The festival of inner light

I stood on the terrace and looked around. The sky was getting lit up in different colors. Different shades with golden tinge got mixed up, in the black palette, as the incessant bursting sounds announced the intensity of the joyous celebrations. Enthusiasm was in the air.

It was the Diwali night.

Most of my friends made it home to join their loved ones and add more color and vigor to the festivity. The happiness of being together manifolds the beauty of any celebration, and it isn't any different with Diwali. I was dejected that I couldn't do the same, but I was getting to know how Chennai, my second home, looked and felt during the special day, and I did feel a pinch of the excitement that was flowing all around.

According to the most popular legend, Diwali is associated with the killing of Narakasura. It is the festival of lights, and it also is the time to worship Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity. So we celebrate, illuminating our houses, and a plethora of firecrackers go off, adding to the fun.

But sometimes, we get lost in the bells and whistles, don’t we? Rarely do we think that the festival of lights symbolizes the knowledge of your inner light. As we remember the story of Krishna slaying the vicious Asura, we should look for our inner demons, and slay them, so that we emerge as better people. Darkness is driven out of everywhere on this day, but our inner darkness also has to be driven away.

So, enjoy the day to the fullest, but, in the end, do take some time out, away from everything, for introspection. Without that, everything else would be pointless. Let this also be the celebration of a personal achievement, of having found ways to make ourselves better and eventually, make all of our co existence, better and more beautiful. 

Change, as I see it

As the bumpy auto rickshaw ride took me closer to my home, I gazed around, and kept noticing the striking dissimilarities between what I was seeing, and what that place used to be, a few years back. It was my once in three months homecoming, from Chennai, to the village in Kerala, where had I spent the first fifteen years of my life. I usually develop an inexplicable emotional nexus with places, but quite ironically, that never happened with the village where I was born and brought up.

“This place looks different, ma”

I exclaimed.

“Look who is being nostalgic now”

My mother’s reply was sarcastic, and I knew exactly why. She was also born and brought up in the same village, and we often discussed the evolutionary voyage of that place. She had told me how different, life used to be, during her childhood.  

“There was a muddy walkway, in the place of this road”

She points to the road, sounding dispirited. She goes on and talks about how agriculture was the main source of income for everyone, the enthusiasm and warmth that floated around during the celebrations of Onam and Vishu, how families were huge, how buffaloes, cows, goats and chicken were all considered to be members if it, and so on. And then, she tells me that everything started changing since people got enticed with the opportunities that cities offered. She reminisces that there was one lone buffalo left in our house, after we sold everything else, and I get the pun, only when she adds that, that buffalo, went on to study engineering, and lives in Chennai now.

I was of the opinion that, if you live in a place long enough, you would eventually develop an attachment with it, and when you see things change, you feel a pinch of sorrow.  So I put across my point pugnaciously, and try to snub her by saying that, there is nothing special in what a person feels for the surroundings that he or she lives in.

“Just look at the way people celebrate our festivals, these days. It was all about cherishing togetherness. But not anymore.”

She retaliates saying that it’s not the change, but the way things change, is what she finds admonishing.  All I can do is to accuse it all on the inability of the older generation to adapt.

But now, as I look around, I realize that, I too have started to miss the way things used to be. There were very few buses in our route, and we used to tell as a joke that, once that bus passes, you can sleep on the road, till it returns after two hours.  But now, the sound of motor vehicles lingers in the air, incessantly. The sprawling paddy fields, which also used to serve as our makeshift cricket grounds after harvesting, are all cut into different plots, and houses are rising, everywhere. The local primary school, has started English medium classes also. And the first three star hotel of our area has started functioning, in the nearest town.  

If you ask me, I wouldn't really be able to tell you, which all of these are to be welcomed, and which all are not to be. The infrastructure development and the better living conditions can be considered as a sign of the economic development of our country, and let us hope that it is the augury of a brighter tomorrow that awaits us. Our culture and lifestyle need not remain the same forever, but the essence and soul of it should. It is important to remain true to what we really are, and to sustain our inner virtues. ‘How exactly?’ is a question that is left to each one of us.  

Am I a little late here?

