faith...........taare zameen par...

Aamir Khan's movies usually touch my soul. It is no surprise that his directional debut is so simple and beautiful.

It is so important to have faith in yourself, and more than often it does not come naturally from within,not from the start. Patch Adams (another one of my favorite movies) has a dialog "have faith in people , and you will be amazed". Somehow someone else's faith in us helps us build our own beliefs. People out do their own expectations , all it takes is a little faith. My theory is that people find love stimulating, it is easier to love yourself when someone else is in love with you.

A few lines from one of my favorite songs in the movie....

Kyun Is Kadar Hairaan Tu
Mausam Ka Hai Mehmaan Tu
O, Duniya Sajee Tere Liye
Khud Ko Zara Pehchaan Tu

Tu Dhoop Hain Jham Se Bikhar
Tu Hai Nadee O Bekhabar
Beh Chal Kahin Ud Chal Kahin
Dil Khush Jahan Teri Toh Manzil Hai Wahin

Just Do it!!

The other day ,I was at subway ordering a 6 inch sub. I knew exactly how I wanted it to be,wheat bread ..all veggies chipotle etc, even before I had it in hand ,I had in my mind what I wanted it to taste like. I was with a friend who told me , he tried a different combination every time! I asked him what happens if he doesn't like what he got, to which he said "oh i'm hungry , I'l eat it anyway".

So there I was ,making sure that every ingredient falls right while he was taking chances over his lunch!! ..and then it hit me... I am missing out on a chance of having a better sub by sticking to a known combination. I realized I have had the same sandwich so many times
lesson 1: Do not be afraid to step out of your comfort zone.

This is specially for people who think , their lives have become very monotonous. I feel it is a genuine way of adding spice to life. More so it actually helps you be more aware and grow as a person. So take a different route to work/school and you never know you might like whatever you find.

Takes chances ,hmm ,so blow off all your money at Las Vegas ? Go trekking in Grand Canyon /Mt Everest ? change your career as and when you wish ? get that hair color you always wanted?..........
May be not all of that, where to draw the line is upto us.
lesson 2: Assess the stakes. Make sure that the worst case loss wont throw you off.

Even if your little/big adventure does not go down well, it should be recoverable. I mean life is everything and then there are responsibilities. But even with these constraints I feel there is a lot of scope for experiments!

RGV......whats wrong with u???

I am hoping that the Sholay remake .. RGV ki AAG will hopefully mark the end of the 'remake and screw up' era. These movies make one believe that no one should ever even bother to remake a movie. Not true, Hum Aapke Hain Kaun happened to be a remake of rajshri's old movie Nadiya Ke Paar and they did a pretty decent job.

So I think all these film makers are to be blamed. RGV seems to be having some huge issues lately. He starts of churning out movies on a similar theme and he never seems to be done. Darna Mana hai, Darna Zaruri Hai, James, .... and now the ultimate "RGV ki Aag" and Darling. He seems to be on his mission to set a world record of making the maximum movies in the shortest duration.

RGV ki aag, is a block buster disaster and I m guessing so is Darling. Darling was confusing, it is as if he was in two minds ,comedy or horror.. and he said chuck it , let me just make it both!! It leaves you wondering why did you even bother to wait for 30 mins before switching to some other movie. I am wondering if this is the same man who once made Rangeela, Company , Kaun.

God Always picks on me!!

God always picks on me... do I sincerely feel that way?no, not really, but it gives me some kind of strange satisfaction to have someone ("God") to blame for everything going wrong in my life. I know it sounds very immature , but really it takes a lot of pressure off. I feel like I am the victim of someone else's mistake and not the wrong doer myself. I do not always succumb to this method, but there are times when even after days of speculation I am unable to clearly see what my mistake was in my whole situation.

Let me demonstrate, Start by saying to yourself "anyway ,how many of us can say that their success is fully attributed to their hard work ? There is a lot of hardwork and a little magic.. and some people just have to wait forever for that magic to happen and I am just one if them".....(see how it works?:))

Back to the "god picks on me" method of problem solving or problem avoiding so to speak, the flaw in it is that it does not last long. It is an ephemeral sense of satisfaction (i wanted to use that word since my GRE times.. finally..!).Your head keeps yelling , "who are you kidding??" , I hate it when that happens.

okay, so this is not something I would recommend you try at home, 'cause who are we kidding, this doesn't lead you anywhere. My school teacher once told me something about ostriches. She said that Ostriches stick their heads into the ground when an enemy comes attacking, it believes that if the enemy can't see me I can't see my enemy. May be it works , for the ostrich for a while.. but eventually you have to open your eyes and well .. do something instead of blaming someone else .. duhh..! :)

Food ,water, clothing and/or inpiration or material benefits?

