Random thoughts in a lonely night

1. Why do we have to say "fine" when someone asks us how we are doing without any intent to know how we are and when we are everything other than "fine"? Why cant we just be honest by saying "None of your business" OR '' "As you do, you a**hole" OR express it more smartly by exercising our middle finger?

2. Why do kids laugh when they are running? What has the hysterical sound and exposure of teeth to do with feeling funny?

3. Were the clothes invented to protect ourselves from weather or for fashion or just to cover our private parts? When did men realize that some selected organs need to be hidden and why?

4. How did people travel in US before Google introduced Google maps?

5. What is the name of the new President of India? Why cant I remember her name?

6. How would life be if we are accompanied with background score to suit our emotions as in movies? Probably every date of ours would have ended up with dancing around trees (as in Bollywood) or in bed (as in Hollywood).

7. Why is it that most relationships do not last long? Is it possible that relationships come with an expiry period and those who are continuing beyond it are just too lazy to switch over?

8. Why isnt moving forward in life as easy as turning a page of a book and forgetting someone as easy as erasing pencil marks?

9. Why isn't Doll calling me yet? Why am I waiting?

10. Why can't I stop having these random thoughts and just sleep?

Before Sunrise - A review

So, here goes my first movie review.

During a visit to one of my friend's house in Kolkata, I remember meeting his roomate (I forgot his name) who shared a common passion with me - Movies. We discussed, scrutinized and analyzed all kinds of movies-blockbusters, drama, crime stories, thrillers, independent cinema. There were two movies which he strongly recommended to me - Before Sunrise and its sequel Before Sunset. I had heard a little about it but never was able to find it in the stores at my place. Finally, thanks to Time Warner cable , Utorrent(read 'mu' torrent) and the seeds who shared the movie for me to download, I was able to watch this gem of creativity.

Before Sunrise is a tale of two strangers meeting on a train and deciding to spend a night in Vienna before they go their separate ways. The plot is very thin but the movie is all about a series of conversations they have in the next 14 hours that they spend with each other. The intelligence of the screenplay is in the fact that the conversations have been made so real and honest that you would feel you are the invisible 3rd person with them who isn't speaking but participating in their conversations. They talk about documentaries, childhood memories, reincarnation, role of parents, past relationships etc. You would generally get bored when you are subjected to such long discussions in movies but the boldness of the script is in it that it dares you to get bored.

To make the conversations look really authentic and give the lazy feel, most of the movie has really long shots and credit has to be given to the young lead pair (then)- Ethane Hawke and Julie Delpy who carry it with ease even when the camera is so still and scrutinizes their mannerism to the minutest detail. I bet any other director would have tried to show the exotic locations of Vienna when you have such a beautiful city to shoot. But here the director uses it like a beautiful woman sans the make-up. As you normally find, it is still beautiful without it.

I love each scene of the movie but if a gun is put on my head and I know that it is loaded, I would pick the following scenes from the movie as 'special'
1. The scene where Jesse convinces Celine to go out with him to Vienna and spend the night. You would really feel and wished you could have done the same.
2. The scene in the listening room. No words spoken. But look at the faces.
3. The coneversation on 'feminism'.
4. The scene where they act like talking to their friends on phone.
5. The scene where they define their relationship.
6. The talk about sex in the lawn.
7. The climax scene at the station.
8. The scene at the end where there are images of those empty places where they had been the previous night.

It is an intelligent 'feel good' movie. A movie that serves us hope but does not serve a fantasy to say that love still exists. A must watch and strongly recommended.

I have also seen the sequel to the movie Before Sunset but its review on my next post.

Will start blogging again!

0k..I know it has been long since I blogged. I had stopped blogging because I felt I did not have much to write (thanks mainly to my 9Am-4Am job) but now after all the pangas in workplace, a failed relationship and my arrival to a new place(USA) life has suddenly got spiced up. I promise I will return soon. Till then..Wait.

