April 21, 2008

Echo

A monk asked Hogen, "I, Echo, ask you, Master. What is Buddha?"
Hogen said, "You are Echo."

Link

February 18, 2008

100 suba post

Does it creep anyone else out a little that 'ten years ago' refers to 1998?

January 24, 2008

Being honest

How is it important to be honest? How different is it to be honest with one’s self and to be honest with others? How much is others’ perception worth while determining someone’s honesty? Isn’t it possible for someone to be completely honest with himself and yet dishonest in the eyes of others? If someone chooses a place where he can be all alone with himself, a place where no one else can touch, does that make him a hypocrite because to others, he is not what he is? If he chooses to hide a part of himself from others, does that make him a hypocrite? Is it wrong to feel vulnerable when someone lets himself known to another? Is it wrong for someone to try to protect himself from that vulnerability?

If u put in two different individuals together, wouldn’t it be a miracle if they just happen to agree on everything? Is it prudent to imagine a world where everyone just stuck to his honest opinions? Does every compromise make one more hypocritical, as u r accepting something who u r not, something u r not wont to do? Is it possible, then, to live without any compromise and stay completely honest? Can we say, I will stick to my own notions, and the world may go its own way?

But then, how will this work in the grand scheme of things? How will the world work if everyone stuck to his opinion and remained honest, without any compromise? Does agreeing with someone else’s opinion, different from yours, make you dishonest? How different is it from respecting someone else’s opinion?

If someone claims to despise a certain kind of behavior, but tries to justify it when he himself behaves that way, does he become a hypocrite? If he is able to justify it, does it cleanse him of his hypocrisy? Is the act of justification itself an act of hypocrisy?

Which one is more honest - shooting from the mouth, or taking time to think, and then speaking? How important is it to show one’s emotions? If someone tries to curb his anger, is he cheating? Should he just let it go?

If u decide not to do a certain thing which u want to, but ought not to do, does that make u a hypocrite? Isn’t that running away from who u r, what u want? Are we what we r, or what we want to be? If I don’t know who I am, can someone accuse me of being not being the real me?

January 22, 2008

Ctrl C , Ctrl V

# How do you extract iron from Hema Malini?
Get her drunk. Then she'll get tight. Now u have hema-tite. You can extract iron from that.

# son: mom, what's there to eat?
mom: hum eat ka jawaab pathhar se denge

# Two paint tankers, one carrying red paint, and one carrying purple paint, collide. The sailors were marooned.

# Two atoms are walking along. Suddenly one says "oh no! I've lost an electron!"
"Really? You sure?"
"Yeah, I'm positive!"

# Did you hear about the dyslexic who walks into a bra?

# What's the difference between ignorance and apathy?
I don't know and I don't care.

# What's the difference between regular garlic and roasted garlic?
A gypsy once told me it was the roasting, but you shouldn't trust the gypsies

#
Deep within a forest a little turtle began to climb a tree. After hours of effort he reached the top, leaped into the air waving his front legs, and crashed to the ground. After recovering, he slowly climbed the tree again, jumped, and fell to the ground. The turtle tried again and again while a pair of birds sitting on a branch watched his sad efforts. Finally, the female bird turned to her mate. "Dear," she chirped, "I think it's time to tell him he's adopted."

# A Times Roman walk into a bar
The barman says, "Oi- get out! We don't want your type in here"

# Two muffins were sitting on a counter. One looks to the other and says "How've you been today?" The other screams "AH! A TALKING MUFFIN!"

# How do you tell a boy chromosome from a girl chromosome?
You pull down its genes.

# A man goes to a party and sees a man with a banana in his ear. He goes up to him ad says "Excuse me, did you know you have a banana in your ear?"
"Pardon?"
"I said did you know you have a banana in your ear?"
"Sorry?"
"You have a banana in your ear."
"What?"
"YOU...HAVE...BANANA....IN.....YOUR.....EAR"
The other man replies "I'm sorry, I can't hear you, I've got a banana in my ear!"

