Love- field notes of a moviebuff

Love should probably be the most inexplicable emotion ever fathomed by human mind. Imagine something which could be the vast universe and the speck rogue comet.Love is exactly that. It's meaning could be exhaustive, accommodating the entire gamut of emotions and at the same time compact enough to be conveyed with a blushing cheek.

It could be complex enough to remain undecipherable over a life time; 
Simple enough to be mastered before puberty. 
It could elude with the deceit of a downpour evading a famine hit land;
While endlessly rain into overflowing tanks. 
A ruthless miser to some;
An indiscreet philanthropist to some other.
An intoxicant to some;
An inspiration to some other
A irrevocable injury on some; 
An antidote to some other. 
A permanent scar on some;
A badge of honor on some other.
A mirror to one's soul to some;
The wall before the mirror to some other.

I'm this sort of a person who talks in movie metaphors over dinner table conversation. Also, most of my learning and epiphanies have happened at the behest of moving images.This piece is an effort at enlisting some manifestations of love; in all it's glory through some celluloid cult classics that've intrigued and inspired me to write this.

Ennu Ninte Moideen is based on a real life story that happened in a rampantly casteist Kerala. It eulogises the trials and tribulations of Moideen(a muslim) to win the hands of his beloved love interest,Kanchamala(a hindu) for over a span of close to three decades;that only saw their love accrue endlessly . Fate mercilessly conspired in their lives- as the sharp end of the stabbing father's hand. As the apathy of casteist parents who dug their heels deeply in their respective stances. Finally as the the whirlpool, that dragged him to his death. Kanchanamala till date leads a celibate life as Moideen's widowed wife.



Vicky Cristina Barcelona presents love in it's enigmatic opulence. It tells the story of two friends, Vicky and Cristina,who fall in love with the same man; who's life is already spiced up by the tantrums of a reclusive wife. Narrated with characteristic Woody Allen nonchalance, this movie makes a passive endorsement to bohemian sensibilities of a man's ability to love two women at the same time with fervent reciprocation. It uncannily portrays how soulmates compliment and complete each other.
What starts as a promiscuous pursuit; turns into a endearing masterpiece that manages to make one actually root for the threesome.



Punnagai Mannan celebrates the redemption aspect of romance.It reiterates the fact that every end ushers a new beginning sooner or later. It narrates the story of a guilt ridden guy, who happens to accidentally survive a suicidal leap with his lover that consumes her life. With the passage of time,another woman walks in to his life from the same place he tried to end it once. She inspires him to love again.He resists and then eventually reciprocates back.After all,light at the end of the tunnel needn't be of a fast approaching train's everytime.
The movie ends on a tragic note, with the couple getting killed in a freak accident in the same suicidal cliff that the story began from. A testimony to irony, that  fro the jaws of death and killed him at the threshold of another beginning.




Titanic is a tragedy; which talks about the conspiracy of fate in one's life. It brings Jack, a lowlife on board of one of the most ambitious vessels built, the infallibly perceived Titanic. Over the course of journey he happens to fall in love with the aristocratic Rose who's ruing over her engagement. Their lopsided romance grows from strength to strength with every passing mile sailed, for fate to play spoilsport in the form of an iceberg that breaks the vessel and their relationship. Every time the movie plays, our hearts sink along with Jack and the plank.





The Holiday is about two lovelorn women, Iris and Amanda who swap homes to hold their lives from crumbling apart.The movie traces the journey to their self discovery in the process of finding love in their new homes. It talks about the impact of travel and nature on widening a person's perspective. The movie's soul is surmised in this wonderful monologue by a teary-eyed Iris reminiscing about her failed relation-

"I understand feeling as small and as insignificant as humanly possible. And how it can actually ache in places you didn't know you had inside you. And it doesn't matter how many new haircuts you get, or gyms you join, or how many glasses of chardonnay you drink with your girlfriends... you still go to bed every night going over every detail and wonder what you did wrong or how you could have misunderstood. And how in the hell for that brief moment you could think that you were that happy. And sometimes you can even convince yourself that he'll see the light and show up at your door. And after all that, however long all that may be, you'll go somewhere new. And you'll meet people who make you feel worthwhile again. And little pieces of your soul will finally come back. And all that fuzzy stuff, those years of your life that you wasted, that will eventually begin to fade."

