Author: manuscrypts

  • Hollowed be thy name?

    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.

  • London

    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.

  • Last Tweak

    See that homemade banner on your right? That was what kept me busy this weekend. A few mails, a few comments, and a lot of GTalk s gave me a feeling that the two sets of audience don’t necessarily like the ‘other’ type of content that appears on the site. So I have decided to shift the ‘brants’ content to its own separate space within the site.

    And therefore, those who wish to get only the personal blog content can continue with this feed, and those who like to read my take on brands and social media can check out the other space, and add one more feed. For the ‘only brants’ readers, I’m sorry for coming up with new feeds every fortnight, I promise not to inconvenience you further. 🙂

    until next time, last tweak, for quite sometime 😉

  • Herbs and Spice

    We’d already been to the first version, a couple of streets off CMH Road, and while it had a Euro cafe setting complete with a blackboard menu, we weren’t convinced enough to visit again. But when we heard there was a revamped version elsewhere in Indiranagar, we thought we should drop in.

    The new version is on 80ft Road, right at the junction of 12th Main and 100 ft Road, above Planet M. The ambience is definitely better here, and there are comfortable seating options for large and small groups. The menu is considerably more than the old version, and offers a more complete spread, including a variety of salads, main course, and desserts. There’s beer too!! If you’re going later than 8 pm, you might like to reserve, since it was quite crowded.

    We were however, disappointed, with the absence of a non-veg soup. So we started with a cream of broccoli soup, which after a by-two division turned out to be only a very small quantity. This was to be a recurring theme. To be fair, they did give us some breads, on the house.

    For the main course, we ordered a ‘Fusilli with chicken, bell peppers, mushroom and basil pesto’ and a ‘Grilled whole Indian salmon with a cherry tomato sauce’. I don’t know if it had anything to with the fish or the Indian part of it, but it took them 40 minutes to serve us. And unfortunately, it really wasn’t worth the wait. The fusilli with chicken was quite okay, and flavoured well, but the fish was a disaster!! A sacrifice both the fish as well as us could’ve done without. The quantity was meagre, and in a long time, I actually left a restaurant with a ‘nowhere near full’ stomach. Well, I did sulk and avoid dessert, but the quantity, or rather, the lack of it, had really put me off.

    They made us wait quite a bit for the bill. Pretty dumb, since there were at least two groups waiting for a table. All of the above cost us over Rs.800, which was just way too much for what we got.

    Photos at Zomato

  • Collage

    After a really long time, I chanced to see some college kids in action. Some, would be an understatement since it involved half a dozen colleges and a few hundred students. As part of the program, I got to see them in their natural environment, their college. Did that make them sound like animals? Okay, it wasn’t supposed to. It made me think about youth. Not mine, since my memory isn’t too good these days, but the usage of that word to represent the collective.And i realised it doesn’t really do them justice.

    For I saw dreamers, the silent types who sat in the corners of the college quad with either eyes glued firmly to a book, or absorbing the world around in general, sometimes with an amused smile.

    I saw the show-offs, displaying everything from the latest in gadgets and fashion, to the latest in body art, and equating that in some way with what and who they are.

    I saw the absolute rascals, whose single focus was the other gender, and their attention. From what i saw, I thought it was more hormones than nobler intentions of love.

    I saw escapists, who learned very early, that it doesnt matter if the grass is green on the other side, or any damn side, you still gotta have it, the grass that is.

    I saw those who were full of life, participating in all the contests that were happening, eager to prove, not to anyone else, but to themselves, that they had what it took to excel.

    I saw some who had perhaps given up on all that happened around them, some of them with a quizzical expression and some of them trying hard to populate vacant smiles.

    I saw those whose looks had more than a trace of rancour, was it against what they were surrounded by, who they were surrounded by or was it against those who were happy in these surroundings?

    Youth, the collective term for a population that consists of individuals who are perhaps still trying to find out who and what they are.

    And as i sat watching them,  I saw some of them stare back at me, as though asking me how life goes, years after you’ve left college? Whether the world you are part of now, resembles the world you used to occupy then. And I would’ve liked to tell them that the world outside does change, but for better or worse, the world within can stay exactly the way it is, if you’d let it. And that perhaps is why some of us never grow up, and some of us feel that we grew up a long time back. And both of these have nothing to do with our age.

    until next time, growing up…