Category: Social Commentary

  • Causalities and Casualties

    Part 1

    For how are they made? By the inequality that surrounds. By their angst that accompanies our opulence. By the unfairness of it all. And when I look at my hands, I realize, I also have a hand in making them. I can’t condone, but I can’t incriminate either. There is blood on my hands too.

    Part 2

    Yes, I am desensitised. Because I exist in agonising helplessness when millions around the world die of poverty, lack of healthcare etc. Yes, it’s connected. And when those who prefer to be oblivious to this, wake up to a terrorist act and resurrect humanitarianism, just because it struck too close, I smell rot. My bad.

    Part 3

    I’m sorry. Sorry that it was your duty to become the nation’s cross-bearer. I’ll not join groups that’ll claim not to let your sacrifice go in vain. Sorry it will. We’ll get back to our lives. Sorry we’ll forget you in time. All I can do is pray, for you and those you left behind.

    until next time, topical compassion!!!!

  • The Best Goodbye Ever

    And once in a while a movie comes along that makes you want to write a note on it. No, Drona, Karzzz, LS2050 don’t exactly fall into the category that I meant. 🙂

    A lot of discussion happened before I saw Dasvidaniya, mostly on twitter, and many thanks to one person who put the idea of a review in my head. I might have let laziness overcome me if not for that. And so, while i will not go about doing a long drawn review, I shall try to pen down the thoughts that came to me as I watched the movie.

    The film worked for me, and the major portion of the credit would go to Vinay Pathak, who has carved a niche for himself, that no other actor can occupy now. It started with Bheja Fry and a few shades of that character can be found in this too. While the basic story idea has been used several times, it is the actor and the situations that makes it endearing and believable.

    It’s the story of a relatively uncomplicated human being, but thanks to a single situation that arises, his life is forced on to a much faster pace than he’s used.  My heart went out to him, when he asks ‘Why me?’ . That one sentence captures the angst of a man who has lived all his life doing the right things, but is yet treated unfairly even by the cosmos. Meanwhile, he lives his life based on a day to day ‘Things to do’ list that he religiously maintains. A meek person who is pushed around by everyone and life, the list is what gives meaning to his life, right from buying vegetables to repairing his momma’s hearing aid to several mundane things that we would regard as well, mundane. But like he himself says, he is not ambitious. Even when pushed, his dreams (in the beginning) are only a car, saying No to his boss, a foreign trip etc; yes, nothing great, but it’s typical of the man’s character, and you end up liking him all the more for it.

    Through the journey of one man, the story shows how simple human existence can be, if only we let it be, how it is possible to love unconditionally, if only we let it happen, and how there is an innate bond between human beings, if only we care to show it. But like a couple of characters in the movie show, at some point, the selfishness that we see around us, and perhaps within us, has created in us, a cynical outlook, and we force on ourselves, a complicated existence. So much so, that (like in the movie) we’d not believe that when, after a dozen years, someone wants to visit us, its only for the pleasure of seeing us.

    Yes, it is possible to live, without strings attached to everything we do or say; and by living so, it is possible to create great joy not just in us, but those around us too.. someday, hopefully, we can live this lesson.

    until next time, time is running out

    PS : So, some might turn around and say “Oh, The Bucket List”, and to those I’d say, for the majority of Bollywood lovers who understand Gunmaster G9, this works way better. 🙂

  • Ride with a view

    The regular route that I take to the office, and one back. There are buildings, homes, people, shops, and trivia that I don’t notice when I pass them regularly every day. Its not that they’re not interesting, but somewhere down the line, they have become routine, a part of the landscape, something that I take for granted, without putting too much of thought into. It took an auto ride to make me see all this in a different light. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t riding.. I didn’t have to pay attention to the road, and had all the time to leisurely watch the scenes and the life unfolding in them.

    And that made me think whether the same applies to people too. The different people that we interact with, at work, at home. Over a period of time, do they become a routine in our lives? Unidimensional characters in our mind, who have been moulded by our own biases and subjective judgements, and so set in that mould, that we fail to see a human being with its own values, feelings, and a life that’s being lived in myriad interesting ways. Does our perspective become so set in its ways, that we take the people in our lives for granted. And we have to wait for life to give us an auto ride to make us see them from a different vantage point?

    And then, what about people who always take auto rides? Do they manage to have a different perspective, but one that still gets set over a period of time? 🙂

    until next time, look around

  • Withering Heights

    From the balcony on the top floor of the apartment complex, I see the shanties below, rows and rows of haphazardly constructed dwellings.

    On some evenings, when I stand outside, I see them huddled together in small groups, their weary yet cheerful faces lit by the dim incandescent bulbs and the small fires they make, having animated conversations, punctuated with laughter. There are games of carrom, and sometimes, I think, impromptu concerts too, since I hear loud singing. On weekends, there are cricket games, and sometimes, feasts are organised too, large vessels are brought out into the open area, and everyone joins in the cooking.

    One day, as I stood watching them, my neighbour walked out onto his balcony. We smiled at each other. At least, I think it was my neighbour and not a visitor, since I’d not seen him earlier, in 3-4 months spent in the apartment. And that set me thinking on communities, and how, as we move from place to place on account of job and lifestyle changes, as our standards of living improve, as we climb higher in life, we tend to move away from shared experiences and communities, and start having transaction based relationships, established when a need arises. 

    It also made me think about this in the context of blogging, of how we start off as small communities, where almost everyone knows each other, then we grow and move on, and lose touch, not just with each other, but also where we started out from, and how.

    The inhabitants of the shanties below are auto drivers, labourers, maids, dhobis, the people who we depend on to keep the clockwork of our life running smoothly, the people who we pay anything from a few rupees to a few thousands of rupees, sometimes grudgingly, and expect to make a life out of. And sometimes, i wonder, in the community spirit that they manage to develop and maintain, if they succeed in making a better life, if not a better living standard.

    until next time, altitudes and attitudes 

  • 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…