Category: Life Ordinary

  • Versus all the world…

    (written a few moons ago)

    Season finales have a way of dispiriting me, by showing me the transience of things. Things that we like, things that we get used to, things that teach us lessons, sometimes not even by design.

    Like this one, which took me to Queens, a borough of New York City, week after week, and also gave me a peek into the world of fashion magazines, however contrived a view it may have been.  More than the sometimes convoluted plots and the character profiling that ensured certain audiences, I was a fan because in its own way, it gave insights into the innate goodness that exists in all humans..characters, especially in the final season of a dramedy 🙂

    But more than anything else, the show was all about the journey of its title character, an unlikely success story. It sold the hope that a person could make her (in this case) own world, despite her unconventional ways, because she believed in herself. And it sold it well, because many a viewer cheered for her, and egged her on.

    Say that I’m changed, say I’m different
    Maybe I’ll finally understand

    It has succeeded to some extent, in teaching me, that its not really the choices I make, but how much of myself I am willing to put in them, that really decides the outcome, and the way I deal with that outcome.

    I’m ready, I’m ready
    I’m ready to believe

    And if I zip through the entire journey of the character, I can also see the transience of these outcomes, despite their seeming finality.

    Say I’ll let go, say it’s obvious
    Oh, I tell myself over, over and over again

    So yes, thank you, for taking me on a very interesting journey, and giving me several LOL moments, thanks to nasty one liners from Marc/Wilhelmina/Amanda. And now, when I am asked, usually with much incredulity, followed by amusement, about why I watch Ugly Betty, I’ll perhaps hum..

    And all the world can watch the choices you make
    All the world can watch each tiny mistake
    Let the world watch….let the world wait for you

    until next time, couchsurfing of a different kind

    Lyrics: All the World (I Tell Myself) by Correatown, played during the season 4 finale

  • Decision Faker

    Of all the books I’ve recently  read, one I liked immensely was Thrity Umrigar’s “First Darling of the Morning”. Some of it had to do with her wonderful articulation of the pop culture phenomena close to my generation, some of it had to do with her personal traits, which I could identify with (“The more silent and introspective I grew from the inside, the more smart-alecky and verbal I felt compelled to be“), and a lot of it had to do with her honest portrayal of human relationships – their gray areas, their changing nature with time, and many such nuances. Will put up a review here soon.

    One of the things that made me think was this

    And finally, I know that the world still belongs to the adults, and although, in their kindness and mercy they may pretend to share it with us, ultimately it is still their world. It is they who decide when we are old enough to stop playing with dolls, when we should give away toys that they’ve decided we’ve outgrown……”

    I tried to think back to the first decision I had ever gotten to make by myself, but I couldn’t think that far back.  I remembered the days in engineering college – love, politics, future plans, all of which were perhaps my decisions. I also remember getting back from GIM and feeling exactly the way the author describes her last days in college.

    I am nowhere close to being ready to be anything but a college student. The world suddenly feels too big a place for me to navigate.

    And then it dawned on me, that however much I’d like to think that decisions are my own, they perhaps aren’t. There’s always a set of people who play a role in the decisions, directly or indirectly, influencing the outcome. But the decisions are made, for better, or worse. In her acknowledgment, the author uses a phrase “Thank God we don’t get what we deserve in life”.

    When i see ‘kids’ these days, this one for example, or N, and the seeming ease with which they take decisions and handle themselves, I wonder if its a generation thing or a personality thing. Even at this age, there are days when, just before I sleep, I wish I could go back to those times, when by the time I got up, my parents/ grandmother would have fixed the mammoth problem that had seemed so future-threatening to me the night before. These days, I wonder if they ever felt all grown up and in control, or were they just pretending, like I do  many a time now.

    until next time, deservedly so.

  • Putting on an act

    For a while now, Renjith has been the gold standard (for me) in Malayalam cinema. Yes, he still disappoints occasionally, but his good works more than make up for it. So I had no hesitation in booking tickets at PVR for Pranchiyettan and the Saint. In addition to writing, directing and producing the film, Renjith also lends his voice to Saint Francis’ character, who starts speaking fluent Malayalam at the end of a hilarious sequence in which Mammootty questions whether the Christians of Kerala were being idiots by praying in Malayalam to a saint who couldn’t understand it.

    If someone had shared this script with me a few years back and told me to pick a lead actor, I’d say Mohanlal. But not anymore. The two superstars of Malayalam cinema have always been contrastive, on and off screen. Mohanlal earned his chops with portrayals of characters that we could either easily identify with or be in awe of. We laughed with him, cried with him, egged him on. In the mid nineties, he moved on to roles that had more serious shades. Less than a decade later, the actor in him died, leaving fans like me fighting discussion crusades that lacked heart. His last good performance was Thanmathra. When people talk about his supposedly superlative performances in films like Bhramaram, I wonder if they have lowered the bar, as a favour to their favourite actor.  I can understand that, most of his other releases make me cringe. I also wished movies like Pakshe and Pavithram hadn’t been made earlier, so that he could’ve done them now. His interviews make me wonder how this serious person with a philosophical perspective on even mundane things could ever have done those amazingly funny characters early in his career. Its a glimpse of the abundance of acting talent he possessed. Now he is just a superstar.

