A life so ordinary

There used to be a guy
He had a simple wish
He never had hopes too high
No real dreams too!

Friends found him funny
Women found him a waste of time!
His bosses found him a waste of money!
His parents had given up long ago!

Why did he choose to be so
Don't be under that illusion.
Ever waking hour he hoped to let go.
Non achievers wish they could achieve too.

He used to get up every morn'
Today's gonna be 'the' day, he'd declare.
I'll show some guts, he said with scorn!
Every evening he'd smile his pain away.

A life so mediocre, a life so ordinary
Life lacking purpose, the years pass by.
No tensions to speak of, not much to worry.
And so it went on, time plunging ahead.

No one seemed to remember his birthdays.
Nor did anyone cry the day he died.
A life so ordinary.
A life so misspent.

Speaking of Sohail Khan Movies...

...I would just like to state that It is so disheartening to see that a guy so untalented behind the camera, in front of the camera, as a screenwriter is given the backing of producers, financers, distributors and whoevers to continue to make horrible, bloated, unbearable, ridiculous movies. the latest case in point being his Aryan - a Rocky rip-off, a Cinderella Man wannabe!

I still shudder when I recall the three unbearable hours of agony I suffered which I underwent locked in a movie theatre watching his brilliant, fantastic, mindblowing movie "Maine Dil Tujhko Diya!"

I hope one day Sohail Khan realizes his true calling in life, quits show business and joins Nerolac Paints as a supervisor to monitor the rate at which a tracter emulsion dries after being applied on a wall.

Plot Outline for - A week in the life of a rioter.

This is something I've never tried before. I mean, trying to write something that is not a movie parody, a Hariteman story or even a movie review. It's something that I hope will turn out to be a biting social satire, something along the lines of what a Joseph Heller might produce.
Its basically a short little story about a guy called Tatya who's a professional rioter.

Hmm. Now what is a professional rioter. It's a guy who is a regular at all sorts of protests starting from a protest rally against Aishwarya's costumes in Dhoom 2 which denigrate Indian culture, to a riot because the statue of a famous Dalit leader was desecrated.
He's a guy you call whenever you want to stage a rally which will have enough carnage to attract the attention of the media vultures, the guy who will have the loudest voice and who can by-heart any slogan that you want him to with a few minutes.
He is a highly paid fellow because he also leads a small coterie of like-minded peers to these rallies.

Why am I thinking of writing this - It's because I'm pretty much frustrated with the state of affairs in India today where everything is considered sacred and no one seems to have a sense of humour. I don't know whether this is a recent development with us Indians or were we always born with such a lack of tolerance. Whatever be the answer, one thing's for sure. This surge of 'Protest Rallyism' has been fuelled by the media revolution that has taken place.

The story mostly will be about how Tatya goes about his business, how he is very professional about it all, and how much armchair angst I feel about India.
Most of all I hope people who read it don't ridicule it as quickly as they would ridicule a Sohail Khan movie.
Finally I hope that I am capable of writing something intelligent!

Man! I need to cut down on the self-deprecation!

Stuck home on a Sunday

I have entered a phase in my life which I occasionally enter every few months.

It involves me not setting foot out of my house for the entire weekend. I just stay curled up in bed and read a book. The odd thing is that I feel very guilty doing this. I mean, after a grueling 5 days of Office I should be going out with friends to movies or shopping(especially since I really need to buy some new clothes) or maybe to go give my bike for Service, which it seriously requires.

But I can't and won't - no matter how much I get berated by my parents for being so lazy.

So, one might question, which is this great piece of literature that is keeping me so occupied. the current book that has attained this privileged position is Harry Potter - The Order of the Pheonix.
One might snigger hearing this, but I've always found the Harry Potter books to be something that you tend to read in one go, which is getting difficult with every successive volume in the series expanding in size alarmingly.

Why I am I jotting down all this uninteresting tripe??? I have no clue myself!

The next post I plan to write is a detailed critique about the characterizations and plots of all the Hari Puttar novels. Hahaha! No ones gonna read that!

BTW in a completely unrelated topic, if anyone gets damn frustrated in their love life, I recommend dimming the lights and listening to the music of Kailash Kher - Kailasa.
And also Strings.

Signing out!