It is one of those rhetorical questions...
We all live for something, as in , we all have something that takes a higher priority than anything else. Some live for their families, some live for their work, some live for money ,some live for love.... there is a driving force within all of us. The want for something that keeps us going.

Just think, some of us do the same things for totally different reasons. A simple example, a man working day n night could be for money which makes his family(whom he dearly loves) more comfortable or could be for the simple reason that he lives to work in one case it is "love" that is the passion while in the later work gives him " inspiration ".How much of passion should we have in ourselves , how much passion does it take to create an Albert Einstein?

I admire people who live for passion , i think it takes great courage and work to live for something you believe in and to not live with "compromises with fate". But we are talking about two very extreme ends of a spectrum here. One is a life of a vegetable and the other is ... it is a "life" very very challenging and difficult one. I think most of us fall in an average category. We are not vegetables , but most of us do not have a passion we would die for, i think. We all want different things in different phases of life, some of which are material and some are not.

The passionate kind can sometimes be harmful.Consider Hitler, his passion worked negatively for others, because his passion was power.Like it or not, the world is ruled by the passionate kind. It is them who truly can make an entire generation to change for good or bad.

Graduating...............& Self-introspection

Time flies.

Again, at a stage where I have to make a few decisions and some my destiny will make for me. It is always hard for me to break out of the "inertia" and accept uncertainty with confidence and hope. I do not know why my head always fears the worst, I am trying hard to shut out that voice which keeps telling me "what if this too doesn't happen the way you want it to".

My mom always tells me to sing to myself "count your blessings" when in doubt. But I have always found myself doing otherwise. I always tend to keep with me all the bad memories and easily forget the nice things that happen to me. I need to change, I know. I dont like troubling myself with those negative voices either.

I am learning, trying to make a change in me. And it is happening, very slowly but something is changing for sure. Its been a few weeks since I am in this "self-improvisation" mode. I do not know, but its been crazy how once after the other realizations are setting in , I guess I am growing up .. finally.. :)

Some MAJOR things I learnt about myself:

a) I am stubborn. Till my own reasoning falls through no one on the face of earth can convince me, whatever the matter be. I should not do that always. I mean it is one thing to believe in whatever you do and another thing to be so stuck on your beliefs that accepting or even listening to another opinion seems sinful. It blocks you from your own good. If u suffer from this disorder too... get rid of it ASAP.

b) I do not know how to stay in touch with people, Its not that I do not remember them . I do , i miss family, friends. But i do not express it , i do not know why . I guess , I am just plain lazy or may be I just prefer talking face to face , than phone or e-mail .

Mixed Blood.....

I am sure there are a lot of people out there, wondering like me where exactly do we "fit in". I am a malayali by birth , with a Christian mother and a Hindu father , born and brought up in Gujarat. Trust me , "fitting in " becomes an issue anywhere I go. I have to make an extra effort to learn some language, some custom , "getting along"has never come naturally or easily to me.

Sometimes I feel it is a blessing, I got a chance to feel two different religions as well as two different life styles closely. I got the privilege to get the best , even compare different beliefs. People like me , invariably grow beyond these boundaries of faith. I am sure it made me a more mature person and helped me in not becoming any "typical" kind.

On the other hand, it is hard to find people of my own kind.. :) because I don't really have a defined "kind" in the first place. When I try to analyse myself as a person , there is such a compound mixture, that to find people who I can relate to becomes difficult. I sometimes feel life and choosing friends would have been a lot easier , had I been a typical malayali or typical anti-mallu or may be a staunch Hindu.I feel ,then I would have fallen in some general category and finding like people would be simpler....

This trail of thoughts hits me almost everyday , when I am talking/ enjoying / may be working in a group. And I find myself wondering "hey I am not like these people either :)." I believe I am not alone, i guess people like me, the "confused" kind is now vast enough to form an independent kind of its own.

I am not happy with being a confused person. It wont be nice to have a world with people like me, we are like water , we mould ourselves differently at different times.

Will and Destiny

These are very contradicting concepts. I believe in destiny , I think it is too mighty to be fought or defied. Now, I am not saying that destiny cannot to altered, i guess that is where "will" comes into picture. We all work towards a particular intention , a goal for ourselves, I am talking about life's major objectives and not the minor goals we set and break on a daily basis. Most of us have these "things to do before we hit 25, 30.....", how many of us achieve everything/anything?

So which one of these is primary and which one is secondary? Does destiny have more power over our will or is it vice versa?

Which kind are you? Are you one of those who thinks he can achieve whatever he wishes come what may? or are you the other kind who believes that there is a greater power , something above our will something that can shake the foundations of our will?? you must've guessed it by now, I am somewhat on the later side.

Although , i do not understand the existence of will if i believe in destiny alone. Why were we given something like a will of our own when all we were supposed to do was follow destiny's orders.
.......................so

Any answers out there?

