I am credited with being the last person on earth to have watched Gautham Menon's latest musical romance flick , VTV - the name now so common that the abbreviation would suffice and even save some virtual breath.Its beautiful to watch, what with Trisha looking more angelic than ever,making every girl cringe wanting to look like that.The movie is equally delicious to listen to,holding us in thrall with the ARR magic.But what I set out to do was not write a review on the movie.Enough people have done that already for me to have anything more to add on to it.Having paid my deepest reverences to the maestro musician and the heavenly beauty,I set forth to say why I did not like the story.
The heady love story and the intense pursuit of it makes an interesting beginning.The idyllic view of Alappuzha adds flavour to the visual treat so much so that I now have a bee in my bonnet about visiting Alappuzha someday .Whoever bestowed the title of 'God's Own Country ' on Kerala ,must have had this blessed place in mind .I cannot mask my delight at the glimpses of Kerala and bits of Malayalam the film offered,stoking the flame of sweet love each one of us cherish for our own hometown and mother tongue .
The movie itself though left me with a bad taste in my mouth.Why does love always have to lose to be realistic? Why are parents always the villains of love?In the Indian context ,where children having love affairs are considered a disgrace to the family,isn't going halfway and then backing off,a disgrace to love itself?This is where I disagree with Jessie.She manages to disgrace her family by saying no to a marriage at the altar in front of the whole community ,and then goes on to do the same cold act again when she finally decides to give up on her love.Clearly,Jessie's reasoning prowess is not quite at a level with her beauty .Had the movie taken on the happy ending like the movie within the movie,Jessie would have saved women in general from the age old accusation of being 'cheaters in love'. I hear with amusement how romantics decry women of being traitors in love,every chance they get .
Having rejected the notion of love in a previous post,I feel the need for clarification before going ahead.Love is not allowed to exist,leave alone flourish,in our Indian cultural setup;not that love itself in non-existent.This happens largely due to the fact that love does not always look at religion and caste before happening to the unwarned.So in our pluralist melting pot of a society where we mix with people from every conceivable religion,caste and language, it's well nigh impossible to ensure that you fall only for someone who will match your exact profile w.r.t the afore-mentioned parameters.The older generation would cry fowl on how the younger lot will bring shame to the family honour through cross cultural marriages.No comments there.Its part of the Indian culture to obey and respect the elders.The arranged marriage system is also a part of our long standing tradition and is even the only hope of so many of our young commitment-phobic losers,including me , in finding a life mate .
However , as a member of the younger generation here's my take on love.Going the halfway in romance and then getting the cold feet and throwing love out of the window when its time to show some guts in getting committed to each other for life ,is like desecrating the purity of love.By all means,uphold the family honour but do not disgrace love in the process;for every time obedience is chosen over love, it loses a bit of its charm.For the lovelorn and the lonely heart alike,love is the elixir of life- the magic we all dream will happen to us in our lives and make living worth it .Be heroes in love,not losers!
Easier said than done?I know....
Showing posts with label random. Show all posts
Showing posts with label random. Show all posts
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Long live love!
“Kadalinu karayodiniyum paadaan snehamundo ....?
Mezhukuthirikalaay urukaan iniyum pranayam manassilundo....?? ”
Does that feeling exist in all of its purity or honesty any more? You will need to say a lot to convince me it does .I, for one, am skeptical that love exists – in the full sense of the word where it’s divinely liberating and intoxicatingly uplifting for the soul. I would prescribe music and literature as soul feed instead. Is love even what it is made out to be? I mean, c’mon, is it even that big a deal?
By these musings , I in no way mean to indicate that I have been untouched by the vagaries of romance .Though the story itself is for another day ,I just don’t want you to shake your head sympathetically saying ,”What do you know…” . All I mean is that love is not a very conveniently practical everyday solution. It’s good for the books, for the reminiscences of a slow dusk. In the extreme cases the possibility of future love even makes arranged marriage between utter strangers possible and keeps our civilization going in India. Thanks to this delusional myth for that, cos by the time people realize love is nothing like The love, the illusion has worn off.