# Attorney: Were you present when your picture was taken?
Witness: Would you repeat the question?

# Descartes walks into a bar and orders a tequila sunrise. The bartender looks at him for a moment and says "Wouldn't you like something a bit more manly?" Descartes says "I think not!" and disappears.

# A waiter asks a man, “May I take your order, sir?”
“Yes,” the man replies. “I’m just wondering, exactly how do you prepare your chickens?”
“Nothing special, sir. We just tell them straight out that they’re going to die.”

# Three people of different nationalities walk into the bar. Two of them say something smart, and the third one makes a mockery of his fellow countrymen by acting dumb.

# So a stripper walks into a Pole:
"Sorry ma'am."
"What? A pole can talk?!"

# A very confident James Bond walks into a bar and takes a seat next to a very attractive woman. He gives her a quick glance then casually looks at his watch for a moment. The woman notices this and asks, "Is your date running late?"
"No," he replies, "Q has just given me this state-of-the-art watch. I was just testing it."
The intrigued woman says, "A state-of-the-art watch? What's so special about it?"
Bond explains, "It uses Alpha waves to talk to me telepathically."
The lady says, "What's it telling you now?"
"Well, for a start it says you're not wearing any underwear..."
The woman giggles and replies, "Well it must be broken because I am wearing underwear!"
Bond smirks, taps his watch and says, "Bloody thing's an hour fast."

# A Pole walks into a bar

# A constant function and e^x are walking on Broadway. Then suddenly the constant function sees a differential operator approaching and runs away. So e^x follows him and asks why the hurry.
"Well, you see, there's this diff.operator coming this way, and when we meet, he'll differentiate me and nothing will be left of me!"
"Ah," says e^x, "he won't bother ME, I'm e to-the x!" and he walks on. Of course he meets the differential operator after a short distance.
e^x : "Hi, I'm e^x"
diff.op. : "Hi, I'm d/dy"

# Who is sodium?
Shahrukh Khan ("Main Hoon Na" )

January 10, 2008

on writing

“Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.” - Terry Pratchett

i'm alone and i have time to kill. i want to write about something, anything. i'm just unable to decide on what. (should it be 'decide on what' or 'decide what on'? i need a wren and martin!) a lot of things have tempted themselves before me, for me to put them in writing. for example, i could write about what i did today, about someone, some movie, sites that i visit, tv shows that i like, my favorite songs, so on and so forth. or i could write some fiction. by the way, there's this story that has been ringing in my head for quite sometime now. i could put it in writing finally! but that would be too taxing and too deep for me to write about now. hmm. or i could keep typing about anything that pops up in my head till i get bored and tired! that should be exciting! but am i not doing that alreaedy? am i excited? i guess u tend to falter when presented with choices. i've always wondered whether having choices is better or worse than having no choice at all. do u realize that having only one choice is the same as having no choice at all? that's when 1 becomes equal to 0! man, i just posed a philosophical question and cracked it myself.

i wish real life would be as easy as typing something. imagine being able to tidy up ur room just like doing Ctrl + A and then Ctrl + J in word. i could write pretty neatly too, justifying the text left and right (it requires a lot of practice, let me tell ya!) it is not so easy when it comes to arranging ur wardrobe, and books and other stuff.

hmmm. so, the story i was thinking about. it is about a guy who, one day, discovers his father's diary. in the diary, his father has written a lot about a certain girl. this was probably before his father met his mom. so, he decides to set out on a journey to go to where the diary was set. the place, as he finds out, is a magical one, unlike any place he has ever been to, and unlike any place he ever thought would exist. as he spends time over there, he starts discovering a lot of things about his father. in the end of his stay, his entire perception of his father changes, and along with it, his person changes completely.

what else, what else? oh, how can i forget to write about the harbhajan-monkey-symonds controversy. now, that is weird. when harbhajan calls u monkey, u don't get offended, u laugh. it IS funny. also, by now, symonds must have used to all the monkey chants. jokes apart, all this hullabaloo coming from the australian cricketers, of all people, smacks of plain hypocrisy. i even had an idea of starting a google bombing meme so that a google search for 'monkey' would point to andrew symonds' wikipedia page! ((speaking of hypocrisy, where did i hear this term 'hypocrisy of democracy'. now where did i hear that. perhaps i'm predicting the title of a future arundhati roy essay, but it sure sounds like a cool phrase. make u sound intelligible and all.))

time to wrap up for now. i have a lot of things in the pipeline (things that i want to do, but just too lazy to) - learn origami, interview some famous person of yore who has now disappeared into oblivion, go on a traveling trip with a bunch of complete strangers, shoot a small movie of my own. if i don't do them, at least i could write about them!