The Namesake

Yes, the movie,What is so great about it?. I think it has become a trend to tag whatever is non - main stream as beautiful and brilliant. Every performance that Tabu gives is awed by people , she is undoubtedly one of the most talented actress we have today and she bags the critic's awards more often than anyone else. I think, that is the reason why people have started finding it "classy" to have a taste which appreciates such non-bollywood hindi / english movies. Even a total mainstream actors/directors start awing such movies(i guess that is because no matter how hard they try , the critics are never impressed).

I seriously find it hard to believe that so many people could relate to such a boring story about one family's lifetime. To me it failed to evoke any emotion. I thought it was too simple a story to be told in the first place. I think it had all the right people doing their bits quite genuinely, all for no cause. A bengali man and woman's culture struggle followed by their next generation's culture struggle was neither inspiring nor moving.

It is not that I do not have a taste for the not so commercial movies. I loved Water as well as Monsoon Wedding ,both these movies specially Water had lead characters which were inspiring .Water showed how the freedom movement , was not just freedom from the Britishers,it was also freedom from a stale unreasonable society and culture (which is still not completely attained). Monsoon Wedding , on the other hand had real life humor , sarcasm, bonding of a typical North Indian family well depicted and a total entertainer.

But with the whole of India going all praise about "The Namesake" , may be i missed something... ???

Large Vs Petite

Gender war... a different kind.
Its almost like a gender within a gender...the petite women vs the not so petite ones...
There is something about these small women , the whole world wants to come forward to save them from .. well something.

I have always been a broad shouldered girl, do not know what it feels like to look delicate."small" "cute" "petite" have never been adjectives used for me . I have never had guys standing up for me , I have always stood up for myself, fought my own battles. Some lucky things these little women are..

It is easy to find the small creatures, you can find them anywhere .... in a store.. in the park.. .library .... or at the movie.. but most likely to be found on a guy's shoulder. Men love these things, they feel their life's purpose fulfilled protecting these infant sized mature women. It is such a perfect match, women who are waiting to be saved and men who are dying to be saviors.

So what are the kind of men for the other kind of women? .......IF THERE ARE ANY....Men who do not need a woman's subservience to feel important in their lives, Men who wouldn't mind not taking the lead sometimes, Men who would like to be friends and not saviors to the women in their lives... I guess we are asking for too much ,
May be there is a reason why Sushmita Sen continues to stay a single mom while Aishwarya rai has hardly ever stayed without a boyfriend.

People.. and Leadership

I recently realized that I hated people who talk to me with their own hidden agenda in mind. I do not like people who manipulate others into doing what they want them to. The sad part is 95% of the people (specially men) fall into this category. Such persons get some weird feeling of satisfaction when they get their way with others , ofcourse without forcing them. Agreed it is an art, but I hate it when it is practised on me.

I guess this particular dislike is what drives me away from politics.And it is this dislike which made me sure what I want to pursue in my academic life. Which reminds me , that it looks like the manipulation is in some ways necessary if your so called "hidden agenda" is for everyone's good. But for people who think it is necessary, aren't they implying that their judgment is superior to others? So how different are these people from someone like Adolf Hitler or any other tyrant dictator. I remember "Mohan Bhargav" of the movie " Swades" , he too wants a purpose served, but instead of manipulating people he just tried to reason with them , rationalize them. Surely his method was tiring and will take a lot more effort than just showing people how they would benefit out of it. But I think it is the right way of doing it, true leadership, than using people's weaknesses to get your way with them.

A lesson from the Bed Bugs!!

Its been a while since me and my roomies have been suffering from rashes and yesterday we decided to dust off our beds... and discovered colonies of bed bugs!!(Mom , this blog is not for you..:).)... living happily sucking blood from our bodies since 2 whole semesters!! For those of you who do not know, bed bugs are small flat insects who thrive on human blood. So well, we invaded their well established colonies in the small corners of our mattresses.While I was doing it I coudn't help noticing how well the bugs had survived so far, we had been sleeping on them and not even once did we suspect that they had intruded so well all around us. It made me realize how well equipped every living creature is for its own survival. I mean its not like these bugs have small brains which tell them where exactly they should start off a colony.. right??

Someone up there really took a lot of time and effort in making all of this.. !!

So... whats next?

Its funny how we spend almost half of our lives planning things like college, job... and then may be marriage kids etc. But what do people do once they have achieved all of that , what do people do when they have a nice job a nice family "have been there done that"..??

I am 22 and so far for me it always has been one stage getting planned before one ends(like most people I know). From high school onwards its always been intensive planning for things working hard to achieve them followed by dealing with the failures or successes. I don't remember the last time when I told myself " i dont know what to do next". I just couldn't help wondering , what happens when i am done with all that I have thought for myself? or does it never end at all..?..