Once again

Once again the colored pieces suddenly come together...Their sagacity almost blinding…Complementing each other...Almost perfectly....In a moment of ecstasy...in the heat of solving the enigma finally...in the bliss of seeing the picture slowly falling into place...demystifying the darkness around you...a million hues diffusing…spreading a joyous glow....filling your heart with light...You smile...

And then abruptly the bits begin to falter...like a kettle ready to blow up any instant...simmering and scathing...the agitation becomes impossible to ignore…Apprehensiveness replaces smiles...Trepidation fills the space that you have started staring into insignificantly…

And in those moments of finality...you realize that the colored pieces were gray after all.

If you start with a bad-hair day....

...then your social cum work cum love life is doomed. After spending fruitless 15 minutes into taming my hair into an agreeable mess (the privileged others who have straight hair call it a pony tail), I was wondering what else could go wrong when...

a. I choked on a piece of idly; I was trying to gorge down in nano-seconds. Normalcy was restored only after a few gulps of water, two hard thumps on my back from mommy dearest and a long-winded ‘how-idlys-can-be-life-changing-if-you-eat-them-slowly' speech.
b. A group of frustrated men in the bus suddenly decided to vent out their pent-up emotions. What ensued was a 'not-too-pretty-to-watch' brawl involving a group of huffy-cheeked men against another group of huffier-cheeked men.
c. The impact of losing all my contacts on my mobile phone hit me fully only after I started getting the routine, customary, and almost revoltingly sweet ‘good-morning’ messages from friends today. I hardly recognized the numbers and was forced to ask them their names. This little activity of mine managed to get the majority of them pug-faced. I also earned the ‘How-can-you-forget-MY-number’ wrath from all of them.
d. A seemingly cute guy in the atrium of our office building decided to walk through me like I never existed. Cursing silently I reached the lift, only to find him inside, still looking away.
e. Tripped in front of a million colleagues, and had to swerve in the most uncomfortable way to avoid falling flat on the face, and ended up looking like a crooked, contorted Oscar statuette.
f. One more attempt at taming my hair in the office loo went astray as my comb decided to plop into the wash basin with a loud clang. The other peacocks, pruning their feathers gave me their looks of purest contempt.

It was then, that I gave up!

Moral: Maybe the guy didn’t look because my puerile hair looked like a bramble bush that had a magnetic attraction to anything even remotely dusty?? (Nah…Not a good enough moral you say?)

Well, then....The real moral: If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway...Courtesy Murphy.

A brief adieu…

The air was tumultuous with shrieks of joy. Festoons of different colors filled the place. The wind howled in merriment and made the flags flutter.

Her eyes slowly scanned the landscape. She could see tiny people hurrying along, young men trying to be gallant, fathers trying to coax children into leaving the fair before dark, and exited women trying hard to tear their eyes away from one stall to another.

She looked up at the radiant sun that was slowly losing luster. She smiled to herself. The whole place seemed so agitated when compared to the gloomy silence the mountains possessed.

"Over here, look over here", she heard him shout. For a moment she was tempted to rush down the slope to join him. But she stood still and continued probing the landscape. It was because of him that she was here. A rush of hatred, love and fear overcame her. But she stood still, for the fight was worth it.

When the sun slowly started moving towards the western horizon, she knew the time had come. The wind whistled into her ears and soothed her frayed nerves. Slowly, step by step she edged tentatively on the rocks. She was now on the topmost point of the hill and she could see the fair gradually losing its energy. Her senses were inhumanly alert while her agile body moved in grace. She could feel a thousand eyes on her now.

He was still there looking at her intently. She could feel her whole body go rigid. From this point she could see vast stretches of barren land surrounding the fair. She steadied herself and took another step towards the edge. Cold wind seeped through her clothes and chilled her skin. One more step and it would be over. She could see the tiny flags from the fair fluttering nonchalantly in the wind. She wondered if she would look like them if she fell. And then she turned to give him one last look. His face had turned white. She closed her eyes and lifted her right leg…

"Cut", he shouted, "Excellent! That’s all for today... Lights and camera off. Pack up".

Slumdog Millionaire - Review

Poor guy makes money. Gets the girl he wants. That sums up the storyline of Danny Boyle's most awaited movie of the year - Slumdog Millionaire.

So what's new and why are people going gaga over it? Well, it is the treatment of the plot that makes this movie pretty memorable. (Well, given the fact that G spent two hours clutching my already cold hands and won disapproving glares from A, itself explains why I will not be able to forget this movie in a hurry)

The quasi-narrative plot opens in the riot-stricken Mumbai slums with the happy-go-lucky brothers Jamal and Salim. Despite deep poverty, the two brats get into every possible mischief. (The best part of the movie still remains the Amitabh autograph scene. I fell in love with the sheer cheekiness)

Circumstances force the brothers to move to the north and there again the brothers impress with their audacity and imagination. Finally Salim gets drawn into a web of local kingpins and Jamal goes on to become a chai walla at a call center.

Somewhere in the middle, the movie loses pace and becomes predictable. In fact it remains racy and gripping until the boys grow up. Salim impresses more than anyone else in the movie. Anil Kapoor too has assayed his role with ease.

The music is not very impressive, but the BGM is pretty haunting at many places. The scene where the boys tumble down from the train, the riots, and the first police chase sequence has music that is incredible. I wonder why ‘Jai ho’ won the Globe instead.

In short, Slumdog would have managed to strike, minus the hype and hoopla.

Realization...

I stooped down to smell them. But I could only see the sullied mud beneath.

I reached out to listen. But I could only see the wiry stalks that drooped.

I tried to hold them. But I could only see the thorns that pricked.

When I realized,

The mud beneath was clearer than my conscience,

The wiry stalk was stronger than my heart,

And the thorns were not as perilous as an aimless mind,

I stooped down again.

By then they were already safe, in another hand.

Bingo :)

Quote
Sing like no one's listening,
love like you've never been hurt,
dance like nobody's watching,
and live like its heaven on earth.
-Mark Twain, Author.

De-Quote
Dance like it hurts,
Love like you need money,
Work when people are watching.
- Scott Adams, US cartoonist.

Haaapy New Yeeeer!!!

Happy new year all ye folks. Have a wonderful year ahead. 2008 was pretty eventful for me. Highs and lows. Elation and grief. Triumph and failure. Life and death. Learnings and un-learnings.

I have also learnt that when life seems dark and murky, and nothing seems to go right, the only thing that can save you is belief. An indomitable belief in yourself. This reminds me of a poem by Robert Frost.

“I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree~

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches."

-Robert Frost.