Movies, Masti, Magic - Part II

It bit me – the movie bug…

Believe me…I saw some 15 movies in the last 20 days or so…it all started with a harmless conversation when somebody told me to watch three Audrey Hepburn movies and I thought to myself – “Yeah! I am gonna do this! All my life I have been waiting for someone to come and tell me to watch a movie that kindles that spark of interest in me! N here it is!”

So I set about downloading those movies…now our LAN is a pirate’s paradise and before long, I was watching them. I had a couple of major submissions along with end-term exams then – but nothing was to come in my way! Not that I didn’t do justice to those commitments – I did more than enough – but that is another story…

Let’s get on with this one…

Audrey H set the ball rolling…she was cute, more than that – I finally knew what all these people looked like – Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, Bette Davis and the rest of the gang of yore…now my dear reader (assuming I have any) - if you are expressing wonderment at the fact that I didn’t already know them, let me tell you that Yours truly has not seen too many movies…I usually consider watching movies a waste of time…I only watch movies which are highly recommended by reliable sources!

So then I went on a spree of watchin classics…I couldn’t get enough of them! I even watched a couple of musicals! N then a friend of mine started ribbing me about my new-found love for the classics and my illiteracy regarding movies in general…so I decided to continue watching and watching all sorts…

Now this post is not about this movie-buff lifestyle of mine – it is about this one movie – Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind…it has made some sorta impact one me…

For the uninitiated – it is about this couple – poles apart – they have a sort of fight and the woman who is extremely impulsive employs the services of a memory-erasure clinic to erase all memories of the man. The man, on finding out, in a fit of anger, proceeds to do the same – only half-way through the procedure, he starts realizing that he has actually spent a lot of good times with her and he does not want to go through with it.

The movie is beautifully made – the past and present and interwoven amazingly well…

The concept got me thinking - erasing memories – I am sure we all have certain memories we want to forget…but to forget altogether that the person or people involved with those memories ever existed – well…not such a great idea…

We are what we are because of the experiences we have had, because of the people we have met and to erase them would be like to feel something every time you see that Titan showroom but not know why you feel that way.

What I also like about the movie immensely – she tells him in his mind inside a memory – Meet me in Montague – and he actually goes there on an inexplicable (to him at that point) impulse to Montague the next day. She is there and they see each other…and she talks to him and both feel some stirring…

A similar thing happens with another person in the movie…she continues to feel an irresistible fascination for somebody she had an affair with and had the memory of whom erased…

Wonders that our minds work…it is so fascinating what our minds make us do – utterly inexplicable stuff…

You know - when people say – choose between what the heart says and what the mind says – I do not understand what they mean…there can be no emotions without the mind - the mind is, in fact, the seat of emotions as opposed to the heart – which is an over-glorified organ (a very important one at that – I have heart disease in the family, I better be respectful towards it ;)) In other words, feeling is just another way of thinking…

On a tangent, I have this thought sometimes in my mind – Whom we get together with, is most times, dependent on circumstances – somebody we happen to meet when we are in that particularly fragile frame of mind; or who we end up spending the entire party talking to, when nobody else you know turns up…well, that is kinda crummy, isnt it? I know that given the circumstances, the fact that two people have to connect is also important – but sometimes, don’t the circs dictate whether you connect or not? Not totally, but to a certain extent?

Maybe, one could have got along much better with somebody else, but the opportunity never presented itself…

On another tangent - lately, I have started feeling that I expect too much from life…I should get down to earth and get real.

Scorched..

Long time since I blogged…there has been so much going on lately - one always means to, but never finds the time to…something else is always more important...

…and that is how we deprive ourselves of the simple pleasures of life…

But I am no one to talk about the simple pleasures of life...not after I have become this creature I have become..

I guess the symptoms were always there - always good at multitasking, involved with two dozen things at the same time...but there are limits to multitasking too, so many-a-time screwing up because of my desperate urge to do this, that and the other!

Then came summers - at HLL…it was a hot blazing Indian summer day when I walked into 'Levers House' in Mumbai...having no idea about the fact that I would vindicate myself at that place..

I met KK there...my boss - and the gamut of emotions that I have gone through because of him - I think he is one of the sharpest men I know - so quick on the uptake, so clear and logical, he cuts you into pieces if you so much as fumble once, and ohh so busy! He would not have any time for me - I would have to chase him like I have NEVER chased anybody in my entire life…I would sit outside for hours while he would finish his phone conversation just so that I could talk with him for 10 minutes! It would rarely anger me, more than that, I would get a feeling of being incompetent – because KK does not give his time easily to people he does not consider worth his time – and from that feeling rose the overwhelming urge to prove myself..