January 08, 2008

Getting ready

No Smoking

(This post contains spoilers - a lot of them. Not that it should matter when you decide to watch the movie!)

"To be is to do"--Socrates.

"To do is to be"--Plato.

"Do be do be do"--Frank Sinatra

thus the movie began. And it had me enthralled from then and there! Two people had recommended it, which is my usual criterion for watching a movie. I was warned of the movie being a ‘mind-warp’ and was expecting a ‘Lost Highway’-ish style of David Lynch and so it turned out to be. It has every element to transform it into the next cult classic coming from Bollywood. The movie did make me go philosophical with the question – what the fuck?!! And so I did what I usually do after watching such movies – search the web for the answer(s) to my question.

The web, however, proved to be a disappointment. There were lesser posts about the movie per se than the Anurag Kashyap love hate war which included, among others, Anurag himself and some prominent critics in Bollywood. Khalid Mohammed’s review (??), in particular, was pure spite and entirely a tirade against the director, with little being said about the movie itself.

As the director himself admits, the movie is about arrogance. It depicts a clash between the arrogance of a narcissist on one hand and the arrogance of a society on the other. I would take it a step further and say that the movie underlines the arrogance of the director himself. It is by a director who doesn’t want to conform to rules, someone who loves his own work like a child, doesn’t care to churn out a run-of-the-mill masaaledaar Om Shanti Om. If not for anything else, Anurag needs to be applauded for that.

After watching it, the movie does fill you with questions. It seems to be replete with visual metaphors. What does ‘Hitler ki aulaad’ signify? The carpets shop? The eunuch giving him the coins? His two cut fingers? His wife and secretary looking the same? The bath-tub? Siberia?

There will be, as is with such movies, multiple answers and interpretations and not a single unified theory that can explain everything. Trying to understand the movie becomes as interesting as trying to decipher an interesting dream. However, we are not content by just dismissing it as just another dream, but are intent on trying to find a meaning, to fit the missing pieces in the puzzle and to discover the layers of reality underneath.

My interpretation

K is having nightmares and going through a traumatic experience as he is being forced to quit smoking, something he does passionately. He tries to cope with his freedom being snatched from him and it is all a harrowing experience for him. He has forced himself to imagine extreme consequences to make him quit smoking and they continually haunt him in his nightmares. He tries to escape and goes to his Siberian dreams but is not able to escape entirely as his dreams turn to nightmares. Unable to cope with reality he returns to his nightmares and digs into it in search of an answer.

His wife and his secretary, albeit the same person, (‘I’m your wife. I’m your secretary. Remember, tum nahi chahte the office mein kisi ko pata chale.’) depict different personas – one who is intent on making him stop smoking and thus, curb his freedom and the other who is not bothered by his smoking. But he is bent on seeing them as two different people. He sees it all as a conspiracy – the people who convinced him to quit smoking appear in his nightmares as members of a well-knit conspiracy.

His cut fingers signify his loss of freedom in another level. It shows how he is compelled to quit smoking. I further thought he could have actually lost his fingers and that could be the reason he is not able to smoke. But I’m not sure of this explanation myself.

His friend Abbas (who regained his fingers after referring K to the baba) and his doctor friend represent people who were forced to conform to societal norms, people who were forgiven their sins after ‘helping’ someone else. The movie in the end, shows the complete assimilation of K into the society when he, for want of redemption, tries to bring in another of his friend to follow his suit. At this point, the dividing line between retribution and redemption becomes blurry and curved – beyond recognition.

