Chocolate........

Guys! Just watched Chocolate ( the movie) for the 2nd time today & I’d love to talk quite a bit about it, coz after a long time a movie has made me think quite a bit. Actually when its trailers hit the stands, I thought it to be another of those sick bollywood movies with a sepia background to it, which would lose its way just trying to imitate hollywood & not being itself. But hey, it sprung up a few surprises, & so much so that when I came out of the theatre I was really confused to decide if I’d liked the movie or not.

The suspense in the film is very desi but what makes it special is that the climax betrays all imaginations & this is one thing that the Indian viewers just can’t digest. Well I’ve heard few people praising the concept but when I say ‘few’, they are strictly ‘FEW’. A few days back I came across a review of the movie in a news channel castigating the movie like anything & showing the public getting out of theatres writing Chocolate off as if it were a crime to make such a movie in India. Today in the theatre too I heard people whispering at the end that this is just not cool enough!

Well, I would not reveal the storyline here, but here the real hero is outwitted by the director with the help of a highly underrated actor Irrfan Khan. ‘Why’ is secondary but ‘How’ is important. This thing probably doesn’t get into the system of the movie goers. How can a hero be defeated in a Hindi feature film? Maybe a larger faction of people feel duped or cheated. As if this is not enough, the plot gets too complex midway & concentration is required to grasp the entire script & this makes the viewer impatient. Add to these the shooting unfriendly town of London & the nothing too picturesque in the movie to soothe the eyes (save the sexy Tanushree Dutta & her revealing apparels). So that’s the perfect recipe to write off the hard work of a creative mind.

But I still salute the Director & even if I’m said that it is inspired from a Hollywood thriller, I still call it to be creative because of his courage to go ahead with the plot. The suspense which has been garnished differently steals the show. A couple of extremely talented actors in Anil Kapoor & Irrfan Khan come to the limelight & keep feeding you with some food for thought, throughout the 2 ½ hours film. I have always liked films that are close to real life & are pragmatic enough to be believed, but guess what! Chocolate is no way close to being associated with real life, still it has so successfully attracted my attention, that I was forced to see it twice in the theatre.

I am certainly not one of those who keeps feeling that Hollywood movies are better their bollywood counterparts, in fact I myself don’t watch too many English movies but I still believe that there’s a lot of scope for matured subjects to be brought up in our own desi style & a newness in the field of Hindi cinema must spring up thereby giving it a facelift. What Chocolate does is that, it helps us to think away from the mainstream. Chocolate gives us a break from the highly predictable high voltage dramas & tells us about something that might not exist at all & more importantly, as I said ‘How’ it might not exist at all …

I warn you that the movie Chocolate might be just a bit more confusing than this blog of mine, but believe me if you are looking for something that is new & are really ready to accept the anti-climax type of a climax then go & watch Chocolate. If it’s a let down then please tell me in which way it let u down otherwise don’t forget to thank me for the advise to watch it.

An Iffy Feeling

Before starting off I’d like to warn that most of u’d be better off not reading this post. I really feel u’d not enjoy this coz this is a blog, from me, to me. I can hear the question, “then why is it here?”. The answer is that I’ve given up writing a diary so I needed to write this somewhere. Of course u can read along if u have a lot of time, or else this is the right time to snap out of here.

There are good times & there are bad times, but what are worse are the times when u really can’t make out if it is actually good or bad. Right now, unfortunately I’ve prodded into that territory. Sometimes it feels that things are just not going my way & the other time I see a strange mystery unfolding & that urges me to take things optimistically.

I suddenly find the life to be at a standstill after some real action earlier this year. Many a friends of mine also feel the same way & most of them already placed like me, fancy being into their professional life as early as possible. For me though, I think the other way round, maybe coz I’ve seen many a people who don’t stop being pleasantly nostalgic about their student lives & not to mention, rue over their decision to take up a job that’s as exacting as that of daily wage labour’s job. So I still know that this has to be the best part of my life. But the big problem still remains that ‘the best part’ is yet not visible to my eyes. The earlier years of college life had been much more enjoyable than they are now. The tension of a future however is a bit on the lower side. I just sense that most of us have been too complacent & so much so that even going on to a short tour to some place, that we were so much used to earlier, appears to be big decision for all of us.

