What Could Be...

Over yet unfinished
Done yet incomplete
The fire in his eyes
Dim yet not put out
The words on her lips
Silent yet playing on them
Too much distance
The feeling passed on
Lost in transit

404

Throw in a movie on an idle Monday afternoon, and my day seems bright. Add to it a non-linear psychological thriller vein, which induces thought and music that keeps playing in your head long after you’ve left the theatre, and I get the worth of every penny spent.

404 is a title that gives away nothing of what this film may be. You soon discover that it is a room number in the hostel of a medical college with rather sparse students and professors. The first year medical students seem to be an enthusiastic bunch out which Abhimanyu stands out as being the ‘brave one’ who opts to stay in room no. 404. Brave, not only because he goes to the dean to convince him to open up the room that has been locked up for 3 years but also because he wants to live in it even though the previous occupant and student has committed suicide.

Aniruddh, a famous professor who is doing a thesis on the the ‘paranormal’ and a visiting faculty at the college, is impressed with Abhimanyu’s rationality and encourages him to stay in the room and dispel the fear surrounding it. Enter the ‘seniors’ of the college, who decide to take ragging to a whole other level with Abhimanyu, making him believe that he lives with the spirit of the now-dead student in the form of his roommate. What follows Abhimanyu’s struggle to keep a balance between illusion and reality, to break out of a trap that he is now entangled in.

404 deals with an increasingly interesting subject of bi-polar disorder which only really takes shape in the second half of the film. Add to that, interesting lighting and performances by the actors with a suitably haunting background score, it more than makes up for it’s fairly unconvincing first half with an exciting twist in the end.

Stanley Ka Dabba

When the film starts and you see little Stanley, a muddy-faced fourth grader sitting alone in a classroom, you immediately start anticipating a taare-zameen-par kind of teaching-learning problem equation. What you soon discover though is a film that not only deals with student-teacher equations, but several big and small issues.

Stanley, unlike Ishaan of TZP, has a big group of friends in his classroom who are ever ready to share their dabbas with him, sometimes wondering why he never gets a dabba from home. Though this doesn’t seem to be a pressing concern for his friends, it turns out to become a reason for his pan-chewing, dabba obsessed Hindi teacher, Mr. Verma, to suspend him from attending classes. After missing out on school for a few days, Stanley returns to school with a newfound confidence and a 5 layered dabba – sharing it with his teachers and friends along with anecdotes of his mother’s cooking secrets.

The film has a smattering of well sketched out characters – Rosy Miss, Stanley’s English teacher who has a soft corner for him and whose warm and friendly teaching style is a sharp contrast from Mrs. Iyer’s, the matter-of-fact science teacher who can’t digest a live model of lighthouse as an acceptable submission of a ‘project.’ Also, the kids from the classroom are so normal, it is hard to believe that you are not watching a documentary on 4th grade school life in India.
Amol Gupte crafts this story wonderfully, capturing not only moments but also universal feelings. I particularly loved his insight on the obsession with the ‘dabba’. The anticipation of break time and the chance of getting your hands on the several mouth-watering tiffin boxes that have the unique taste that differs from one house to another, is such a simple truth. Also how the film manages to hook the audience in a way that they feel an urgent itch to know where Stanley actually comes from and then going on to give a serious message on the social fabric of this country.

Obviously, there remain some questions that crop up as the credits start rolling, but a warm, fuzzy feeling overshadows them as you sit back, wanting to dedicate a minute more to this film viewing experience.

Drowning Out His Music

I was into my tune
It’s melody all I knew
And the beat kept repeating
All familiar, nothing new

I heard a drift, a little sound
It clashed with my own
Softer first and growing
To a loud disturbing drone

The beat picks up
The notes start to intertwine
And soon I can’t differentiate
Which is his and mine

My head shakes a little
And the shoulders start to sway
Now into the groove
His music makes way

We’re both in sync now
The song is just right
Feel like it’s going to last
Way past the night

And suddenly the fading starts
One chord at a time
And the music in the end
Is devoid of rhythm – just mine

Company

Even though the very rare time comes… where I want to coop up in a corner in a dark room, at most times I want to be out in the open. I want to babble away till the person in front of me says ‘remember to breathe.’ I often find it difficult to connect with people who prefer being alone in the trying times of their lives.

I mean how can they just be by themselves when they’re down and out? Doesn’t feeling loved count… by the people who do? Irrespective of how many times over someone says ‘you can do this’, ‘believe in yourself’, ‘I am here for you’, I can keep hearing it over and over again. The comfort that comes along with company can hardly be substituted by the sound of the constant whirring in your head. Or the traffic sounds outside your window.

I remember my first ever job interview. I was a bag of nerves and someone (who meant the world to me) had to wait on me downstairs till I got done. Also there was the support of constant text messages and reassuring smiles till I went right through the door of my interviewer. Now that meant more than any tangible thing ever could.