Nipped in the Bud

The proud toddler, covered from head to toe with nothing but excitement scurried across the pathway to show off his newly acquainted skill to his parents; the ability to walk.
To his surprise what his parents noticed weren't his newly acquired skill, but his nudity. Sheepish with shame, the mother picked him up in the same manner as his poop,to cover him with some baby clothes.

Cradles and walkers were vestigial artifacts. First rays of awareness had bloomed on him.
                                                
                                                                  .   .  .  .  .

On an obscure afternoon; he articulated his first ever word. His grandmother was the first witness to his graduation from "ga-ga-goo-goo" gibberish. His first word became the frantic toast of the house and was on endless loops for the rest of the day. That day he slept a proud sleep not aware of the agenda awaiting him. His father woke him up with a picture book and started pulling words out of his mouth. He couldn't communicate in gibberish anymore and they wouldn't communicate back in the same tongue like they used a few days ago. Not long ago was this language a big hit with his parents and relatives. He would try earnestly, but his naive tongue was too soft to let the friction with the gum create syllables yet.
The quick transition from being a trophy to being evaluated in months and day, life's ruthlessness had dawned upon him. He eventually learnt the syntax of adult approved vernacular.

Soft toys and singing dolls were things of the past.Too premature to be disappointed; he was perplexed.

                                                                     .   .  .  .  .

A thing just couldn't just lie around in his ecosystem. Not anymore. There was this undying enthusiasm to deconstruct everything into it's spelling, utility and the numerical extrapolations possible.
Every bedtime story that he was carefully told, couldn't just be an anecdote. It had to compulsorily end with a punctuated moral inference. His ethical apparatus-his civic fiction wasn't allowed the luxury to evolve; it was cut and stitched whimsically.
He was baptized. That day, he got a name and a god. A god who could do no wrong. One who's prowess illuminates the sun and rotates the earth.He who kept a record of every person's deeds.
 Hymns in his glory were slipped along with every course of meal.Every inquisitive query about his existence were admonished as sacrilegious. He was modeled to become another god-fearing individual.

He picked grammar, multiplication and blind faith. Grown up enough to be disappointed, but premature to understand;he was at the threshold of identity crisis.

                                                                     .   .  .  .  .

With every grain of individuality, systematically weeded out at home he went to the land of uniforms; School. Here he was a uniform clad roll number with ceiling limits on his decibel level and creativity. The seeds of curriculum and discipline were planted in his mind, fertile for initiative and free spirit. This place with homogeneity in it's sanctum sanctorum was a behemoth machinery; that churned out a homogeneous pupil who would represent it in the society with his rank.
The rank which would help him land a college. A college which would go on to land a job.

He had come to place his individuality in the altar of acceptance. He was too overwhelmed by the perks of approval; to be disappointed at his shallow existence fashioned on representing aspirations and school of thoughts; that weren't his.


                                                                       .   .  .  .  .

He married the girl he fell in love with; when he was spoilt for choice with alliances pouring endlessly through acquaintances; thanks to his fancy pay and god given looks. This relation masquerading as a love marriage was essentially an approval seeking device; a habit of the past.
He didn't know her well enough, but knew she made the male population at workplace go weak in their knees. This was his way of seeking their approval.
He was part of a generation that thronged theatres playing rom-coms and had lyrics of love songs for Facebook statuses. This was his way of seeking it's approval.

Few years into their marriage, they had a male child. One day the proud toddler, covered from head to toe with nothing but excitement scurried across the pathway to show off his newly acquainted skill to his parents; the ability to walk.To his surprise what his parents noticed weren't his newly acquired skill, but his nudity.