The time I spend in college is great, but it is too less & rest of the time being at home feels like being in prison. In recent past my preparations for other competitive exams have also taken a blow, I find myself in a dilemmatic situation where I don’t really know what to do. What hurts me most is that, at times no one seems to be bothered much about what happens with me. I may be over reacting a bit but the whole world appears to be so busy that even a few things that matter a lot to me doesn’t matter to them at all, not expected also, but then it hurts.

Surely at times I also get too carried away with myself & my close ones & hence ignore some of the most important people of my life & actually I’d love to believe that it is just a coincidence when everyone I want to spend time with have all got carried away for a short period.

Now being an optimist from within, I got to find a few ways out of this iffy phase. Yes maybe I need to spend more time with my college dudes, freak out with them. Go & watch some David Dhawan mindless comedies, listen to some jazzy & peppy music. Finally, like I’ve always done I must give everyone more space, get back to my normal self, try and feel better. But firstly my expectations from others must be done away with, time and again I do expect too much from people around me & just need to keep it down now. I know I can shrug this off with a bit of effort & logical thinking.

Again here some people would misunderstand me thinking that I’m trying to be self exaggerative, as they have done before, but I would just say that I’m trying & giving a vent to my silly emotions, which I hope would move away with time. Now before ending , please all my readers, don’t take this personally as this is targeted to none of u all & specially u, my only regular reader!

Changing Definition Of Comedy

Laughing is one of the most inevitable acts that make life easy for one & all. In our daily life, humor is something that adds spice to an otherwise monotonous string of events. Just imagine human beings without an emotion called laughter, in their attributes’ list.

However day by day this trait has started to become so rare that we’ve started to need artificial help to tickle our funny bones. The thought of people needing to go to laughter clubs to have a daily dose of laughter makes me feel extremely disappointed. I just can’t imagine myself to be in such a helpless position where smiling & laughing have to be practiced. But don’t worry this is not going to be a philosophical blog, coz what I want to talk about is the definition of comedy that has changed over the years for everyone.

Cinema & TV have always been great contributors in terms of comedy that refresh us, at a time when probably we don’t feel like laughing, even at the funniest of events around us. Some of the comedy movies have many a times left us rolling over with an aching belly. Some of the TV serials have touched those chords of our hearts that were bound to evoke the ultimate laughter inside us. I primarily like Hindi comedy as I feel the British comedy to be too formal & the Hollywood comedy to be too rude at times. So I just can’t help naming a few laughter bombs that have been thrown at us by our own Bollywood.

My personal favorite is Padosan( one of the classics of Indian cinema),there are a lot many which have successfully tickled my funny bones & cartilages more than once. They are, Chalti Ka Naam Gadi, Half Ticket, Chupke Chupke, Golmaal, Pushpak, Pyar Kiye Jaa,Jane Bhi Do Yaaron, Andaaz Apna Apna, Hera Pheri, Aawara Paagal Deewana, Aakhen & Munnabhai-MBBS. On the smaller screen, I’d always love watching Mungeri Lal Ke Haseen Sapne, Zabaan Sambhalke, Tandoori Nights(though I didn’t follow it too often) & off late “The Great Indian Laughter Challenge” has successfully had me into splits, a good number of times. Sadly about the latest TV comedies I can’t say much as I hardly follow any of them these days.

But what disturbs me at times about the changing trends in comedy is the methods people try to adopt to make others laugh. The creativity of converting a general scene into a comic one is an art itself & more often than not, brings the real giggle out of u. However, today brevity is the other name of comedy with ‘one liners’ ruling the roost. Reading between the lines & double meaning statements have started to capture the director & script-writer’s fancy. Although there’s nothing wrong in it but somewhere brevity has tried to take the place of levity. The result is that, the nice, light hearted & innocent form of humor is lost somewhere. The long list of movies like Masti, Style, KyaKool Hai Hum, and so on… have all resorted to issues relating to infidelity, sexual desires & other ridiculous topics. Most of the time the new brigade of directors try to create a comic scene after a lot of panting. Most of the time they end up combining dozens of coincidences which leads to a scene where every character gets the other one wrong & finally the chaos created makes the viewer feel that this is the ultimate laughter riot. But where’s the creativity, after all?