The blog has been dormant for a while and there have been multiple reasons like the latest socio political developments around the world and an appalling fall in the rate of monsoon in a bitter gourd shaped state in the southern part of India. I haven’t been watching too many movies, reading too many (Or even any) books for the last couple of months, which accounts for the absence of reviews. ‘Dark knight rises’ was the last English movie that I watched in theatre, and I did write a review for that. As I used to do with all of my movie reviews, I immediately sent it out to ‘The Hindu’, annoyed by the constant requests of the editor. But, by some unexpected turn of events, it didn’t get published. The editors had found it really hard to manage the e mails that flooded their inbox, after my previous reviews were published, and now, they are not going to publish movie reviews other than the ones by their own critics. Fair decision. But by the time I learnt that, one week had passed, so I didn’t feel like putting up the review here, because a movie review should never be that late.

Yesterday morning, as I opened Hindu Magazine, I found an article, which was a response to another one published in August. There was a subsequent reply by the author of the first article as well. The hot debate was about nothing, but the ‘Dark knight rises’. Damn! This movie is still being discussed. So why I can’t I put my review as well, in the blog?

First of all, I will provide the links of those two articles, which, I found, to be very interesting. Here is the first article, and here is the response.

I personally feel that, the allegations of Dark knight rises lacking the right political implications is void, because you can never thrust the responsibility of conveying the right ideas upon an artist. The greatest success, for an artist is when his/her work is being appreciated, discussed and digested by maximum number of people. Christopher Nolan could do that, with the story of a comic hero.

So, here comes my review, which is, a very small note, on how excited I was, about the movie. I am a Christopher Nolan fanboy, and especially a huge fan of the Dark Knight series, so it is possible that I have missed out on all the down sides, if any.

Again, all of this doesn’t matter because the readership of my blog is that huge.

Begins. Falls. Rises. Goosebumps!

Trilogy. Prodigy.

Movie : The dark knight rises

Cast : Christial Bale, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gorden Lewitt, Tom Hardy

Expectations, is a double sided sword. It could be an inspiration to go the extra distance, and sometimes, it could burden you, and even beak you down. This applies for films, too. Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dark knight rises’, which was hailed as the ‘Most awaited movie of this generation’ arrived last week, amidst the skyrocketed expectations of the movie lovers. As the Villain of the film, ‘Bane’, tells in a memorable dialogue, ‘There cannot be true despair without hope’. But the makers of the film have delivered a piece of cinematic brilliance, which meets our hopes, and saves us all, from falling into the pit of despair.

It has been eight years since the Batman has vanished, after taking the responsibility of Harvy Dent’s vicious acts. Organized crime has been pushed into oblivion and the people of Gotham are having a peaceful time. But as Bane arrives, spreading chaos and fear, Batman has to come back. He has to revamp his spirits, to stand up to the stronger enemy.

There is so much to appreciate in this film, that it obscures the mind on what to mention and what not to. It’s superbly directed, and very well cinematographed. The cast has done well, without anybody falling short of the mark. The adrenaline pumping action sequences are as good as it can ever get. But the film has much more to offer, that the scintillating fights. The emotional depth of the film has to be attributed to the writers. They have created a soulful story, which depicts the inner battle of an individual, while leaving a room for all the thrills and frills.

The movie lacked a villain as good as the Joker, and you cannot be without getting reminded of Heath Ledger’s mystifying performance, as Tom Hardy walks around, as the masked villain. The film, as a whole, doesn’t reach up to ‘The dark knight’, but having a too good predecessor can hardly be a fault.

Bottomline : Worthy culmination of the legendary trilogy. Must watch. Just decide how many times.

When the screen comes alive

Modes of communication is the backbone of our existence as a society, and it has been decades since cinema has evolved as one of them. It has been communicating countless emotions and ideas  that transcends the visuals, and the poetry on screen has flabbergasted us, many a times. Modern cinema has evolved into a form of expression, which can touch your heart, burnish your spirits and revamp your thoughts through the depiction of stories and events.