                                                                        .   .  .  .  .

A majestic rock more often than not, can't be embraced as a stand alone spectacle. Admired for it's intrinsic value. Let alone to remain married to a mountain or a valley. To be sculpted by rain and storm to an eternal piece of art.
Most of us would  tear it apart from where it belonged. Wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to chisel it to a statue of our imaginations. Place a tag on it, to make it viable in an exhibition of statues.

Sorry Adorable- An unposted letter

Dear Adorable,



Your incessant barking ended a surreal sleep prematurely. Founded on a fling between my over efficient air conditioner and a romantic drizzle, this meditative-deep slumber had dawned upon me after months of deliberation. I had actually come to throw you out of the precincts of my flat because of Ginger, my pet cat. That moment you wriggled from under the car, I knew my heart, that had skipped a bit wouldn't let me. It was divine when you squinted at me trustingly with a wet forehead. The naive assurance you were hoping of me with your twinkling-bed bug eyes oblivious to my agenda.That was the closest I had come to seeing God .

My flat is in a bustling main road.Bus route at that. I couldn't let you practice road-crossing lessons on this stretch that has made carpets out of elderly mutts,my little monster. So, after our bond was forged in that cheesy manner, you became my responsibility and I had to find a better place for you.
One that would put a roof on top and protect you from getting mauled.
After bringing you home, I called up a few friends and acquaintances who I thought might be interested in taking you in. My mom made a few calls too. We promoted you to them on the basis of your undeniable good looks. Not to mention your athletic build. Trust me, we weren't lying when we did. I can already see neighborhood female dogs circumventing around.

Sadly, whether reasonable or not, all of them had a reason instead of a home. Buddy, this is not a reflection on you. You're one awesome guy. You must understand how our heads work to appreciate the idiosyncrasy involved in picking a pet.
Some of us have spaces to host a cricket match in our houses, but hearts the size of a mustard seed.Some large hearted souls, hearts with circumference mutliple times the size of our constraints. The last kind of us being the worst ones,with both-adequate resources and interest. but to whom pet adoption is a vanity affair. We would shelter a dog, but not a deserving one like you warring forces of nature to keep afloat. But a artificially bred one with a foreign ethnicity, designed to suffocate facebook with cutesy photos.Not your fault that your parents weren't German sheperds, Labradors, Pugs or even Alsatians. Not your fault that we don't patronize anything made in India; except rotis, idlis and Gods.

I would've loved to bring you up in the copious precincts of my flat under the alibi of a watch dog. But my archaic flat also houses close minded pricks well past their menopause with strict prohibition on raising dogs. They've already adopted two watchmen,dangerously fragile septuagenarians for pets. Another inundating constraint is the fact that Ginger is our child and isn't a dog person exactly.
So I was left with no other better alternative, but enrolling you with Blue Cross.

I had to pull the plug off our bonhomie unceremoniously. I couldn't complete our eye contacts after that. I was feeling a sore lump in my heart, while you were clinging on to my lap on our way to Blue Cross. I really did pray for a wonderful person to adopt you. I really did.
Your little heart was pounding on my palms when the ruckus of the other animals welcomed you.Sweetheart, I really wanted to console you then. But then, I wanted you to forget our brief rendezvous for good at the same time. I felt pathetic about enrolling you into an orphanage . But trust me, that was the best place to entrust you. Agreed, it is a little stuffy, unhygienic and all. But they foster your kind with genuine love and care. You'll start agreeing with me when you warm up there. Trust me, being around your species with food and shelter, is way kinder than shuttling between tea shops and overflowing bins. Also, here you stand a bright chance to being adopted by some wonderful individuals. Given your charming ways and the frequency of adoptions there, that's a virtual certainty.

I couldn't say these things to you for obvious reasons in the morning. I'm sure you'll grow up to be a magnificent creature with access to unlimited supply of food and love. Hope you understand me one day ; if you happen to remember me at all by then. Love you Adorable.




