What drives you?

Of late, I have across people who have indulged in some activities which would frowned upon. Nobody in the sane mind would ever, even in their wildest dream, consider some of things that these people would do. The more you interact with these people, the more you will realise that they have a tale to tell, and a sad one too!
One guy was happily married to university sweetheart till she was diagnosed with the big C. Her health deteriorated as quickly as the news sinked in into the family. Even before the family could come in terms with her impending demise, she left Mother Earth. The guy, devastated with the whole turn of events, was a flicker away from being engulfed by the black dog. He did what most sane people do in situations like this. He ran. Like Forrest Gump he ran and he ran like he had never ran before. At the age of 50, he completed his first marathon and there was no stopping him. The euphoria  of the post run high appears to be the only thing that conserved his sanity. The addictive endorphin just kept him pushing his distance. Recently, I heard that he completed the gruelling 100km Hong Kong Ultra Marathon in 29h30m! He kept his feet on the ground and did not leave his future to the stars!
Yet another person went through another earth shattering moment in her live. A full grown adult son took his own life! If the trauma of losing a love one alone is not enough, the worse was narrating the whole event again and again to well meaning friends and relatives. The worse was the self appointed creative rumour mongers who spun spiced up stories on the turn of events. Not only these people were doing a disservice, they do not realise that news gets around and reaches the unintended recipients, like herself! The pain was simply too much! Like something God-sent, she was introduced to a Guru.
All the various brain waves that she was exposed to through various sessions of meditation and self realisation helped to rewire her dendrites. She is now standing tall and calm in the sea of uncertainty. The Guru was her anchor when her going was rough.
Naysayers will always ridicule and highlight negativities of people's various indulgences. They are quick with their so called 'credible information from the horse's mouth' but they should walk a mile in the sufferer's shoe to feel the pain.

Every dog has its day

Blue Jasmine (2013)
Story & Direction: Woody Allen

We were just discussing the other day whether a person's work should be assessed by his work alone. Quite often than not, personal actions, inactions, mistakes and crimes are used with vile against their ingenious work of art. Just because of Hitler's nefarious acts, are we going to downplay his picturesque painting of Vienna? How about his push for advancement in German technology? Then there is Roman Polanski with the cast of black cloud overshadowing his deeds. What about all the prodigies, geniuses and the insane who are a separated alone by a fine line who had behaviours clashing with norms of society?
Woody Allen, often frowned upon by the world at large for the alleged misconduct with his step daughter, has come up yet with another winner. It has all the trademarks of Allen's typical brand of comedy.
Cate Blanchett, gives a Oscar deserved performance of downtrodden wife of a crooked businessman in verge of mental breakdown.
She flies in from New York to crash into her sister's life in San Francisco.

VW - Hitler's pride of joy
(Volkswagen - folk's wagon)

Jasmine's (Cate Blanchett) story is told in flashbacks as the story progresses. Jasmine and her husband (Alec Baldwin) lived amongst the uppity society with their ill gotten gains through creative accounting and manipulative Ponski scheme. They used to look down their low brow sister and her then husband when they visited New Year. They (actually Jasmine claims ignorance over the whole scheme) also used their money to invest in failures.
After discovering of husband's extramarital affairs, Jasmine snitched all of her husband's business to the FBI. The Government and lawyers took all their money, made them paupers and put her husband in jail who eventually killed himself. Her young adult son left university to be on his own.
The mentally stressed Jasmine tries to pick up the pieces and start life anew in San Francisco. Life is not easy for her as she has to endure the wrath of Ginger's ex-husband, her new boyfriend, advances of her new boss, her desperation to live the high life and her willingness to bluff herself all the way through to charm a wealthy suitor.
An entertaining flick with lots of emotion with a twang of comedy infused in it.

Power with the People!

Hirok Rajar Deshe (Kingdom of Diamonds, Bengali, 1980)
Director: Satyajit Ray

You will be wondering how a tale set in the medieval times of stories of kings, magic and two main characters who are not exactly the best matches in the box going to impress you. Well, that is the magic of Ray. He even composed the music score and songs for this one.
This film is actually the sequel of Ray's 1969 offering 'Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne' where two village idiots were given magical powers by angry demons who could not stand their croaking!
10 years after that episode, they are comfortably living off their common father-in-law, the King of Shundi. The problem is that they are too comfortable that they are bored. Just then, the King summons them to sing at the courts of Hirok Rajar to honour him on his anniversary at the throne.
To the outsider, Hirok Rakar's kingdom is rich with diamonds. It is all a charade as the the farmers who tow the plough has no food to eat and the diamond miners are too poor to buy stuff.