Roundabout that time, I started reading ‘Atlas Shrugged’ – long overdue – and it blew me – I wanted to be Dagny...I wanted to command that kind of respect for being as competent as she was, I wanted to feel that kind of passion for what I was doing..

N so I worked, I worked so hard like I have never worked in my life...I worked so smart like I have never worked in my life…cutting out the inefficiencies completely...if people think life@IIM is tough, they don’t know what they are talking about..

I went and visited shops in Northern and Western India, in the scorching heat...shop after shop, observing and chatting up shopper after shopper...looking, observing, listening, noting, inferring, improvising…touched base in Mumbai, did research, made plans – only to have them shot down by KK..

He would ask all the right questions and catch me at all my shaky points…he was rude, some said – even I said so at times – but he was the kind of person who does not tolerate fools or foolishness...and that kinda authority comes with the absolute confidence of knowing that you are doing a good job…and I wanted to be that person..

I did everything that I could have done...took feedback diligently, went and met people, landed up at advertising houses without appointments and managed to get my work done…people have always told me I am pushy...but I took that to an art form..

I started planning for my market research then – and man, was it a nightmare! So many people to contact, so many permissions to take, I was working like a maniac and was not even sure of it would get done...but I made it work...My market research finally went on air – in Mumbai and Delhi...I went crazy...I was working 13 hours those days – conceptualizing, executing, supervising..

I fell sick…

N then mid-term appraisal happened and KK told me this – ‘I have failed as a tutor with you because you are good at everything, I am unable to identify an area of improvement for you’! I felt like I was on air...

N so you see, that was the story of my summers more or less…yeah, there were a few drunken parties and a Bollywood party as well, some interesting dinners and some criticism from KK towards the end (he again caught my Achilles heel)…but predominantly, it was about moving towards that place I have always wanted to reach – operation with minimum leakage and infinite efficiency!

Was it fun? I don’t think so – I learned a lot...skills and competencies as PM would put it...I am much more confident now and I definitely know how to get my work done...but it has made me into this kinda person who cannot sit still for one moment...someone who wants to extract every bit of productivity from life…someone who cannot enjoy the simple pleasures of life..

The Tragic Indian

Deviating a little from the past few threads, this post is about the literary scene in India as seen through my eyes – I still have a lot to see and so please forgive the oversights, if any.

I have recently been reading this book called Ladies Coupe, it is by an Indian author – you may have heard her name – Anita Nair.

The special thing about this book is that, it is just like all other books authored by Indians. It is melancholy. If there were colors I would assign to the world seen through my eyes, while reading it, it would be shades of grey, with a tinge of ochre. The book is about these women who spend their lives playing the daughter, the sister, the wife and mother and finally realize that they need to find their own identity in order to be complete.

I hate the sound of ochre.

There have been others – Jhumpa Lahiri interpreting maladies or walking us through the travails of Gogol; Salman Rushdie equating the hopes, aspirations and downfall of a country with the hopes, aspirations and downfall of a kid born at Midnight; Anurag Mathur apparently describing the desperation of an Indian adolescent to get laid in the US of A, but actually trying to depress us by insinuating that we Indians are too garish, hypocritical and are perceived to be funny the world over; Meera Syal explains ably that Life isn’t, in fact, all haahaaheehee and Indian women, be they in any corner of the world, are doomed to unsatisfactory existences; and then there is Dominique Lappiere who manages to be suitably morose describing the City of Joy – and he ain’t even Indian (Although to be fair to him, the theme is about the flame of hope burning amidst all that misery, but the misery is so vividly described that one doesn’t get to the flame of hope part)! And how can we forget Munshi Premchand, whose tales were mired in hopelessness and destitution.

Do not get me wrong – I think Indian writers are brilliant, they write lucidly, they capture details that actually make you think – since all those lives they talk about are in someway yours. The insights that Premchand brings into a simple tale of misery and starvation does affect you in some manner; the absolutely fantastic language and construction that Salman Rushdie uses leaves you stunned and Indian women – well, we all know what a hard time society gives our women and that is what these stories depict – our society.

What I am wondering about is – Is the Indian author so burdened by his own cultural dilemmas, his existential traumas – especially relevant in the new world, saddened by his own perceptions about kith and kin, his observations about everything I-N-D-I-A-N that his books are dipped in the sort of sauce that comes with resignation?

