Let Peace Prevail !!

The word 'Taliban' makes me sick to my stomach .How in the hell these barbarians are alive in this modern world ? George Bush should try his hands at acting because that's all he is good at. Running a country is just not his kinda job let alone trying to be a 'crusader of peace'.What he did after 9/11 was a job half-done that had not made much impact on terrorism.And now we are seeing the consequences of a job half-done.

Last week Taliban held Suryakant-an Indian and threatened to kill him if all the indian will not leave Afganistan. They did killed Suryakant and what we did ? I think the latest 'breaking news' i got is that they trying to identify the dead body. pardon me if i m not so updated with the so many 'breaking news' breaking simultaneously.

The problem is why these reckless hooligans are able to do anything they and get away with it. Who funds them ? Who provide them ammunition and all other things they require to execute their plans ? Since they HAVE all these things, they are able to do what they are doing.The truth remains that their are people in this world who seems to be as normal as us are secretley supporting them.Why ? The answers is Religious Fanaticism.

In the coming time this politics of religion will again overtake this world as it has done successfully in the past.I m no prophet but anybody can see that the more somebody try to supress it more it grows.It's a vicious circle. You condemn them ..try to supress them ..they feel they are being unduly supressed because of their religion ...some idiots are always there to fan this fire more..and again they do something as an act of revenge ..and again u try to supress them.Circle complete.

It is never going to end until we see the light and realize that religion is a very personal thing.It is meant for individual's communion with God(though i m an atheist,let me assume i know the basics).All these religious institutions serves no purpose and mean nothing if all they do is nurture hatred for other relgions and their followers.

Education should be our religion and schools our temples( or church,mosque etc).They will give us a better understanding of things and nobody will ever be successful in misguiding us .We all will become our own guide.

But Alas !! It remains nothing but a wishful thinking .People of this world have this great inclination of attaching so much undue importance to something as inconsequential as religion.Hope to see a world as John Lennon imagined before i leave for my heavnely abode [ as i would like to believe ;-) ]:

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one .

-John Lennon


Till next post ....just hope that peace will prevail if not today maybe one day.

chao !!!

6 Ways to Improve Hindi Movies :

1. for chrissake !! read the script atleast once before making a movie.(how else can u justify ,Kyun ki, Saawan, Shaadi se pahle etc etc .)

2. Give Mallika sherawat her due ..on any given day she is a better actor than likes of Kareena and Esha who gets roles because of their MOMS.She definitely deserves better scripts.

3. Some movies are flop from the time u see their promos..don't allow to release them..I hope everybody knew that Saawan-the love season and any aaftab shivdaasani starer is going to get flop anyways.

4. We can always do with minus 2 songs per movie.

5. Amitabh Bachhan is a powerhouse of talent ...use him only for meaningful pupose like Black or Sarkar.Movies like Lakshaya are a disrespect to his talent .

6. Shahraukh Khan should only be directed by karan johar and aaditya chopra and that too only in 'out and out' romatic roles.No more attempts for change of image ..i mean don't u think it is little too late for that ?

I have often told you stories
About the way
I lived the life of a drifter
Waiting for the day
When I’d take your hand
And sing you songs
Then maybe you would say
Come lay with me love me
And I would surely stay

But I feel I’m growing older
And the songs that I have sung
Echo in the distance
Like the sound
Of a windmill goin’ ’round
I guess I’ll always be
A soldier of fortune

Many times I’ve been a traveller
I looked for something new
In days of old
When nights were cold
I wandered without you
But those days I thougt my eyes
Had seen you standing near
Though blindness is confusing
It shows that you’re not here

Now I feel I’m growing older
And the songs that I have sung
Echo in the distance
Like the sound
Of a windmill goin’ ’round
I guess I’ll always be
A soldier of fortune
Yes, I can hear the sound
Of a windmill goin’ ’round
I guess I’ll always be
A soldier of fortune

-Deep Purple

It was never about the Candy

Why it happens that most ppl grow old in the manner they never wanted to ? I believe that everybody of us has hated at some point or other,our elders for being so mean or rude or selfish or just strict(reason is inconsequential here) as a little child .We all swore that when we will grow up we will be the one person who will treat everybody nicely and in a just manner.(again what we meant by justice is of no significance).We all believed and did what our moral science teacher taught us .For sure we all tried hard to achieve those noble standards atleast once before most of us failed to do so and stopped trying.We all realized(or believed) while growing up that a good guy rarely wins the race and most of the times its a bad guy who by hook or crook takes the winning cup.These moments of glory for the bad guy were our moments of disillusionment from the moral values of being honest, speaking truth, working hard and wishing well for others.Let me try to explain it in terms of what we all liked once a lot " a candy".

A candy means a lot to a child ,sometimes a world.He likes it a lot and is willing to do almost anything to get it. In my childhood days if you had beahaved yourself there was a fair chance of u getting a candy .So I tried to do good and 'behaved' and if i succeed i get a candy ,simple enough .My best effort was enough to get the candy .The moral lessons and all the 'do right' preaching was important to me as long as i get my candy.