Baghdad 2003

The King, a tyrant, is surrounded by yeomen,  corrupt 'yesmen' ministers and astrologer who tells him what he wants to hear. A mad scientist is ready with his brain washing machine to 'correct' wayward citizens. The King decrees that all books be burnt and schools closed indefinitely as they were breeding grounds for dissidents.

Hungary 1956

The only school in the land with the sole teacher, Udayan Pandit (Soumitra Chaterjee, again) becomes the enemy of the state and is on the run.

Down with the King!

By chance, he meets the duo (Goopy and Bagha) who were on foot to the palace. With their magical powers and the force of the people, they outwit the regime and manage to use the brain washing machine on the King himself. The movie ends the symbolic destruction of giant statue of the King. This vision is exactly what was seen after the fall of Saddam and the fall of Stalin during the 1956 Hungarian workers' uprising.

Defensive mode

We are all living in a world where everybody is just waiting for another to make a mistake whilst at the same time everybody is just so careful that their posterior is not exposed and hence vulnerable to abuses.

Whenever a misadventure is encountered, the first response is mum! Nobody talks to anybody as anything you say will be used against you in any situation just to fry your goose. Silence is golden whilst the conniving officers of the law scheme out devious plans to dissociate yourself any plausible repercussions. Truth, justice, liberty you say? What is that? When you are persecuted and crucified for an event that even be beyond your control and your rice bowl is jeopardised, to hell with doing the right thing. It is the right thing alright, for yourself and your dependants. By admitting mistakes, everything would be pinned on you conveniently. In this world of fault seeking and destiny defying population, no one will empathise with you or have sympathy for your predicament. The time for Truth (a.k.a. God) to set things straight is long gone. We killed God long ago with our advancement in technology. There was a time when we were quite green about things around us. We had once marvelled at the splendour of many breathtaking events in our lives - how the sun was eaten by darkness; how the wrath the Mother Nature belched out boiling molten rocks whenever we thought we had wronged and how God punished the fornicators by inflicting incurable diseases!
When Man found a plausible manner to explain all these God sent events, he stopped blaming God for everything. He instead held each other responsible for misadventure, negligence or gaffe, depending on which side of the fence you are! And the sharks have no intentions to bring peace on Earth as it would affect their rice bowl and drinking chalice too - a tool of their trade.

Of freedom and emancipation...

Ghare-Baire (Bengali, Home and the World; 1984)
Director: Satyajit Ray

This is a Rabindranath Tagore's 1905 story set at a time when Bengal was divided into two by Lord Curzon. This was the time of the uprising of the Indians against their colonial masters with the shouts of 'Vande Mataram'. The Mussalmans who have been living in peace all this while with the Hindus suddenly feel that their status is threatened. It is also a time of the emancipation of women, especially in the elite circles of Calcutta.

Against this background, Bimla is married off to a wealthy nobleman without even seeing his face. She and her widowed sister in law were confined to the inner courtyard, never seen outdoors. Bimala's husband (Nikhilesh, Victor Banerjee) is a modern man, may be considered as a pacifist or mild-mannered by some, encourages his wife to learn the British way of life. He had a private English tutor (Jennifer Kendal) to teach etiquette, read, write and play the piano.

Along comes a debonair politician, Sandip (Soumitra Chatterjee), a vocal participant of the Swadeshi self-rule and burn British products movement. Sandip was Nikhil's childhood friend and was offered a place to stay. For the first time in her married life, Bimla is brought out of the inner courtyard to be introduced to the visitor. Sandip is impressed with the mature, sophisticated woman in Bimla and the charm of Sandip fascinated Bimla. After all, Bimla had not seen and been with any other man. They almost fall for each other.

Meanwhile, Sandip is active in his boycott and burn British product and admonishes Nikhil for his display and usage of foreign product. Furthermore, he deals with poor Mussalmans who deal with foreign products. 

Opponents of Swadeshi argues that merchants of foreign goods are indeed poor, and by boycotting them, they lose their source of income. Furthermore, they were cheaper than local products. They suggest that the boycotting should be left to the well-to-do!
Bimla and others soon realise that the apparently nationalistic leaders are not what they appear to be. There is talk of them murdering to achieve their agenda. The money that they seem to garner maybe for themselves!

After a small storm in their marriage, Nikhil and Bimla's marriage is reinforced. Sandip is politely told to leave.

