Suyog is making me do this..
Three things that scare me :
1. Being alone. In every way.
2. My possible lack of ability.
|3. Losing control.
Three people who make me laugh :
1. Guru.
2. Seinfeld.
3. Any B-grade ‘hero’.
Three things I love :
1. Literature in any form.
2. Techstuff.
3. Spending time with friends/family.
Three things I hate :
1. Loneliness.
2. Stupidity.
3. Falling sick.
every child dreams of seeing his parents ecstatic. and its even better when you’ve been instrumental in making that happen.
my biggest regret since i came to the states, was the fact that it meant missing my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary. considering i couldn’t actually be there for the wedding, it would have been pretty rocking to really make it memorable.
i couldn’t be there. there was just no way. damned high pressure grad school. [trust me, this would have played out slightly differently if i had been there :)]
i tried. got people convinced. sowed germs of ideas, and watched as the occasion became what it should be - a celebration that 2 people deserved. granted, i’m biased - they are my parents. but they deserved to have a day where they could look back and say - ‘there. everyone celebrated the fact that we are together. its all been worth it.’
From Late Edition, ages ago:
1. Initials: SEV
2. Name someone with the same birthday as you: Paul Allen
3. Last thing you ate? Daisy’s Chocolate Chip Pound Cake. Cheap, and filling.
4. For or against same sex marriage: I don’t really care - but ‘for’ I guess.
5. I say Shotgun! You say? Gun that blows you away ?
6. Last person you hugged? Umm…
7. Do you believe in God? I’m borderline agnostic. You tell me.
a few weeks ago, ‘guru’ proved that the bachchan baby, was in fact a damned good actor in his own right. it was the kind of performance that you see very rarely.. and abhishek seemed to have proved that he was indeed an actor who deserved to be seen beyond being his father’s son. not that he hadn’t already shown this, but this was the stamp of credential that few ever get. few, if any, title characters actually ever carry off a movie. case in point - mangal pandey, asoka, satya, omkara.
and now, one of the year’s best films has come. the son has competition from his father. funny. few actors are coming close to competing here.
from the opening shots dissolving to the queen dying in her bed, to the final moments, including 2 minutes of sheer darkness.. ‘eklavya’ carries off the classic intrigue-drama combination. superbly. at one point in the movie, i was wondering at exactly what the director was planning to do with his setup.. it seemed remarkably bereft of possibility. but mr. chopra knows his art. strings are left trailing, gathered almost remarkably. and no scene is without that hallmark touch you look for in his films.. the sheer blending of all the arts. i would fault the ending a bit, but on the other hand, it suffers from the same problem as ‘guru’ - how do you resolve the setup ? there really is very little else that could have been done. occasionally, ‘eklavya’ is more the stage-play than a movie… these are but nit-pickings though. the haunting shots, the depiction of the monster within all of us, the 600 camels charging across the screen as you sit enthralled searching just as eklavya does.. its all there.
amitabh brings eklavya to a different level - even if he doesn’t have to speak for the first 20 minutes of the movie.. his silence literally speaks. none of the remaining cast can be faulted - jackie shroff, boman irani, saif.. the list spans the page. and there is a reason that they are there - few others could have pulled off those roles.
brilliant. one hundred minutes beyond any other.
after all, ‘rishte mein woh tere baap lagte hain’.
..with updating this to WP2.1. while there are a whole lotta fixes and improvements (such as the tabbed interface for posting, and general usability).. its screwed up the AJAX somehow. dammit. i do so love it when those ‘thingies’ appear and disappear like magic. this install is definitely waaaaay faster than previous versions too. but, now i also feel like updating the damn theme. i have kinda taken it to the next release.. but the changes are mostly cosmetic. theme-hunting, when i don’t have time to do assignments. nice.
..finding a good music library/player for managing all the damn music i’m accumulating. i’m not complaining about the music, just about the fact that WMP11 is a tad sneaky.. creating .db files and copies of the album arts all over the place. itunes kinda sucks, and winamp became bloatware after version 3.. media monkey is limited.. and suddenly we’re out of music manager softwares. crap.
..with a certain day that people seem to want to ‘celebrate’. it’s apparently in honor of love and sentiment; but somehow in all the snazzy greeting cards, and mundane outings that people seem to need to go on (and blow money).. i don’t really see the feelings implied. are we trying to prove that we are capable of love? or are we so facetious as to believe that love is something that needs to be re-affirmed in by going ballistic? UT has had posts about this in the past, and i’ve started sending out the true VD cards since last year. people don’t seem to appreciate them too much though. i wonder. as a kid, like every one else, i’ve read the stories, and wondered what it would be like to celebrate ‘v-day’ with someone truly special. remember jesse and becky on ‘full house’? it all seemed so sweet, and goddamn idealistic. but then for the 2 weeks ahead of feb the 14th, we have the ubiquitous ads at every nook and cranny telling you ‘you should be doing something for your beloved’. and the remaining 364 days of the year we’ll go back to the platonic relationship, because goddamit, v-day is the best time to let loose all those feelings of love you’ve kept pent up for the last 364 days. oh joy.
..with the fact that i’ve barely earned anything from google ads here. blech.
that is all.
His hand reached out..
“Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”
It needed to be done. Why could he not just do it ? Seemed simple enough - to pull a lever. Whatever happened after that really didn’t make the slightest difference.
Or did it ?
Confusion, frustration, irritation, elation. The old ways never really leave you. Randomly connecting words and seeing if they make sense. Even now, when he had bare seconds to make this decision. Or, as he was doing, avoiding the decision.
His hand grasped it. Now all that remained to be done was to…
**************
Pull it, pull it, PULL IT !
Damn. Yet, again. He couldn’t.
His hand was poised in mid-air. Inches away. Seconds away from doing it.
He couldn’t. He didn’t have it in him to do it.
He suddenly notices the contrast between his fingers and the implement that hovered tantalizing in reach. It looked… different. His fingers danced, showing off the sheer dexterity… that he just could not use in this one simple task.
Why ? Could he really answer that question ? Was it a question worth answering ?
Maybe the lever didn’t want to be pulled ? Maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was subtly influencing what he was doing, this ’second thoughts’ business. He should break it, teach it a lesson. Just for the record, this was all the levers fault.
Whom was he trying to fool ?
**************
The lever waited, eventually the hand would come to grasp it. The hand was poised mere inches away, but it could have been a million miles away for the amount of time it seemed to be taking to decide whether to grasp it or not.
And then, two minutes later, the impatient kid jumped off the merry-go-round, pulled the ‘on’ lever.. and ran back in time to enjoy the ride.
Such is life. Much ado is made about… nothing.