With time this candy is replaced by some other things which becomes important to us through the passage of time.Since these things are not as trivial as a candy therefore sometimes we end up not getting this 'new candy' despite of our best efforts.Frustration follows.. and we can not help feeling that this world is not governed by these simple rules of morality but a little cheating ,manipulation ,deceit ,chicanery ,bootlicking and God knows what, is also required to get our "candy" apart from a little stroke of luck.

Since it was always about the candy, we throw these moral values in a dustbin and set out to get it(the candy) with everything that is required(good or bad) in our bags and fight the battle again to get our candy and sometimes we get what we wanted .But we lose so many things along the way .We don't believe in good anymore .We suspect almost everybody around us of being same culprit that we ourselves are.We lose faith in the innate goodness of human being .We start seeing only the bad things in people and most importantly we forget that life is indeed beautiful.What we see around us is nothing but a mere reflection of ourselves.

Now u say : Hey !! now i have my candy but still i m not happy .Is something wrong ?

Actually there is ,if u haven't realized by now then let me tell you --it was never about candy ,dear !! The candy was there to give u a motivation so that u will do right things.Candy was there to train u to do right same as a ringmaster use meat chunks to train tigers.

Have u ever wondered why it feels so good when we help somebody or speak the truth in face of difficult situation.Our ancestors always knew that the source of any feeling is always there-- up in your head .If u don't have guilty u will always be happy and when we do so called "right things"-- take it or not, u do feel happy. You were supposed to realize the meaninglessness of candy on your own but u didn't .That finally made u the person u never wanted to be in first place when u were a child.

So Dear friend !! Doing right is the right thing because ,It was never about the candy.

A Suitable Boy : Review

Published in 1993, written by an internationally acclaimed author Vikram Seth, 'A suitable Boy' is unconventional in many ways. First and foremost being its length, it has roughly 1350 pages and nothing short of a tome. Other factors being ,a preface written in verse, verses used for chapter titles in the index, the family trees( given to facilitate understanding for those poor people who can never understand that how a nephew's niece is related to the uncle's cousin, which are quite simple for us Indians) and these are just to quote a few.

The book starts with the marriage of Savita Mehra in 1951 to a English Lecturer Pran Kapoor. Lata is the younger sister of Savita and since Savita is now married, it is high time now to find a suitable boy for Lata. The whole book revolves around this one liner plot. Seems quite unexciting...huh !! wait ! haven’t we overlooked something ? It is 1951, a time when a nation had general election for the first time under its own constitution, a time when the scars of partition were still not completely healed, a time when the rosy dreams of Independent India were withering away and most importantly a time when some Indian felt for the first time that British India was not that Bad. Just like Salman Rushdie's "Midnight Children" the time period in this book is highly significant. Set mainly in the north of India, this book is a definitive guide to the Indian culture and values for anybody who is curious about it. For those who are already aware of them, it is a journey back down the forgotten memory lanes.

Vikram Seth takes you through a pan-Indian journey (as he himself termed it in the book) in the search of a Suitable boy for Lata. On the journey you meet many people, some suitable, some not, but all carved out with such a rare finesse that they almost seem at a touchable distance from you. The amazing storyteller that he is, he also commands a deep understanding of human psychology and emotions. His characters are real, made up of flesh and blood. It seems as if you are reading about your neighbor next door. He strictly adheres to the old rule of storytelling that great stories are simple stories. And with this simplicity he dwells into the minds of his characters, which makes them so special. He is an amazing researcher and you can see that in the amount of detail he provides about a shoe cobbler, lawyer, judges, shoe trader, politician, courtesan, Calcutta socialite, Godman, mathematician and what not. His hard work pays off in the consistency of all of his characters.

This book is about Lata's dreams, her Mother's expectations, Maan's (Pran's brother) escapades, Savita's love for unattractive but understanding Pran, Kabeer and Amit's unfulfilled desires(two 'suitable' boys), Pran's struggles with his disease and college politics , Indian politics and about its perception through a common man’s eye and many other innumerable characters. But most importantly it is about a journey of Lata from being a girl to becoming a woman. She changes partly because of the circumstances around her but mainly because of discovery of her true self along the journey.

This book never preaches anything but teaches you so many other things. It is actually a love story in a very unconventional sense. It rarely talks about the fairy tales; rather it talks about the unpleasant things happening around. We never want to discuss about these things when we are in love but nevertheless they all have their own undeniable significance. It talks about a love that grows slowly and steadily, the one kind which is good enough to be true, the one kind we all wish to have one day in our life. This unusual romanticism gives the book a universal appeal, which is a hallmark of a timeless classic.
Words are only used as a means of storytelling and are not an end in themselves. You keep on reading this book seeing the unread pages thinning away day by day and before you realize, Lata is finally married and leaving for her own home saying farewell to her mother and maybe to you also. You close the book and wonder to yourself "Was it me who just completed this 1350 page book?" and somewhere deep in his subconscious, Mr. Seth smiles and says "thank you my dear. Thank you very much."