N.B. An exciting footnote noted in the course of a conversation between Nikhil and Bimla...
Our society used to be proud of their powerful women, Draupadi in Mahabarata with her 5 husbands, Sita and many more. Somewhere along the way, they became docile. Was it because of the Moslems with their culture?

Keeping up with the Joneses?

In verbatim (not translation)
Super Hit Matinee Show

I remember an uncle, a close family relative and a retired civil servant, who spent a lot of his retirement time watching old Tamil movies. I found that quite amusing as none of his kids have an iota of outward appearance of embracing Indian culture. They did not speak any of Indian dialects, watched only English language TV/movies and even sneered at the comical sing song way of how movie stars delivered their dialogues. The uncle's reason for indulging in his pastime is for the meaning life lessons and heart rendering song lyrics that it had to offer.
I found this ironic as my parents were looking up at the way they brought up their children and we were asked to emulate them as much as possible. They were envious at their children's command of the English language and their skill in playing instruments. Not wanting for us kids to lose our mother tongue, ironically my mother would insists that we spoke Tamil at home. Outside the house, however, we were to speak our mother tongue as Tamil was not considered as a language that would 'draw intellectual discourse'! In the neighbourhood that we were living, only people from the underprivileged background would converse in Tamil. Hence, ability to converse in English would make one step above the rest, so she professed! We were from the city and it was the 70s. People were all trying to improve themselves economically. Tamil, as we saw it, was not going to lead us anywhere.

All the way to adulthood, I encountered many who hailed praises of the Tamil language, of how it is one of the oldest surviving language and how has a separate word for every situation. Even in modern scientific scenario, there is a readily available word for use. If in the English, the word 'love' is used to denote various types of affection between man, God, woman, animal, food and so on, in Tamil every particular act of love has a specific word.

Having said all that, if one were to listen to any Tamil language interview on cable TV from Tamil Nadu, 50% of the sentences are laced with English. As if, spiking English word makes the conversation more intellectual. Of late, even advertisements are using foreign word instead of readily available Tamil alternatives!

The caption above shows the title of an afternoon matinee slot on Raj TV. It reads in verbatim, not translation - சூப்பர் (super) ஹிட் (hit) மேட்னி (matinee) ஷோ (show). I am sure there must be a suitable translation for that in Tamil (தமிழ்)!

The art and science of knowing of your limit!

When you reach a certain age, everybody around you who apparently shows concern on your well being will give you unsolicited advice asking you to slow down and take things easy, that now is the time to the fruit of your labour and the sweat of your hard work. They would often quote you instances and examples of apparently healthy individuals just dropping dead like flies after a seemingly trivial chore. The way they coax (or put you in a corner), they seem to be cocksure of their facts and pretty soon plant the recurrent seed of doubt, uncertainty and fear in your brain. Admittedly, no matter how much there is of better living condition in the afterlife, we rather grow old, sick, wasted, unwanted and shoved around than die no time sooner, preferably never!
You will slow down, fearing for the worst, the unknown enemy. You become sluggish, puffed up, unfit and fat, poorly coordinated and a ticking time bomb. When your pin is unhooked, you disappear, become another statistic and everyone will move on with life, looking out to dash the hope of another health conscious middle aged man.
Man would not have reached where he has reached now if he had stayed in his comfort zone, fearing the unknown. There would not  be any of our ancestors who would have walked out of the African continent to explore newer pastures, no tomatoes in Indian cooking as tomatoes are native of Mediterranean land, no spices in cooking (the European wanted to find alternate route to lay their hand on these black gold), no preserved foods until refrigeration came around, no pleasures of smoking as the the first puffer would have been petrified to inhale, no simple pleasures in life (scared of retribution in afterlife), no new World as we know it as Columbus would have been stiff dead to topple over at the edge, no Fauja Singh running till the age of 101, no Arnie and no Arnie for post of Governor of California if he were just contented with green card, no space exploration, above us only sky, do not incur the wrath of the unknown force...
True, everybody has their potential and threshold. No pain and no gain they say. You certainly do not want to push yourself to the limits and beyond and to realise too late for goodbyes. It is an art to know your limits. Use the sciences and the signs to reap the maximal benefit out of activities.
I remember hearing a story in my childhood. A sage meditated for months to get his wish granted. He did not want to drop dead but to be given ample warnings. The Gods agreed.
The sage lived close to a century and died in his sleep. In heaven, he questioned the Gods for not keeping to their words. The Gods, in reply, denoted that They kept their side of bargain! The greying, receding hairline, the kyphosis, the joint pains, the reduced effort tolerance, the failing eye-sight, the slow thinking processes and so on.... The sage, the wise one he had been, had failed to notice!