The baba is an epitome of the society, which in itself is much more arrogant than any arrogant person. The baba wants people to conform to his rules. His mistakes will be forgiven, he can’t be blamed. At the same time, he will be relentless when it comes to mistakes committed by individuals. If a person has committed a crime, a sin, he has to pay for it. The baba is unforgiving.

Hitler is one name for human arrogance and that’s why he repeatedly refers to the baba as Hitler ki aulaad (Baba: “Guru manta hun main usko”)

Siberia epitomizes his loss of freedom – the curfew and his inability to find cigarettes to smoke. It is a fear that he harbors constantly. Further, the bathtub in the snow connects his nightmares to reality. It is the place where he drops into ruminations and where his fears come alive as nightmares, and finally brings him back to reality.


P.S. Get the script of the movie here.

Sunday evening


Before




After

December 19, 2007

s or t?? ah! wht a dilemma!!

December 17, 2007

Evanston updates



  • The place has taught me how to greet ‘Hi’ to one and all without any awkwardness. I’ve always felt sort of ill at ease when people greet me on roads, more so if I’m not too familiar with the person. Indeed, my most hated moment in flights is when a beautiful, well made-up stewardess greets me with an uncomfortable cheerfulness. I’m the sort of person who would look at the person from a distance and silently hope that he/she is looking down or away from me so that I can pretend I didn’t notice him/her either. Having spent some time over here has, however, done wonders to my greeting skills. Everyone does a “How are you doing?” to everyone and everyone replies with a “Fine. How about you?” It has been a revelation. I have mastered the art of greeting everyone. Now I only hope someone doesn’t snub me and my new-found talent with that cold, are-you-freakin’-mad look when I get home.
  • More often than not, as I look left and right before crossing the road, a car comes and stops in front of me, waiting for me to cross the road. This, to say the least, is freaking embarrassing for me. I have never enjoyed such respect on any road I have crossed in my life, and it has come as a shock to me. I have even tried to politely decline their offer, indicating with my hand to make them pass first, but they are adamant. I can now finally extend my arms, and feel like a ‘king-of-the-road’.
  • I’ve never seen snow before my trip here and had a fairly romantic notion about it. However, it has proved to be more of a nuisance than magnificence. Perhaps it is the cold I’m actually scared of, and I can fall in love with snow again soon enough.
  • If I miss anything of the food over here, it is going to be Swiss Miss and the 'Suicide' wings from Buffalo Joe's. The Swiss Miss saved me from the cold i was suffering from and the Joe's wings have become an addiction. (I was surprised my manager had noticed that!) Otherwise, food has been pretty ordinary, in spite of the numerous restaurants that you can find in the small area.

December 15, 2007

The Bird People in China

(this review is posted simultaneously at reelsuave. thanks to the editor, john, for his effort. visit reelsuave to discover some extraordinary cinema.)


“And again I slept thousands of times, but I have never seen a dream of myself flying.”

It is one of those movies you are scared of writing about lest you might end up robbing the reader of the joy of discovering the movie by himself. I strongly suggest that you go ahead and watch the movie in case you haven’t, before reading this.

The movie doesn’t fit into any genre. It almost seems like a fantasy but it is so real in parts; it is humorous indeed with genuine laugh-out-loud moments, and yet takes a look at life that leaves the viewer thinking a long time after the movie is over. Above all, it is a movie about the triumph of human belief. Buoyed by touches of exquisite humor, fantasy, love, innocence, hope and magic, the movie ushers in a new wave of cinematic experience. And to think that the director is mostly known for his mastery in depicting exaggerated violence, horror and bizarre sexual perversions, as in movies like “Ichi the killer”, and in the segment “Box” in “Three.. Extremes”, it is indeed a treat from director Takashi Miike.

The movie is about a Japanese businessman and a yakuza who end up in a small village in the depths of Yun Nan province of China, untouched by human civilization. While the first part of the movie details the journey of the two, the second shows the transformation underwent by the two after they reach the magical village. And magical it is, as the director succeeds in depicting – seemingly impossible incidents, but filled with such belief and innocence that you cannot but believe it yourself.