THE FORECAST

The forecast in Times of India read, “Change is on the horizon and you can see it coming. Embrace it and see what happens. You do your best to make things clear but others seem determined not to listen”

I have a habit of checking the forecasts for my zodiac sign regularly (FYI, I am a Capricorn) and never has it seemed more accurate. This is the first time I have decided for a change in around 3 years and I have started sensing the tension build around me. My mother has started hinting at how my father does not like my decision. My father, while not completely denying what my mother said, attempts to re-phrase it to me in more diplomatic words. I know the words will slowly transform into more meaningful, emotional and personal terms (read blackmails) in the coming months. So, as far as the weather forecast goes, my life at home will be full of clouds and rains in the coming months. Probably my parents are fighting their own battle where they has to choose between staying close to their loved one and the good of their loved one. I know they will choose the latter finally but not before using all the tricks in the book for the former. The tension is less at office as they are unaware of the plans. Currently, the weather is quite gloomy at office and it is at a standstill. Call it the silence before the storm as torrential downpours can be expected with frequent thunder and lightning in the coming weeks when they know about my plans to leave the company. YES, I have decided to call it QUITS.

Though my decision is planned and well thought out, I am also fighting my own battle to break away from the shackles of the comfort zone that I have become so habituated to. Staying with your family, drawing a reasonably good salary and working in a reputed firm is almost all that a society feels a person needs for stability. I have all of that and being single and uncommitted also rules out the possibilities of girl-friend-induced or wife-induced instabilities. But have I achieved everything that I wanted or am I achieving all that I aspired for in this state of stability? The answer is NO. I have always believed that Stability Is a Curse (inspired from Nagesh Kukonoor’s film production company, SIC) and it is a big roadblock in the path of achieving greater success. Despite my strong views on the same, I have to agree that some part of me wants to cling on to this comfort zone of stability. Probably there is some force working in the Universe, which is trying to bring every unstable object to the final state of stability. But once it attains stability, it has nothing else to do. In other words, attaining this finally state of stability can be equated to DEATH. I believe it is this journey from instability to stability, which is called LIFE and we have to attain everything we want within that journey. My current state can be called stable but I feel that I have not achieved enough to attain this final state and for heaven’s sake, I am too young to die.

The change I have decided on is to re-attain the state of instability that will initiate something I have been missing since long… the journey of life. I don’t know if the decision I have taken is the best one for me but I know everyone has the right to make a decision for his own and to suffer/enjoy its consequences and I am ready for it. I am ready for a new life.

And of course, I will be paid much better in return. (no puns unintended)☺☺☺

SHANTARAM…

I just completed reading the book, “SHANTARAM” written by Gregory David Roberts.
It was awesome, mind blowing and according to me, a literary masterpiece.
Here is a prologue to the book. I hope you enjoy it as I did.

“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortures. I realized, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

In my case, it’s a long story, and a crowded one. I was a revolutionary who lost his ideals in heroin, a philosopher who lost his integrity in crime, and a poet who lost his soul in a maximum security prison. When I escaped from that prison, over the front wall, between two gun towers, I became my country’s most wanted man. Luck ran with me and flew with me across the world to India, where I joined the Bombay mafia. I worked as a gunrunner, a smuggler and counterfeiter. I was chained on three continents, beaten, stabbed, and starved. I went to war. I ran into the enemy guns. And I survived, while other men around me died. They were better men than I am, most of them: better man whose lives were crunched up in mistakes, and thrown away by the wrong second of someone else’s hate, or love, or indifference. And I buried them, too many of those men, and grieved their stories and their lives into my own.

But my story doesn’t begin with them, or with the mafia: it goes back to that first day in Bombay. Fate put me in the game there. Luck dealt the cards that led me to Karla Saaranen. And I started to play it out, that hand, from the first moment I looked into her green eyes. So it begins, this story, like everything else- with a woman, and a city, and a little bit of luck.”

I’ M FREE…

I’ m free…I’ m on BENCH.

Since the last 6 months, I have not been getting much work in the project. Today, I m relieved from the pain and burden of having a project code against my name.
Yesterday, on hearing this, one of my friends asked,
“I don’t understand. You didn’t have to work earlier and you don’t have to work now. What the difference does it make?”
I hope this blog can explain the difference.