The most sublime, uncalculated and in that sense, honest, love happens in the adolescences and mostly in colleges. This feeling has its expiry date set even before it starts for the farewell day of college .The author has seen only too many lovers part ways without the slightest of doubts in their minds. After college, since most people get into jobs and are busy shaping their careers, I doubt anyone pretty much even finds time for love. I have no clue what marriage stands on, since I have already declared that I am a non-believer. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say, the institution of arranged marriage is based on convenience .While choosing a partner in India’s erstwhile AM system, people carefully investigate the social, educational and financial status of prospects, and try to attain a balance as perfect as possible. This could be picturised as the bride and the groom being seated on the two plates of a weighing machine, balancing each other off in each of the above mentioned parameters. Love is nowhere in the picture though. Oh yes, the match making is done all cleverly in the heads of the elders, with love, supposed to just happen since all the parameters have the perfect values required for that chemistry .
I frankly fail to understand how people agree to marry on something as vague as such a prediction . Ah, the myth though still lives ….
Love is a beautiful concept though and is best left unexplained. It’s not supposed to be like anything known before and in that sense, no comparison can ever do it justice .Its most powerful proponents are music and literature, and love finds it’s most exciting expressions in them. For ages now, love has lived in all its truth and vigour, in music and literature and they in return ,have thrived on love .I don’t mind love being a delusional myth , as long as it feeds fire to imagination and creativity ,for, if nothing else, I am a lover of words and songs .
Long live love!
PS- My first post for 2010.Rock the year folks !
“Kadalinu karayodiniyum paadaan snehamundo ....?
Mezhukuthirikalaay urukaan iniyum pranayam manassilundo....?? ”
Does that feeling exist in all of its purity or honesty any more? You will need to say a lot to convince me it does .I, for one, am skeptical that love exists – in the full sense of the word where it’s divinely liberating and intoxicatingly uplifting for the soul. I would prescribe music and literature as soul feed instead. Is love even what it is made out to be? I mean, c’mon, is it even that big a deal?
By these musings , I in no way mean to indicate that I have been untouched by the vagaries of romance .Though the story itself is for another day ,I just don’t want you to shake your head sympathetically saying ,”What do you know…” . All I mean is that love is not a very conveniently practical everyday solution. It’s good for the books, for the reminiscences of a slow dusk. In the extreme cases the possibility of future love even makes arranged marriage between utter strangers possible and keeps our civilization going in India. Thanks to this delusional myth for that, cos by the time people realize love is nothing like The love, the illusion has worn off.
The most sublime, uncalculated and in that sense, honest, love happens in the adolescences and mostly in colleges. This feeling has its expiry date set even before it starts for the farewell day of college .The author has seen only too many lovers part ways without the slightest of doubts in their minds. After college, since most people get into jobs and are busy shaping their careers, I doubt anyone pretty much even finds time for love. I have no clue what marriage stands on, since I have already declared that I am a non-believer. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say, the institution of arranged marriage is based on convenience .While choosing a partner in India’s erstwhile AM system, people carefully investigate the social, educational and financial status of prospects, and try to attain a balance as perfect as possible. This could be picturised as the bride and the groom being seated on the two plates of a weighing machine, balancing each other off in each of the above mentioned parameters. Love is nowhere in the picture though. Oh yes, the match making is done all cleverly in the heads of the elders, with love, supposed to just happen since all the parameters have the perfect values required for that chemistry .
I frankly fail to understand how people agree to marry on something as vague as such a prediction . Ah, the myth though still lives ….
Love is a beautiful concept though and is best left unexplained. It’s not supposed to be like anything known before and in that sense, no comparison can ever do it justice .Its most powerful proponents are music and literature, and love finds it’s most exciting expressions in them. For ages now, love has lived in all its truth and vigour, in music and literature and they in return ,have thrived on love .I don’t mind love being a delusional myth , as long as it feeds fire to imagination and creativity ,for, if nothing else, I am a lover of words and songs .
Long live love!
PS- My first post for 2010.Rock the year folks !
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Verse Ofcourse !
A curse on my uninviting mailbox
Looks like it's under a hoax
For there's nothing new or fun in there
To make me smile even once in a while!
Cross I am with all those blogs
I regularly visit and turn back disappointed
Cos no new posts have they for me either
To make me think and ponder awhile.
A bolt of lightning on the idiot box
For all the boring shows and thousand channels
Bloodier are the reruns
Of anything nice they might once have had!
Cannot even turn to my all time love
In good stead they have stood me so long
My dearest pals ,my good old books
For I'm recovering from a Coelho overdose.
And so I take a path I've trodden so less
That of verse and rhyming words
As a last resort or escape
This here is what came out as a result.