    Mammootty, on the other hand, I had never considered a brilliant actor, despite films like Thaniyavarthanam. It was his screen presence and the strength of characters that carried him. Cop, lawyer, CBI sleuth, he brought a special something to the role, which made him a star. But the thought of him doing comedy was funny, despite coming across in interviews as a very witty, fun loving person. Over the years, he has slowly scaled his repertoire. Now he dazzles us with films like Kaiyoppu, Loudspeaker and Paleri Manikyam, each a different genre and style, and even in utterly nonsensical films like Pokkiri Raja (a Tamil film made in Malayalam, go figure) he displays a comic timing that makes you forgive the movie. In an equally masala commercial movie called Daddy Cool, in one scene he references a character he played 13 years back! Instant Classic. At 56, the method actor has arrived.

    Mammootty is now extremely comfortable as an actor and is not afraid of even having fun at his own expense. The things the mimicry guys used to feed on – his dancing skills (lack, that is), hand gestures are all part of his own comic repertoire now. On the other hand, Mohanlal is a shadow of his former self. One can actually see the labouring that goes into his acting now, where, once upon a time, his portrayal of characters seemed so natural that we regularly forgot it was an act.

    I thought about both of them in the context of talent and passion – last week’s post. Having seen the above two, I have to wonder again whether passion commands more perseverance than talent.

    until next time, cut.

  • Beaming

    1980s – Sunday mornings, Doordarshan.

    1990s – Weekday evenings, Star Plus

    “Space.. the final frontier.” An entire generation got its thrills from those lines, and fashioned homemade communicators and phasers that at least stunned their parents, mostly because some other objects would’ve been dismantled in the construction. 🙂

    On the day that I posted the Lego tales, I happened to see this – Creative misuse + Lego Star Wars = Lego Star Trek, and smiled at “as someone raised on both universes”.

    And a few weeks back, I caught Star Trek, the 2009 film, on HBO. I missed it in the theatre, partly because I didn’t want to spoil the images of an era gone by. Though Captain Jean Luc Picard and Lt. Commander Data did make good attempts at engaging viewers, Captain James T Kirk, Spock, Dr.’Bones’ McCoy, Scotty and the remaining crew would always be Star Trek. But curiosity meant that I couldn’t miss it on television.

    And it was an amazing experience. To see the old characters played by new faces, to wait for characters to appear, and to see the back stories fit like pieces in a puzzle, to see the cameo by Leonard Nimoy, to once again behold the USS Enterprise…. a “mind meld” of sorts and “emotional transference” was an effect too.. 🙂

    It was difficult to see Zachary Quinto as Spock, more so because I’m  used to him as the evil Sylar in Heroes. But I thought he  did a stellar job. Incidentally the original Sulu, also stars in Heroes as Kaito Nakamura, Hiro’s father. Eric Bana was disguised enough for me to not have Hulk visions. It was great to see a new version of Uhura without the Amrish Puri like hairstyle.

    It was impossible to see Chris Pine and not remember the inimitable William Shatner as the original James Tiberius Kirk. I still remember my initial difficulty in accepting Shatner as Denny Crane in Boston Legal, but my affection for the series was much increased by his Star Trek references, especially one season finale in which he told Alan Shore that he had once captained his own ship. 🙂

    When I see the word ‘epic’ used these days, I wonder how many of those experiences would stand the test of time. Star Trek belongs to an earlier era, when we had fewer epics and our options to step out of reality were limited.

    until next time, live long and prosper 🙂

  • Crowded Out

    At restaurants, in movie halls, in malls, I sometimes come across people who’re there all by themselves. Not the corporate warrior catching a quick lunch, or the guy catching a movie in a multiplex to kill time, or the husband who got lost while his wife concentrated on the shopping, but the people who look like they wished they had someone to share the moments with.

    I see them furtively glance at the other tables and people, as though trying to steal a vicarious experience. I sometimes wonder how they came to be that way – are they introverts who never managed to get out of their own company, or people who found their partners or soulmates, and lost them midway to life, or did they make a choice of being alone, only to regret it much later in life.

    And then there’s the flip side too. Happened to see Robin Williams’ “World’s Greatest Dad” recently, and was reminded of that. While I agree that ‘lonely’ and ‘alone’ are not the same, I quite liked this line from the movie

    “I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone.”

    In a hyper connected world, with its own sets of cliques and norms and validations and more often than not, a lack of compassion, that is a thought I can relate to. Thankfully, the movie’s soundtrack offers a solution 🙂

    I’ll say who cares
    When people stare
    I will make myself invisible
    Yes I will

    Invisible – Bruce Hornsby

    until next time, virtual immaterialism 🙂