Many of u may call me an eccentric, but frankly speaking, most of the time I get out of a theatre after watching the movies of these genre feeling that I’d have been better off, not watching it. I can’t deny that I often laugh at these, but eventually I do not end up enjoying them at all. Most of the masses & even a good number of the so called classes have readily accepted this kind of comedy with both arms open & I have absolutely no reservations about them, but what hurts me is that, if a series of such films are only made then very soon the real essence of comedy would die out & the number of people appreciating real quality comedy would surely come down.

At the end of the day though, what matters is whether the majority of the audience is moving out of the theatres with a smile & if this pattern of comedy can get the grins out, then let the trend continue. Being an optimist I would always believe the kind of laughter which suits me would also never die out because still films like Munnabhai-MBBS are made & directors like Priyadarshan are still working hard to get the good old form of comedy into the mainstream. Let’s hope that both brevity & levity survive in making people laugh, for the years to come.

My 1st seminar!

Know what! I just happened to present the first real seminar of my life this week. Many of u must have gone through this experience already & some of u wud go on to experience it very soon. Altogether it went smoothly for me, but not before a number of hiccups. How about talking a bit about the whole experience. Nothing much to convey over here but just sharing it with u all. Take a deep breath folks! Its going to be long.

Very unlike CET, the seminar sessions have gone on quite strictly this time, & that too at quite a brisk pace. So quickly, that my turn arrived in just over a month since our college reopened for the 7th sem. inspite of my roll no. being 48. To see everyone prepare Java & talk about Java I had set up my mind not to speak on Java inspite of the fact that I did a summer training on it, this time around. Moreover our’s is a training seminar & so u have to present a seminar related to a topic that u’ve covered in ur training. Java is still French to me, thankfully I’d completed a summer training last year on Linux administration & incidentally it happens one of my favorite topics in Comp. Sci. So I made up my mind, Linux it wud be…

But this was just the first step. Watching so many of my classmates crumble under pressure at the dice with the mic in hand didn’t help my confidence a lot. Here just speaking abilities weren’t going to help as technical knowledge matters. Even after a great seminar u cud be grilled by a barrage of questions by ur own friends & failing to answer wud spoil the entire party for u. For me another difficult part was that I was one of the very few to present a seminar on a totally different topic. Another thing that I had to keep in mind was that, I had to be very perfect with the infos that were to be included in my presentation, coz a group of 4-5 students of our class have already hosted the college website in Linux itself & of course they would always pin me down if I was wrong somewhere. As if all this wasn’t enough, I had not prepared anything for it till I found out that I was just 3 days from my D day.

Now I started off with an exhaustive search of the internet, but to my disappointment I could hardly find something which could go either into my presentation or the report. So at 1:30 a.m. I decided that everything had to be typed by me & the old saying seemed to be the truest thing in the world “a book is a student’s best friend”.

So with 3 nights & 2 days to go, I started off my ppt presentation. One full night wasn’t enough, I worked till 5am & then in morning from 10 to 12:30pm to finish it. It was a Sunday & I remain terribly busy on this day, after fulfilling all my commitments by 8pm I realized that I had to be at home & prepare a report of over 25 pages, get it printed, & then bind it, and obviously I also had to prepare for my presentation, & get myself ready to answer all sorts of link-less questions to be darted at me at the end. All this with just one day in hand. As I reached home I found a number of guests at home & again those plastic smiles were to be called for. I’d been so busy that I even forgot that India’s match was going on. But I didn’t miss the last part while I’d been entertaining the guests. All these stuff & when I looked for the time it was 11pm. Quite evidently, I knew that this night was not meant to sleep. 3 mugs full of Coffee & a splash of water on my face in every 30 mins ensured that I was up till 5:30am, typing with the max possible speed I penned down(rather keyed down) the report with no copy paste jobs as was the case with most of my friends. With God’s grace I was done by 5:30 & could arrange a 1hr slot to sleep for myself. Yes! Just 1 hour. At 6:30am my Dad got me up as I’d asked him to. Then after the tea, this time my Dad prepared it for me, I had to rush to get the printouts. Now everyone who’ve worked with ppt & ms word themselves must be knowing the editing demons that bug u like anything. Moving in to a PC with a lower version of ms office I was terrified at what I got out of my work. After a 2.5 hours of tussle, I could get the whole thing done with some sanity being restored, but still a couple of problems still persisted, so I handed them to my Dad & asked him to get them corrected by an experienced DTP agent in his office. My patience was tested full length & so much so, that now I didn’t care that even being a computer engineer I had to take help of others in resolving problems in ms word.