Your guilty wellwisher,


Me

Of likes & retweets

The myriad ways for people to stay connected now was a dream then; the way people stayed connected then is a dream now.

That was an era; bygone obviously, when people had a healthy relation with their neighbors, not the perfunctory association meetings about car park earmarking. People bled and emoted into letters for beloveds; who treasured them as trophies. Phone calls were a rationed luxury, that had to be booked in advance at the jurisdictional post office; run by a postmaster who doubled up as the agony aunt of his territory. Postmen were acquaintances who were jubilant with money orders and morose with telegrams carrying news of demise.
Friends were family actually, not friend-zoned on facebook. Men wrote love letters rife with metaphors.Women weren't auditing proposals. "Shy" was the "blush" in vogue then. Good looking people were actually called handsome and beautiful."Cute" used to be an expression reserved for fluffy mammals.

Then in the forged alliance of inventions and preferences, the ouster of old school ways happened.Gradually, but steadily. People who grew radios for pets, had moved on to Ipods. People who once used typewriters and fax machines, started getting used by desktops to be it's artificial intelligence. Life as we knew it,moved from before the monitor to within. Hard copy correspondences were softened in the edges for eco-friendly soft copy ones.
The radical metamorphosis of "What's Up" is quite something. It started as a naive enquiry of a person beneath to replace "Hello" from common parlance to finally turn into an App that allows colonies of people to bitch about each other with ordered flexibility.

'Liking' is not the same as appreciating, like 'retweeting' is not the same as patronising.

The advent of Facebook,Twitter, Whatsapp, Skype among a thousand other applications has jeopardized human behaviour like never before changing the way people interact, express, emote with each other. Take the adulation behind a fanboy's paper cutouts of Amitabh Bachchan during the 80s that cannot be likened with a retweet to a SRK tweet.
 For that matter, the charm of a trip to a nearby photo studio to encapture a fond memory with a friend leaving abroad as opposed to a selfie at will.

There was an earnest effort in a direction that the heart took. A process involved. An aesthetic behind every aspect. A story to tell.
Our life run by PDAs is characterized by convenience sans the concern, the person sans the personal touch and most importantly, a robust structure sans the sanctity. We've become too involved to flatter our identity crisis to be our 'virtual identity',our alter ego fashioned on edited photos and manicured posts.

This relentless pursuit to simplification has led to a whole lot of utilities,tangible and intangible that have gone on to encapsulate processes, in the process rendering human discretion, vestigial. Take for instance, the need to buttonise emotions that has led to a bouquet of emoticons for every known histrionic. Now emoting in a conversation is a touch away in an emotionless world; where yellow balls have replaced the contribution of the facial muscle or writing to express.

There's nothing which brings two people together than difference of opinions and the resultant fights. When two friends fought over an issue, they wrote elaborate letters,swore it out on phones and even landed a few punches when reasons dried out of the words uttered. There was a boiling point, courtesy the difference. Cooling point when reason prevailed over acrimony. Then the bond strengthened. I've heard men from my previous generation share such tales. I've found a few friends myself in the grind.
No one cares to go through the entire shebang. All it takes is stop liking a friend's post consistently, exiting from a group or my personal favourite; not replying after a double blue tick.As simple as that.
From being impulsively angry when rubbed the wrong way; we've found solace in sly indifferences and inaction; settling for less friction over permanent solution. Anger,one of the most primal of expressions, that served as a language when men didn't speak one, has positively been diluted into a pale caricature of it's former self.