There were a few rare ones like Satyajit Ray, in the days of yore who would churn out Feludas and some like Sudha Murthy and RK Narayan now, who use everyday incidents to depict various shades of human life - all with a glint of humor. There are those like Ruskin Bond who say it with nature and although his tales are as poignant as they get, they are speckled with old-world villas with bougainvillea and winding blue roads under the water-color skies - the stuff of nirvana. And then of course, there is the Shobha De!

Looking at the bigger picture - What makes most of these Indian authors so sensitive? Why is their world-view so tragic?

Of Bullshit and other kinds of manure

Continuing with my series on life@B-school, here’s a thought: What if there was something about you, you thought was a good thing, and then you had this big realization that you were quite OC - Obsessive-Compulsive for the uninitiated, about it?

Let me tell you a story –Once upon a time (yeah right, I like fairy tales!) there was a little girl whose father told her to look after his boss’s garden. The boss had a beautiful garden, the kind that refreshes your weary soul – exotic flowers, gentle breeze – the works. Now her father told her – ‘Moon (that’s what he used to called her), take good care of this garden, it’s your responsibility’. Moon would observe her father very keenly and she would see that he went to the market everyday with candles to sell and would sell them to the best of his abilities. He was not the maker of the candles. The candles were produced in a factory not far off and he was paid a fixed salary irrespective of the number of candles he sold. And yet! There was no candle seller as good as Moon’s father! He would work the whole day, sell twice the number of candles that the other candle sellers could and after coming back, he would sit and think up new ways of selling more candles, or ways to make the candles better (based on feedback from the customer – he had his marketing research bang on!)! So anyway, Moon knew from a very early age that one must take pride in one’s work and do it with an enthusiasm that shines though, even if it does not get the big bucks home, it gets you that awesome feeling that very few people in this world have experienced – the absolute conviction that nobody else could have done it better than you!

So Moon started to tend this garden, she would inspect it every morning; make a list of all the things that needed to be done to it; make plans about how the garden could be made even more beautiful and weed free; and together with a couple of boys, labor away at it. Soon it went from being just a job to a consuming passion. She set tasks for self, which were sometimes a little ambitious considering her school-work and other pursuits, but found the time to do them. She set high standards for herself and expected those two boys to do the same. But it takes all kinds – and the boys turned out to be the type who would not work unless it was absolutely necessary, unless somebody was at their throat pushing them to work or unless they hoped to derive something positive, in the form of monetary reward or recognition from it.

Moon started to harbor feelings of resentment towards them. She would tend to be irritable as soon as their names were mentioned or one of their excuses to evade work came to light. She spent many a frustrated moment trying to implement the best course of action for the garden, but met with failure due to lack of assistance. She even cursed the seasons, when came the time for the trees to shed and the flowers to sleep, she hated that look for the garden – her garden.

Her father noticed all of this and sat her down one day. He said ‘Moon, work with all your might, but know that there will be times when your colleagues will slacken off and you will have to use all the tricks in the book to extract their pound of flesh; or fire them if it comes to that. But do not fester this resentment. You cannot go and reason with the rains to fall down on your garden because it needs it badly! When met with circumstances like that, you can either fret and fume, or go grab the hose and water your garden (and wet your colleagues who are standing by and watching - in the process hoping they catch a cold)!’

Yeah, I know the story was corny as hell :) So where were we - OCing, yeah, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and you don’t wanna go that way, baby. This ain’t a race against time, or anyone else, it is, in the end, all about your own self. This place brings out the worst in you and throws it into your face, you have no choice but to confront it, and therein lies redemption - and that’s why I love my life here...

Taking stock..

It has just been eight months into this course, and I already feel like a misfit for the ‘other world’.

We the people…We are not like other specimens of the species, there are marked differences, and some of them are as follows:

 At around 2:30 in the morning, when we are at our relaxed best, we remember some of our friends and family, whom we have not strung two sentences with in quite some time. We then proceed to call them up, only to be met with
o The phone ringing incessantly – no response (And you tell me that I don’t call ya! You don’t pick up the phone when I do!)
o A groggy voice, laden with sleep, pouring invectives down at us, for waking them up at that apparent ungodly hour (Gosh! What sorta lifeless morons go to sleep before 3!!?)
o Yeah, that’s about it.
 We have an assignment submission, a ‘5 percent’ quiz to prepare for the next day, one project group meeting, one club meeting and a case to read and we think the day is ‘light’.
 For us, every minute does count – we have a major submission exactly one week from now and we think – Wow! That’s a lot of time! I could probably write a thesis on the topic, travel the whole of India and come back to submit the thesis, in one week (if Jules Verne can travel the world in 80 days – we can do one better)!
 CNN is on campus, so is Channel [V] – but we don’t have time for them. We are at the high end of the demand chain, due to the Life Cycle theory of expected ‘footage’.
 We epitomize the concept of ‘Work hard, party harder’. After an L^2, the collective alcohol content coursing through our bodies can serve as the alternative fuel for all the nation’s 2 million cars.
 The Great B-school Placement Process – it makes men out of boys. It is the kinda hammer that shatters glass, but forges steel. Everything about it – the concept, the preparations, the process, the way the operations are managed (It is like a mission being planned- days in advance, the anointed few hold mega meetings complete with floor plans, walkies, et al), the ability to continue to believe in yourself inspite of being disappointed, the ability to remain unscathed inspite of being ‘plucked’ early, the ability to bear injustices and retain perspective – all parts of an exercise that leaves a mark.
 We speak in bullet points ;)

Inspite of all of this, life here is not so bad. The quantity of time you spend ‘chilling’ is in direct proportion to how ‘chilled out’ a person you yourself are.

And on a serious note, when one thinks of all that one has already learnt, the mind boggles – a place like this makes you discerning about who you should befriend, and who you should keep one-arm distance from; it cuts out the inefficiencies from your life and you are operating at maximum capacity – you learn that this figure is flexible, in direct relation to how strong your will power is and you learn how much to bend before the crack comes; it makes you acknowledge the fact that there is brilliance in many of us – it’s just a question of what you do with it, where you go with it; and most importantly, you learn how to face your own deficiencies and overcome them, instead of merely glossing over them, like you had been uptil now.

Finally, it fills you with hope – after going through the grind for these two years, life outside has gotta be better, right? Well, I, for one, know that it will be better. Not because it will be less hectic, or easier in any way. Most definitely not. But because I will be better equipped to deal with it. Two years here - is like being molded by fire.

Of economics and other oddities..

I recently read this article which said that economists nowadays define progress, not as how well-off the people of a particular country have become, but by how much happier they have become..

Health has been replaced by 'Wellness' and surveys pertaining to one's state of emotional well-being - every couple of years, is the norm in that great weird, whim ridden country - the US of A!

Weird stuff is happening even on the political front in America, a Democrat Senator's being in hospital could result into a serious tipping of the scales..if he kicks the bucket, the marginal victory in the house of the Senate for the Democrats will also breathe its last..

On the one hand, the country boasts of nudist colonies and same sex marriages, while on the other, some of the Episcopal Churches break away because they do not endorse either a gay man, or a woman (straight or gay) to get ordained. God, if he exists, must lie in these contradictions..

Enough of all this boring stuff..I have been suffering from a writer's block all this while, but it is more of laziness actually. I know very well that given a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen), words will flow like booze at IIM B and the rest, as they say, shall be history.

The reason why I have picked up the gauntlet today is to talk about this particular trend that has been part of my life from it's earliest..my association with people that nobody else wants to associate with..

In other words - weirdos, outcasts, the-much-hated and the so-called whackazoids find their way into my circle of friends..

(I strongly believe I am not hurting any sentiments out here. The people who have been referred to, are all too well aware of how the populace views them and they choose to not care. That is what makes them special in my eyes and draws me towards them. I consider such eccentricities to be their USP.)

These people intrigue me - what makes them tick, what makes the others hate them..are questions that I seek to answer - subconsciously..on a superficial level, I just like to talk to these people..and as early as I can remember, my dialogues with my friends seem to be peppered with phrases like "He is not really all that bad" or "We are really wrong about that person" etc etc..

(From this paragraph, it might seem like I talk to these guys because I am curious or because I pity them. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Pity is the last thing I feel for people who have the strength of character to be different. Like I said, they intrigue me, and I feel attracted towards them because they are not following the herd - be it in thought, speech or action..)

What is life, if not an exploration of the oddities and the eccentricites? Public opinion is the worst measure of a man's true worth and this thought is weird, coz if everybody did believe it, it wouldnt be true anymore :)

I hope I continue to meet many more of these outliers - they make life much more interesting and delighful..they have their own agendas, their individual 'Schools of thought' and way-side paths to tread upon..I too harbour these delusions about myself..on the road less travelled..that's where I want to be..