Another hour sleep was all I had & then started preparing for the presentation. By the afternoon the printouts were ready & after lunch I got it all ready for spiral binding. A couple of hours more of preparation & then off I went to get the spiral binding done & then went to sit for a mock exam in my CAT training centre. Needless to say the xam was a disaster & in the process I lost another 2 hours. Back home I started serious preparations amidst speculations from my friends that the seminar cud be cancelled the next day if the students went for a mass bunk as there were a series of holidays around. Of course this didn’t help much.
Finally after setting all the strategies, I started another exhaustive search of the internet to get the answers to the question which cud be asked. By 1:30am I was feeling somewhat confident, so I went on to sleep & then got up at 7:30 next morning. Then my Mother told me that Dad had taken my Kinetic Honda for some work, I wasn’t too worried as I wud start for the college at 11am. But this wasn’t as simple as I’d thought. A phone call from my Dad left me in utter shock. He told me that the bike had broken down & he cudn’t come before 12(the scheduled time for my seminar). I lost my cool & shouted at him. I felt that all the hard work was going into the trash bin very soon. But deep inside I knew my Father, he wud not give up & while I was trying to arrange for some other means to reach my college (which is in the remotest of the remote places), my Dad reached home by 10:15 with another bike that belonged to the garage owner. Once again I saluted the miraculous abilities of my father & started for college.

Just hold on guys, this is not all. As I entered the seminar hall, I was pleased to know that at least now our fellow-mates had been matured enough not to go on a mass bunk. But something much worse was awaiting for me. The news that there was no mic available on this day due to some technical faults increased my B.P. And to whomever I said that without a mic I wud not be able to deliver the seminar, he/she said that why on earth did I need a mic. Here I need to say that from the very 1st sem my classmates know me to have a very big voice & believe it or not my names in the class are “Loudspeaker”, “Bazoomba”, & so on. Every one felt that if there was one person in the class who didn’t require a mic then it was me. And actually I used to enjoy this impression to an extent, before this day, but now things were not that rosy anymore, the obvious expectations were creating tension for me.

Five people were to present their seminars on this day & I was to be the fourth (roll no. wise). All of them started off their presentations standing on the dice & ended up delivering it from the floor, as the voices were just fading out & the audience couldn’t hear them. But I knew that delivering from the floor was difficult as then to see ur slides on the projector u’d need to turn 180 degrees around. And I cud see it happen for others.

Finally, my turn came & I also tried to start off from the dice. Guess what! As I had said my 1st sentence, my friends started shouting “slow, slow, u r too loud”, this relieved me as I was sure now that I wudn’t have to go to the floor. Then I went on with the presentation, with an attention level of the crowd upto my liking. After 10 mins or so I was amazed that 2 or 3 of those guys who had hosted the website were listening to me very keenly & one of them was applauding quietly. This was really a gift for me! Some were busy gulping down the drinks that had been arranged by us but the sound level from the crowd was pretty low. Finally I concluded the seminar & to my surprise there were a very few questions asked that too most of them were sitters. In fact most people asked me questions about it after the seminar was over. Probably they were a bit hesitant to come up with their questions to me, God knows why! But whatever it is, I was pretty satisfied with it overall & most of my friends thanked God that we didn’t have a mic or they believed that my voice wud’ve destroyed the mic forever. And what more, I was enjoying this tag of “loudspeaker” for myself once again….

So finally I was through with this ordeal & now I’m quite relieved. Now, not many of u wud read this fully, I know that, but if u do then please take the pain to comment with a few lines, maybe u can share ur experiences too.

Bye
Suvra.