all change. But what affects us most is when people change and thus do relationships. Friends that one made along the way slowly keep falling through that sieve of life and losing themselves. New ones get added but our new found cynicism refuses to allow ourselves to open up as much to them.

Its not such a dark thing either. People change for the better too. Relationships evolve. When you grow together, sometimes you have the benefit of being a part of the journey and this brings us closer. My relationship with my sister, parents, relatives, husband, best friends – each of these has changed many times over and continues to do so. What makes some of these relationships special is the belief that if I don’t like the changes that are happening, they are momentary – they will change again.

And that is what gives me the humility of holding myself back from trying to control each of these relationships (or so I like to believe). Que sera sera….what will be will be.

Adarsh Scam & the Nation's Ire

The collective fury over the Adarsh Apartments scam confuses me. For the uninitiated, it is an apartment complex built in the prime area of South Mumbai on land that was allocated for war widows of the Indian Defence Forces. The permission to build 10 stories was flouted and a sky scraper built in its place. Each flat whose market worth was actually around Rs.8.5Cr was bought by people of high standing like some ex chiefs of the Indian army etc. for Rs.85lakhs.

Since this scam has been brought to light by the media, there has been an uproar on the fact that flats were wrongfully allocated to ministers, private owners and other people of public standing. This uproar doesn’t confuse me. I believe we all like to vent our frustrations on these occasional scams. It just changes face from a CWG to an Adarsh. Corruption itself is not a phenomenon new to India or to all of us. Neither is it new to any country in the world. Corruption exists in most countries at various levels – some larger than the other. Financial frauds, economic busts like the recent one, political payoffs – all of these are faces of corruption at some level.

So what confuses me is what it really is that has irked us so much about this. CWG I understand – we felt that we all pay taxes and those taxes were being misappropriated. But in this case we all know of someone who had gone to see these apartments being built when they were being built and their only regret at that time was that they did not have the funds to get a flat of their own. Everyone loves a deal! They knew that the market cost of the flats were atleast 10 times of what they were being asked for. I am not too sure if the knowledge that this land was originally meant for war widows would really have changed any of our minds to purchase one of these flats being offered at a pittance.

So is the ire really regret that found translation into a smug smile if-I-did-not-manage-to-get-this-one-no-one-else-did-either! Or if it really is anger at corruption – and if it is, how deep does this corruption truly run?