To ensure all hell broke loose;Zuckerberg has announced a possibility of a "dislike" button.So I dont like your looks, Im not happy abt your marriage, I hope you choke over your momos. All of this and more could be expressed with a single button.
What do I say about the faceless crusader activities on cyberspace. Are these endeavors intended to massage one's tall alter ego or to scratch the itch of the lurking vigilante within?
Being part of an issue actively, participating in a demonstration is not the same as trading in hashtags.For one, there is no accountability;despite the tendency to flatter one's self to being part of a collective conscious to the nation's stand on a given issue.
So there is a genocide in Israel, people tweet with #WesupportIsrael to mark their solidarity. Would we trade in hashtags and coinages if our beloved vapourised?

Imagine #JewsforLunch trending over Hitler run Germany or #IndependenceFirstLook trending across India on the night of our independence. Resilience would had a new meaning then.Who knew apathy could be compartmentalized in such a virtual way, World wars would've been fought on different grounds.

The world has shrunk in radius thanks to these social platforms. But we've drifted apart as people in the bargain.

Buddy Time

 This is an excerpt of one of my older posts about one of my friends. An epiphany of sorts.We weren't in the best of terms.Like a comatose patient on life support, our friendship was running on WhatsApp and Facebook that time.

"A friend in deed,is a friend in need" is what I believed in. For me what makes an acquaintance from school or college special is the number of activities we both have excitedly been part of. For what is a friendship without enough anecdotes to share?

There are lot of them who would say things like we went to the same school,our college bus route was similar or we were neighbors when probed about the origin of their friendships. Most friendships are often flattery of acquaintanceship that reveled in locational-convenience.So in these cases it was more of coincidence conspiring to put them in a congenial radius than the spirit of comradeship.

But this guy and me were partners in crime since the twilight of our teenage. Our chemistry shot up northwards and our bonhomie was booming with every misadventure, with private and public properties being collateral(in a miniscular scale albeit). Like me he was an aficionado of movies. This habit nurtured the relation over the years; while softening the edges. As we grew up sanity grew along over our free spirit. Like urbanization eating into forest, this civil side was mowing into our wild side.The frequency of our meetings kept dwindling, with the distance between our residences remaining at a constant stone throw length.

There was a phase were he would wait for me to call, with little knowledge of the fact that I was checking my phone's display every hour.I wouldn't say he was entirely at fault for this phase of unrequited exchanges between us, given that my ego had grown up to constitute 30% of my BMI.

From a friendship which was once regulated by heart and instinct,it was withering away into indifference with brain and ego looming large. I could see the brotherhood turning commonplace with us meeting up on sunday morning cricket matches and birthday eve gatherings..
 It's not like there were no initiatives to end the tepidity from our sides, but somewhere it was beyond the starting trouble.From tangible presence in each other's scheme of things, we had turned into a comforting presence in the backdrop with vicarious acknowledgement of an erstwhile bond.

With every reality check life throws at us, we figure out who constitute our real circle. My break up happened,things were a little rough.I had a lot of 48 hour days to see through. I couldn't afford to be as high handed as before, with the humbling duress making me a little vulnerable, err aware. He was the first guy I called as soon as I called it off. That's when I knew his significance in my life. He was my shoulder when I was unstable, my shrink when I was getting woefully  nostalgic at a drop of a hat.That phase startled me out of my insulation of pretense and calculation.

That's when we had gone for this very popular movie. Midway into the movie I started getting my nostalgia bouts again. It was over-whelming to try watching the movie beyond that as I was suffocating from thoughts that had breached the parallel realm.I sprang out of the movie hall teary-eyed, to mitigate embarrassment.Within a matter of few moments he was there by my side ,ready to leave.

We couldn't leave the theater precincts as it was raining profusely.It felt like destiny had cherry picked the worst time of my life to hurl water darts at me.At that moment I was seeing hideous metaphors in things around me, a statement fate was making to me with dramatic props. We were at the theater's front end waiting for the rain to subside when I got started all over again. He was there patiently listening without an iota of indifference like for the first time . The prowess of the downpour was waning. So was my relentless need to cling on to a decayed relation.


I realised one thing then-"A friend in need, is a friend indeed".
For as much choice as you exercise in picking your company,the person that your friend turns out be in testing times is way beyond your whims.I was lucky to have him around at that phase. Always.