Shawshank - A review

This is what my favourite movie critic had to say about my favourite movie.
For now I reproduce over her his comments. I'll attempt a review soon in my own words.

Roger Ebert is the best in the business, in the matter of movie reviews, and though how we respond to a movie is completely subjective, I generally tend to agree with his views.



BY ROGER EBERT / September 23, 1994

"The Shawshank Redemption" is a movie about time, patience and loyalty -- not sexy qualities, perhaps, but they grow on you during the subterranean progress of this story, which is about how two men serving life sentences in prison become friends and find a way to fight off despair.

The story is narrated by "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman), who has been inside the walls of Shawshank Prison for a very long time and is its leading entrepreneur. He can get you whatever you need: cigarettes, candy, even a little rock pick like an amateur geologist might use. One day he and his fellow inmates watch the latest busload of prisoners unload, and they make bets on who will cry during their first night in prison, and who will not. Red bets on a tall, lanky guy named Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), who looks like a babe in the woods.

But Andy does not cry, and Red loses the cigarettes he wagered. Andy turns out to be a surprise to everyone in Shawshank, because within him is such a powerful reservoir of determination and strength that nothing seems to break him. Andy was a banker on the outside, and he's in for murder. He's apparently innocent, and there are all sorts of details involving his case, but after a while they take on a kind of unreality; all that counts inside prison is its own society -- who is strong, who is not -- and the measured passage of time.

Red is also a lifer. From time to time, measuring the decades, he goes up in front of the parole board, and they measure the length of his term (20 years, 30 years) and ask him if he thinks he has been rehabilitated. Oh, most surely, yes, he replies; but the fire goes out of his assurances as the years march past, and there is the sense that he has been institutionalized -- that, like another old lifer who kills himself after being paroled, he can no longer really envision life on the outside.

Red's narration of the story allows him to speak for all of the prisoners, who sense a fortitude and integrity in Andy that survives the years. Andy will not kiss butt. He will not back down. But he is not violent, just formidably sure of himself. For the warden (Bob Gunton), he is both a challenge and a resource; Andy knows all about bookkeeping and tax preparation, and before long he's been moved out of his prison job in the library and assigned to the warden's office, where he sits behind an adding machine and keeps tabs on the warden's ill-gotten gains. His fame spreads, and eventually he's doing the taxes and pension plans for most of the officials of the local prison system.

There are key moments in the film, as when Andy uses his clout to get some cold beers for his friends who are working on a roofing job. Or when he befriends the old prison librarian (James Whitmore). Or when he oversteps his boundaries and is thrown into solitary confinement. What quietly amazes everyone in the prison -- and us, too -- is the way he accepts the good and the bad as all part of some larger pattern than only he can fully see.

The partnership between the characters played by Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman is crucial to the way the story unfolds. This is not a "prison drama" in any conventional sense of the word. It is not about violence, riots or melodrama. The word "redemption" is in the title for a reason. The movie is based on a story, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, by Stephen King, which is quite unlike most of King's work. The horror here is not of the supernatural kind, but of the sort that flows from the realization than 10, 20, 30 years of a man's life have unreeled in the same unchanging daily prison routine.

The director, Frank Darabont, paints the prison in drab grays and shadows, so that when key events do occur, they seem to have a life of their own.

Andy, as played by Robbins, keeps his thoughts to himself. Red, as Freeman plays him, is therefore a crucial element in the story: His close observation of this man, down through the years, provides the way we monitor changes and track the measure of his influence on those around him. And all the time there is something else happening, hidden and secret, which is revealed only at the end.

"The Shawshank Redemption" is not a depressing story, although I may have made it sound that way. There is a lot of life and humor in it, and warmth in the friendship that builds up between Andy and Red. There is even excitement and suspense, although not when we expect it. But mostly the film is an allegory about holding onto a sense of personal worth, despite everything. If the film is perhaps a little slow in its middle passages, maybe that is part of the idea, too, to give us a sense of the leaden passage of time, before the glory of the final redemption.

My first post

Hello everybody,

This is the first time I am writing something in my blog. I intend to fill this space with as much crap as I can think, some original, some others stuff I dhapaved from somewhere.

If the stuff I post over here will seem to be the ramblings of an incoherent idiot, I must compliment you on the accuracy of your judgement.