Another time, when I was going through my first ‘real’ break-up, I tried very hard to do the whole ‘I want to be alone’ thing. I would lock my room for sometime and feel so terrible, that I’d keep coming out on stupid contexts like wanting to take a bottle of water from the fridge. After an hour, on one till-then-wretched Sunday, some delectable aroma started wafting out of the kitchen. To my very mixed emotion state, I realized my mother had cooked all of my favourite stuff so that I could ‘find my solace’ in food. I hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry. But I do know know that the meatball curry and rice mixed with the ‘lau’ of the mother made most of the pain go away.

Now for the downside of it. Everyone is not as lucky as I have been even with the few people in my life. And there’s also the whole pressure thing. What if things go wrong and I can’t call someone and tell them I want to quit my 2 day old job? What extent am I going to go to just to be comforted by company? It’s all very overwhelming. But then I am the talker – a personality trait that defines me. That ain’t changing because things can go wrong. Because I might not have anyone to talk to tomorrow. (Quickly crosses fingers and hopes fervently for days filled with the company that cares)

Dedicated to all the people who have never left my side when I needed it the most – I will send you guys this post personally.

The Human Network

While watching one of the most awaited films of the year, The Social Network, I was gripped by it’s frenetic pace and riveting storytelling. The enigma behind the ‘creator of Facebook’ was lapped up by scores of audiences. And though there is a lot to talk about in the film, the thing that stuck with me was the truth of the flawed human being. 

In cinema, books and the like, we’re used to being exposed to things in black and white. And the occasional gray space is usually complicated and hence warrants a ‘this won’t happen to me’ line. But then it does. We can’t all be on a moral high ground at all points in our lives. So we sometimes forget to give someone credit, we get enchanted by the ‘evil’ world, we let things engulf us when we know how much we resented it in the first place. And so when we watch the film, and see the Facebook CFO and best friend being left out of the business deals and important decisions, when we look at him express his anger over his sudden negligible share in the company, something inside us does the ‘tsk-tsk’ for the character of Mark Zuckerberg. But then I think of it again. How many times have I let myself get carried away by what seems ‘right at the moment’? How many people along the way have I hurt to get ahead? 

There’s someone like that in each one of us. And try all that we might, it’s tough not to make mistakes. It’s even tougher to come out in the open and say we’re sorry. So we just let it go – the guilty conscience, the people we hurt and the opportunity to make it right. We plough on right ahead, because we know that’s the only direction we can head in. Everybody has the little selfish streak in them – whether it’s leaning on someone who you know you can’t be there for, whether it’s hiding something we know we should let out or just not trying hard enough to make things right with the people we care about. 

And that’s what brings me to the point of saying the most important thing. It is to give it your best shot to make it okay. To admit your mistakes and be there for the people who you’ve hurt. And if that’s not worth it, be honest that it isn’t. At the end of the day, it is important to find pleasure and success for oneself - the debate is how far you are willing to go to get that and at what cost. The self-projections to the outside world are, ultimately, transient. What you have to go to sleep with every night, are your own doings.

Gen 'Eclectic'

He’s 27. He’s a mixologist at the latest nightspot. She’s 30. She’s a health blogger and a fitness enthusiast. Considering that the words ‘mixologist’ and ‘blogger’ had red dotted lines underneath them when I typed them out, it makes me think either the words are too new or my Microsoft office is not updated. Well I think the latter is more probable. This also makes me realize how much I love the new spectrum of career and opportunity. Leaving the doctor, lawyer, and engineer syndrome far back, there is a whole army of a generation walking away from the clichéd parental biases and the rigid education system (a teacher once told me I would suffer from an inferiority complex if I dropped science in the 9th grade) into the area of passion and endless possibility.

This ‘gen-next’ which is garnering more and more people in its realm is characterized by a dizzying mix of characteristics – a highly experimental bent of mind, driven by passion yet calculative and with an outlook to life where fear does not exist. Knowledge about what they can do well and confidence that they can take on practical issues without crumbling make up their attitude.

Yes, of course there are hurdles along the way and a whole lot of them, as nothing ‘forward’ is without its share of rebellion from the already established. Whether it’s the grounded parents and their views on ‘carrier’ or the small customized firms concentrated in the metros with such specific skill requirements or the nature of work where an income is far from ‘regular’. But then again, a mind without fear and the conviction to achieve come as mandatories to belong to this dynamic group.

As for me, every time I meet a spa manager or a coffee table book designer, a shoe painter, a gourmet foods home delivery company owner, a style editor… I’m transported to this world of viewing myself in different places doing things that make me get a head rush and leading a highly romanticized life, complete with all the adventure. But for now, I sit about on the fence and wonder about the what-can-be’s, juggling the sideways pull of the settled and the wanderers…the focused and the floaty. Somewhere in my heart, I wait for a moment to posses me and magically convert all my doubts into a fierce drive that would make me a part of this eclectic clan.