Hoping someone would read it atleast
And that one wouldn't hate it too much
Mayn't be good but what the heck
That's the best and all that there is for now !!
A curse on my uninviting mailbox
Looks like it's under a hoax
For there's nothing new or fun in there
To make me smile even once in a while!
Cross I am with all those blogs
I regularly visit and turn back disappointed
Cos no new posts have they for me either
To make me think and ponder awhile.
A bolt of lightning on the idiot box
For all the boring shows and thousand channels
Bloodier are the reruns
Of anything nice they might once have had!
Cannot even turn to my all time love
In good stead they have stood me so long
My dearest pals ,my good old books
For I'm recovering from a Coelho overdose.
And so I take a path I've trodden so less
That of verse and rhyming words
As a last resort or escape
This here is what came out as a result.
Hoping someone would read it atleast
And that one wouldn't hate it too much
Mayn't be good but what the heck
That's the best and all that there is for now !!
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Stand By Me
Last week was the groggiest one of my life; exactly because I spent the most of it in a state of impenetrable grogginess. Last Monday morning went something like this .I drag myself out of the bed past 7.15 am when I have a bus to catch at 8 am by taking an auto to the pick-up spot. I further drag my sleepy self down the flight of stairs to the ground floor (thank god I didn’t slip and fall and break my neck. Come to think of it now, that would have given me a week off!! ).
Seated in the drawing room sofa I find my younger bro who had risen early like an ideal student ,even taken his bath and reading the morning’s newspaper! Again, thank god he didn’t take after me ..though I keep reminding him, “I was way better than you when I was a student myself ,so don’t give me that sneer!”.So I ask this dude in the process of enlightening himself, “innu bandh-o strike-o vallathum undo dey ??”* He gives me one of his supremely condescending looks, glances at the clock and shakes his head, and goes back to the newspaper.
The long and short of the whole episode is that, the whole of last Monday was like walking around with shackles on your feet .Was very very boring, I tell you. So I let the stupor continue for the entire week!! :PAnd I didn’t wake up till that weekend. Had a blast last Saturday though, aise hi , usual stuff…an exorbitantly expensive haircut! That did the trick of bolting me out of the slumber! And I come back this week with my batteries recharged and a new addiction to keep me beaming through the week.
‘Stand By Me’ by Ben E King. I am absolutely in love with the song right now, and listen to it religiously whenever I get time. My mp3 player is constantly playing that track and must be going nuts in that infinite loop I have put it in .Do check out the song if you haven’t already .It’s wonderfully romantic ! Of course it’s an all time hit number which I have known for a while, just that I finally downloaded it last week, and so all the renewed raving about it.
Wish you a romantic** week ahead!
*Is there a strike or a bandh today? (In Malayalam)
**[The wide implication ;-) ]-- Characterized by strangeness or variety; suggestive of adventure; suited to romance; wild; picturesque; -- applied to scenery; as, a romantic landscape. [1913 Webster]
And darling darling
Stand ..Stand by me ,stand by me ..
When all of your friends are gone .. Wont you stand ..?
Oh...Stand by me ...
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Untouched ...
Another time ,another day, I may come forward and kiss your forehead to tell you are the one;today I am too caught up with my life ...
I wanted to stay but can't, because I got to keep moving though I dont know where it is I am going ...
I think I will remember you as one of my charming unfulfilled dreams,but today I shall bid you good bye,again ..
Dediated to the volume of Orhan Pamuk's 'My Name Is Red' acquired by me months ago and yet untouched!
Do you have a similar story to tell ?Well , I'm listening ...
Another time ,another day, I may come forward and kiss your forehead to tell you are the one;today I am too caught up with my life ...
I wanted to stay but can't, because I got to keep moving though I dont know where it is I am going ...
I think I will remember you as one of my charming unfulfilled dreams,but today I shall bid you good bye,again ..
Dediated to the volume of Orhan Pamuk's 'My Name Is Red' acquired by me months ago and yet untouched!
Do you have a similar story to tell ?Well , I'm listening ...
Sunday, February 15, 2009
River Of Thoughts
---------------------------------------
A monotonous guitar note kept playing in an infinite loop in my thoughts rendering every thought of mine with a melancholy touch. I looked up at the blue expanse overhead and let the river of thoughts flow unhindered until they would quieten down on their own, for I hoped for some peace at the end of that flood. Sunlight beat down upon my face as I sat there on the low wall surrounding the garden, eyes fixed at an invisible focus above me through the clump of tree leaves.