There are no clear cut rules ragarding the ingredients of good cinema. However, in general, we can say that, it should be a slice of life. According to the legendary director, Alfred Hitchcock, cinema is life, after you take the dull part out. But this doesn’t defy the role of the unrealistic or surreal elements. It only means that, the audience should, in some way, relate the journey of the characters, to some or other aspect of our existence. There are several examples for the not so real elements in cinema, offering us deep insights into life. Christopher Nolan’s Batman series is about the existential crisis and the subsequent struggle of a superhero. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the rings is a fantasy about the battle between good and evil, depicted with the help of stunning visuals. Woody Allen’s Oscar winning ‘Midnight in Paris’ uses an illogical and inexplicable time travel in the story, and still ends up being an excellent film, which tells a lot about human nature and the soul of a city. 

The intricacies that we can relate to life, woven somewhere inside, is what makes all these films special. The most excellent movies are made, usually, using the common things that we see, in life, as raw material.

When we look at Indian cinema, in the same perspective, things are very interestingly poised. People in different regions of our coutry speak different languages, and we have different film industries for each. If we were a country with a single language and culture, our film industry would have been much bigger, with a huge audience, which would have created a room for bigger budgets, and more effort behind each film. The biggest film industry in our country, Bollywood, does not represent our films as a whole, and there are several well made films coming out, in the regional languages. But the bigger audience ensures that Hindi films do better business.

We have a fairly big group of audience for the mindless comedies, logicless hero centric action films, and cliched romantic movies. But apart from all those, which of course, succeed in the business part, do we see enough life on our big screen?

Rather than bits and pieces from their films, what we need to take up from Hollywood, is the way, they adapt true stories and books, into movies. We have seen how smart screenwriting creates a story out of events as simple as a King’s fight to speak without stammering (King’s speech), a grave and mundane book on the economics of baseball (Moneyball), and an unproven theory about who actually was behind Shakespear’s works (Anonymous). We too, have plenty of stories happening all around us, and there are a lot of books, worth being adapted, in our literature. 

 Cinema is an art form, in which, creativiy plays the pivotal role. It assumes it’s mellifluous best, when it draws inspiration from life and literature, and whole lot of creative vision acts on it. That is exactly what we need to see more often, on screen.    

The final showdown

This was typed out after I watched the final of Euro cup 2012. 

More than three weeks of football extravaganza came to a conclusion with Sunday’s final, after which, Spain had the last laugh. They became the first team to retain the European champions title, and to win three major titles, consecutively. The final between Italy and Spain was not the best of games of Euro 2012, and it was one sided, but still, it was worth watching. And I had to watch it. How was the question.

Living in a rented house, without television, in Chennai, is very hard. Especially during the time of such sporting events. This is the place where televisions get given away for free, by politicians. When you think of that, you feel worse. So, I put a status message in facebook, hoping that someone with a huge LCD TV would invite me over to their room. The status message was as follows.

I am so desperate to watch the Euro cup final and I don’t have a television in my room. Anybody from Chennai OMR region, with a TV, ready to accommodate me for Sunday night? I am not as scary and ugly as the profile picture looks, I don’t make much noise, but I do utter very insightful coments during the match.

And it worked. One of my friends asked me to come over. There were a dozen of us, watching the match, there, which consisted of people with various degrees of football knowledge. So, we had lots of interesting comments pouring in, during the match. Someone suggested that Pirlo should have kicked the ball with ball with less power and more swing, someone else, commented on the technical errors in Spain’s strategy, and somebody, even wondered whether David Villa was named after the apartment that his parents were living in, while he was born.

The match started evenly, and in the first half, both teams had their chances. While Casillas stood like a rock in front of the Italians, Spain, netted the ball twice, to announce their supremacy. Second half started with both the teams unleashing a flurry of attacks, but soon enough, Italy got reduced to ten men, and the rest was just a formality. Spain’s game was not in their mellifluous best, but still, their deft passing was a treat to watch.

Certain degree of success can come with the help of luck, but to climb the mountain of success, and to be a there for a while, takes a lot of talent and effort. That’s what the Spaniards are doing, at the moment. Congratulations to the Spain football team, and all those who supported them. Especially to Gerard Pique’s girlfriend, whose hip never lies.

If you know what I mean.