God song routine

I read somewhere that whatever one does for twenty one continuous days turns a habit, good or bad. Habits have a knack for sneaking into a routine, to become daily features in one's life. Most habits we form, come from a time our minds were open,naive or receptive to a stimulus we were caught by unaware.

This was a routine I picked from a ISKCON yatra(holy trip) my dad's brother had taken me on. Narsimashtakam,a hymn about the glory of the lion incarnation of Lord Vishnu that ran close to abt 90-120 secs with a familiar recital style; an ushering routine to the day's commencement.This was one of the few things which I picked from my brief stint, which stuck to me.
During school time, it was a good way to start the day. I used to recite it loudly within myself while peddling to  school on my modestly endowed bicycle. It didn't hurt that I used to perform well at exams;tough ones at that and have innocent luck with cute girls. What more could a high school goer have in mind for agenda. I was not old enough to find what relevance obeisance to God held in a school going routine or sieve coincidence out of northward academic grades and a corresponding prayer.

Then the worst thing happened after school.I mistook the rapid growth of facial hair to be profound wisdom. I questioned everything around me. Every bewildered face that fielded my convoluted questions made me feel like a crusader.A reformer of a generation to come I used to flatter. The phase after school is the time when the average grown up mind loses taste in bland serenity docility brings about, floundering its way into debatable truths that seemed absolute from an erstwhile phase characterized by lunchbreaks and board exam preparations. Suddenly the naive conscience nurtured by teachers and classmates, is woken up to the avalanche of excess-freedom, desire, passion,choice and ambition which build the character of a person, while feeding on his innocence.

This phase was marked by my days beginning with the recital of the same hymn, but with far lesser fervor.
I was questioning its sanctity and that made it sound so mechanical.I started equating fruitfulness of endeavors with and without the recital and tried quantifying the effect..
What was once a lullaby to wake up a day, was now hanging like a dried up lemon on the rear mirror for superstition sake.

I was declaring myself to be an atheist with the pride of a war hero.It was a cool thing to do back then.For one, it separated me from the rest of the herd giving the uniqueness I could wear like a badge of honor around my friends reveling in ceremonies and rituals. Secondly, it let me have a bare forehead which went well with modern clothes which other people from my caste couldn't pull off.

Thing about activism founded on the school of thought of "being practical"; is that it makes you prone to cynicism.So much so that you're overindulgent in disapproval and non conformity, that you can't resist the temptation to deconstruct everything ranging from pleasant to miraculous to even bizarre.

How beautiful would a flower be to a person, who's deconstructing it in the head as a erstwhile seed on fertile soil and a prospective victim to a bee's philandering ways?

When you dedicate energy to question things which are inconsequential, it eats into the time left for self improvement. For your ego has been fed upon disapproval and questioning of everything extramural, that it's made your judgement a tad too complacent for self assessment.

Just like in the case of some cynics who felt cool about declaring themselves to be agnostic at debates involving religious views, I got answers and truths hurled back in different dimensions from the universe in return, upto a point I waved the proverbial white flag.

I left my habit of misplaced reasoning on the altar of faith, and boy;did it work. The god song again started to resonate peace within, waking up the school going kid in me. Things started getting better, actually they were how they used to be. What changed was my perspective towards them. The god song started my day and made me thankful, for I started reciting it with gratitude unmindful of the consequences it bought upon or the sanctity upon which it was written.
With the resurgence of this habit I became a more receptive individual, in the process had a lot of life altering epiphanies that went on to change my outlook towards life.

There have been cases of men who leveraged their urge for sluts and alchohol to create timeless works of art. Also,there have been ones who've go on to absolutely live unmemorable lives constructed on pet habits and rationed indulgences.The utility we derive out of every habit makes them integral;lack of which; vestigial. We ought to live long enough to know what we go on to become with the pursuance of every given habit, memorable or a forgettable.