They tried to bring me back from the madness and kept asking me to come back inside .They seemed concerned for me, but they wouldn’t understand even if I explained. The river has to flow its course; madness is to try to control it or worse, stop it. The river has a will of its own and it’s far beyond my will over my self. The sun, I will have to bear in order to gaze the sky in its eyes.
Birds twittered around me annoyingly; I wish they would stop disturbing me for their noise was drowning the guitar strums my thoughts played on. My breathing turned to heaving as the hot air got heavy and beads of sweat rolled down my forehead. I had to be patient and wait for the tide to roll over. Then I could go back inside into the cool comforts indoors, but not before that. I even wondered what the river was trying to say-but it spoke an alien tongue. I could gather familiar words here and there if I tried hard, but they weren’t coherent.
The river just ran on insanely, spitting condemn and roaring with anger. I feared it may boil over onto the banks and singe me; I hated that I had no control over it and that I just had to watch it flow, with trepidation, from its shores. I also hated its force and its utter unwillingness to obey. If it was up to me , that river would have flown peacefully ,kissing the sands and caressing the stones in its bed and just being pretty to look at like all those rivers are in the pictures, but my private river was turbulent and vicious, crushing the stones and the shells and constantly threatening the shores with menace. It was in a bad mood today, and I was waiting for it to calm down… waiting in the sun till the river ran its course....
---------------------------------------
A monotonous guitar note kept playing in an infinite loop in my thoughts rendering every thought of mine with a melancholy touch. I looked up at the blue expanse overhead and let the river of thoughts flow unhindered until they would quieten down on their own, for I hoped for some peace at the end of that flood. Sunlight beat down upon my face as I sat there on the low wall surrounding the garden, eyes fixed at an invisible focus above me through the clump of tree leaves.
They tried to bring me back from the madness and kept asking me to come back inside .They seemed concerned for me, but they wouldn’t understand even if I explained. The river has to flow its course; madness is to try to control it or worse, stop it. The river has a will of its own and it’s far beyond my will over my self. The sun, I will have to bear in order to gaze the sky in its eyes.
Birds twittered around me annoyingly; I wish they would stop disturbing me for their noise was drowning the guitar strums my thoughts played on. My breathing turned to heaving as the hot air got heavy and beads of sweat rolled down my forehead. I had to be patient and wait for the tide to roll over. Then I could go back inside into the cool comforts indoors, but not before that. I even wondered what the river was trying to say-but it spoke an alien tongue. I could gather familiar words here and there if I tried hard, but they weren’t coherent.
The river just ran on insanely, spitting condemn and roaring with anger. I feared it may boil over onto the banks and singe me; I hated that I had no control over it and that I just had to watch it flow, with trepidation, from its shores. I also hated its force and its utter unwillingness to obey. If it was up to me , that river would have flown peacefully ,kissing the sands and caressing the stones in its bed and just being pretty to look at like all those rivers are in the pictures, but my private river was turbulent and vicious, crushing the stones and the shells and constantly threatening the shores with menace. It was in a bad mood today, and I was waiting for it to calm down… waiting in the sun till the river ran its course....
[ Written under the influence of 'GoodBye Blue Sky-Pink Floyd'. ]
PS: The guitar finds repeated mention in this blog, cos I prolly am addicted to its sound and can’t think of any other instrument right now. It may well be a momentary love affair, like all others in my life too.
PPS: I have developed a sudden unexplainable liking for the semi-colon!
Thursday, January 22, 2009
FIGHT CLUB
Just couldn't resist drooling all over this one, once again!And this time I had to say it aloud!
Soo many kickass dialogues ! Jim Uhls rocks !
Here goes my favourite one -
Tyler Durden: Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
This post is labelled 'random' precisely bcos of its nature ;its just that a gigantic wave of crazy admiration hit me n swept me off my feet ..Random!! ..I knw..
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=2QgFWXLN-ug
Just couldn't resist drooling all over this one, once again!And this time I had to say it aloud!
Soo many kickass dialogues ! Jim Uhls rocks !
Here goes my favourite one -
Tyler Durden: Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
This post is labelled 'random' precisely bcos of its nature ;its just that a gigantic wave of crazy admiration hit me n swept me off my feet ..Random!! ..I knw..
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=2QgFWXLN-ug
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