My association with the project was much like an affair with a young, gorgeous lady.
(I call it ‘young’ because it was a single resource project and ‘gorgeous’ because I got to work on niche technologies).It gave me high visibility (due to client appreciations and good appraisals) in the circle (my project in particular and unit as a whole) and also envious on-lookers (due to my late-to-office-early-to-go routine). The only and the biggest problem with the project was that I didn’t have “enough” work.

The case was like -You can sleep with this young, gorgeous lady but you can’t make love to her. Now, this is an insult to the manhood of any person. You just cannot expect any MAN to do that. Of course, ‘Making love to her’ is the single-most important thing in the world for a man in that position. I am sure, ‘just sleeping with her’ does not even feature in his ‘Top 10^n, n-> Infinity, actions I would like to do in my life-time’ list.
Similarly, for a Software engineer, it is an insult to be in a project where there is not enough work. I would like to have all the good appraisals, appreciations and envy from my project mates, but for my work/quality of work rather than for the lack of it.
A release from the project gives me two immediate benefits:
Reduces frustration
Makes me available for service to other projects. (It is very much possible that I don’t just have to sleep with the lady this time)

So, this is for the other gorgeous ladies (projects)…

I’ m free…I’ m on BENCH.
Only Term and Condition: You know what ;-)

What is more painful in love?

• Her coldness towards you, or her indifference.
• The ‘Fear’ in her eyes on your presence, or the look of ‘Sympathy’ towards you.
• An outright rejection of your proposal, or her aloofness after saying “We can be friends”
• Not receiving any calls from her, or not being able to call her up
• Her absence when you needed her or your absence when she needed you.
• Staying away from her at a distant location, or trying to stay away from her intentionally.
• Not having any news about her, or hearing only the bad news and rumors.
• Loving someone you cannot forget, or loving someone you cannot forgive.

MOMENTS...

A Software engineer's life is too planned for comfort. It is difficult for him to do anything without adequate planning and he takes a lot of pride in that. His work, meetings, deadlines, the parties, even the coffee and toilet breaks are all planned. The unfortunate part of this very precise planning is that the focus of attention is more on the time on the watch rather than enjoying the moment.

It either took a momentary collective craziness or a lot of frustration on our part to decide on a long drive to Konark and that too late in the evening while we were sipping some hot coffee in Cafe Coffee Day. The decision may also have been triggered by the deafening mindless noise in the cafe but none of us could deny the fact that it had more to do with the internal turmoil that our monotonous life is facing each day, each moment. Leave aside the work on the weekdays, even the way of spending the weekends has become monotonous. It is usually spent watching movies or hanging out on one of the few cafes in the city or getting our mind & soul drunk in some dim lit bar.

Being a domestic guy, I was a bit hesitant for the trip at first but the urge to do something different was too strong to resist.It finally took a long drive, a crescent moon on the sky and a mildly violent sea to relax our senses and create a moment that could actually be treasured. We spent some time on the sea-shore and most of that time, we were silent. There was no time to discuss our projects, girlfriends (or the lack of it) or personal problems. The sight of the moaning sea, trying to sweep away our feet, was just too beautiful to be missed. All the complaints and problems of our life seemed so trivial and small. I had finally found a MOMENT that I could hold on to and that too after so long.

It's an irony that it takes long intervals of time in our long life for an unforgettable moment to happen. Recollect the first day in your college, the moment when you first saw your childhood crush, the first time your beloved touched you, the day when your best friend said how much he valued you as a friend, the date and time when you got your first job, the day when your father bragged about your success to his friends. The moments that force us to believe on the concept of the TIME MACHINE that would enable us to go back to our past and relive those moments again. The moments that are poor in time period units but very rich in life.

There is one thing in common in all those moments... they came unplanned.They cannot be planned. Like Doll was saying the other day,
"All our unforgettable moments come unplanned and when we are least expecting it."
"The moments may come too far in between but they are worth waiting for."