The movie is accompanied by enchanting visuals and a haunting soundtrack that weaves in seamlessly into the fabric of the movie. It helps in enduring the pleasant, magical aura of the entire movie. The actors are genuine and don’t make a single mistake that would otherwise distract the enraptured viewer. Before one realizes, the transformation of the characters is already complete. The end of the movie leaves the viewer unmovable, and yet reeling under an unfathomable force, floating with feet firmly on ground!

Make this journey and you will have reached a place you have never been to before!

November 26, 2007

Cold

A clear moonlit sky
And still, my senses become
This warm winter night.

I crave for some sleep
The air stirs reluctantly
And your thoughts blind me.

While across the seas,
The snow falls incessantly
Do you feel the cold?

(Written on 26th January, 2005)


Fate

I drifted down the meandering river,
Unaware of the curves of time.
With the current ,my spirits heightened and fell;
I was too meek to swing my arms.

My voice of dissent got subdued even
When I hit the river bed.
Only the sanctity of the moment
Was what I desired and ached for.

A glimpse of the sea, lying flat and still
Made my aspirations pierce my mind .
It spawned a mortal fear of getting sucked
Into a whirlpool of queer fate.

For once ,I battled against the currents
Which had carried and cuddled me.
I was unaware of my body being
Dissolved in the acid water.

Reality fading, I made an attempt
To find the safety of a boat .
One – blurred ,almost beyond recognition ;
A desperate and feeble lunge....

A boisterous sea welcomed a new me ,
And my boat,my companion.
It was time for me t look up and sail
Beyond the horizons of fate.

Written on the 12th of October,2004


Illusion

A room,
Engulfed in absolute darkness ,
In absolute stillness.
A flicker lights up the room
For one undying moment.
And then - absolute nothingness.
The darkness starts filling me,
Making me feel nothing;
Almost.
Making me almost resign myself
To a fate of darkness.
A streak of light appears from nowhere
As I stand up-
Fate betrayed.
I reach out ,searching for the source
But it eludes me.
The streak dims and then brightens
But it stays,
Intriguing me, attracting me,
Overpowering me.
I grope in the darkness
Searching for the source,
But it eludes me.
I’m almost resigning myself
To a fate of darkness – again.
Then I discover a source of light-
Inside me.
But it’s not the one I’ve been searching for.
It’s the one that has
fended me from
the darkness around me.
It is so dimmed ,though.
Then ,
The room gets flooded with
Light
Killing the darkness,
Leaving nothing of it.
But I-
I’ve been blinded .
My eyes have betrayed me.
Now, I can only hope that it's all
An illusion.

written on 29th September ,2004

November 07, 2007

A day in Haiku

(In 3-5-3 ‘s and 5-7-5 ‘s)
(1)
Smoke, rising
Blends with the early
Morning fog
(2)
The sway of the swing
In the night’s moulded darkness
Silent, but the creak.
(3)
Rain, lashing
A leaf falls, dancing
In the wind
(4)
Dreams nestled
Inside another
In sound sleep


November 06, 2007

Movi(e)ng thoughts...

I wish I could frame myself in a movie – a movie that captures every moment of my life, every day. There are times when u believe u’ll get a better picture of a situation if u were in someone else’s shoes. Looking from a third (or second?) person’s perspective at me doing something will certainly give me more insight into the state of affairs. This solves a certain dilemma – when u need someone’s help and u are not sure who to talk to. U r not able to solve it urself and u don’t trust anyone enough to talk about it. What better way than to do it in ur own leisure, as if u were watching a movie, literally!

Perhaps a background score in tune with what I’m supposed to feel would be convenient. At least u won’t feel that crippling helplessness when u are (sometimes) not aware of how u r supposed to feel. That small cue could potentially save u from many an discomfited situation.

Speaking of background score, I had this thought. Usually, movies treat the background score to accentuate the mood of the movie. Why not do something opposite? I would love to see how viewers react. Will it go unnoticed? What effect will it have on the movie as a whole? Will it reduce the effect of the movie and ‘average’ out the mood of the movie? Or will it make the movie crappier than ever?!!

September 28, 2007

And I'm ;aughing as ever!!