Sitting in an official meeting, opposite someone who’s seen you in the nude, was uncomfortable. She dreaded the inevitable moment when he’d bring it up. Everyone stared when he said “You know, the last time I saw her, she was nude. Keeping her dress on was obviously not her strength….. as a 2 year old”
until next time, the bare truth
Saw ‘Rock On’ during the weekend, and as always, Farhan Akhtar did not disappoint. No reviews here, just a few thoughts that the movie provoked, so even if you haven’t watched the movie, read on.
Inspite of the movie’s tagline – ‘Live your dream’, I thought it dwells more on choices we make as human beings, the directions we take at crossroads, the compromises we make as a result of those, and the implications of those choices, some of which we have to live with, our whole life. That, i guess, is why the movie worked for me, after all ‘Choices’ is perhaps the largest tag item on this blog. 🙂
All of us have dreams, right from the time we were asked who we wanted to be when we grew up, and perhaps before that too. There are those who pursue it without deviating at all, there are those who compromised in between, but came back to them because living with the choice we made was difficult, and then there are those who live with a choice that did not include their dreams. The film shows all of the above, in addition to one more set – those who live a compromised version of their dreams.
So, there are those who follow their dreams, there are those who choose not to, but the tragedy doesn’t end there, as gray shades are abundant. Those who are never able to figure out what they want, who live in a limbo of multiple alternate realities, those who chase the dream only to figure out that it wasn’t what they thought it’d be, and lose the spark in their eye forever, as a life is gambled away.
Compromise – that was the keyword. While its very easy to see that a choice out of our dreams would involve lots of it, the movie also made me think about the other side of the fence. When a person pursues his passion/dream with all his heart, does he also harbor a feeling of having ‘compromised’ on the (for lack of a better word) fun part of his life, or the materialistic things that he could’ve afforded if he had put his dream on the shelf? The opportunity costs arriving out of following what one considers his destiny? Will he be a mirror reflection of those of us who compromise and wish for that chance to live at least once before we cease to exist? Or would he have achieved a private utopia as a reward for sticking to his dreams? Or does that utopia exist only in others’ minds? What happens when you’re the only individual gold medalist your nation has produced, and you still fell a sense of ennui/hollowness, a feeling of having missed out
Which leads me to a question i read sometime back – ‘Is dissatisfaction in the nature of existence’, and irrespective of what we do, the climax has already been decided?
As for the movie, it speaks about something many of us can relate to, and it is ‘feel good’, er, except for the part where i was met with stern gazes when i sang ‘Popcorn, hain yeh waqt ka ishara’ during the interval. So, you see, I do it all to myself. 😐
until next time, bedrock
PS. A nice read on the movie.
Edward Rutherford
This is the second time I’m reading this book. A lot of book descriptions have the words epic, saga, spanning centuries and generations etc. But to truly understand all of that you have to check out this book, for its scale and scope is truly massive.
The tale starts from the time before the island of Great Britain was formed, ends in 1997 and in its expanse weaves a tapestry that contains the story of generations of families and events in history that they’ve been part of. Its amazing how, throughout history, the same characteristics are brought out – not just of people, but of the city too.
A lot of cities have a rich history, but very few of them manage to give the visitor or inhabitant a sense of history. I’ve never been to London, possibly never will, but I’m sure it’s one of those places which would give one glimpses of life as it happened centuries before.
Three mails in my inbox, all relating to an interest of mine – reading, but at three levels of engaging me. The easiest one to discuss is Rediff Books, which in a very matter of fact way gave me a list of books, including a 10 day MBA, how to save Income Tax, and ‘The Chronicles of Narnai’ (sic). It informed me that I had expressed an interest in receiving such information. I did? Reading, I’d say is a great vertical for a social network, but Rediff Books doesn’t seem to think so.
The second mail was from Shelfari, which gives me a status on what people in my network are doing. Now, I had signed up on Shelfari a while back, and had updated it for quite a while. My old blog even had a shelf I’d found cute. But somewhere down the line, its interface and utility ceased to interest me. I got quite irritated with their search which never managed to find my friends for me, only for me to get a mail from them later, not by them finding me, but on how they found this an interesting site, and wanted me to join. That was around the time that i became a Facebook fan, and found Visual Bookshelf. And why was that? Because Shelfari’s app on Facebook refused to work for me inspite of several tries. Now, to be fair, I might have been a rare case since I see a lot of people using it.
The interesting news last week, was Amazon’s acquisition of Shelfari, which leads to a strange relationship with its competitor, Library Thing. I noticed from the second link that the UI has been improved considerably, but they’d lost me way before I could experience that.The effects of such a partnership would be beneficial to both parties, as Shelfari gains from the scale of Amazon and its users, and Amazon gains a community that it couls scale up and synergise very effectively with its current services. Amazon is doing some interesting stuff, most prominent of which would be Kindle.
And that brings me to my favourite utility in this vertical – Visual Bookshelf. The biggest advantage I have is that I get to share it with all my friends on Facebook, and it automatically adds the friends who use the same app. It also means that I get to share a review on my newsfeed, so even those who don’t use the app can read it. VB’s mails to me are pretty simple – it tells me the status of the books I have added, and gives me an option to change it, it lets me know what my friends have added, and in a way I found very appealing, lets me know what the team is working on, and that’s some pretty interesting stuff.
But there is another app I’m considering to give a spin, and that’s ‘Books iRead’, from weRead, a team based in Bangalore. Its page on FB informs me that it has more than 6.5 lakh users, 25 of whom are friends. I read recently that it had been acquired by Lulu. Not exactly the Amazon kind of deal, although I couldn’t help but wonder whether the guys who should’ve actually done a tie up with weRead long ago should’ve been another Bangalore based online bookstore start up – Flipkart. It could’ve been perhaps as simple as me reviewing a book on Books iRead, a friend reading it and deciding to buy it, and Flipkart offering an option to buy. Now, Flipkart is doing some reasonably good work, and I loved the way they first caught my attention, but this would be a good context to remind them that they haven’t gotten back to me on Dublin, a book I’d asked for! But don’t worry, none of the online guys in India have, so there’s reason to cheer. Sigh!! 😐
until next time, Read India