Monday, May 10, 2010
For the Moral Benefit of Genda Phool Jr.
In that parallel universe that flowers live in, where flowers watch movies starring flowers, you think that just at the moment the guy flower and the girl flower are going to do the dirty, the scene cuts away to two humans having sex?
Monday, May 3, 2010
Appa, My Father.
(Note: This was meant to be published on May 2. Adjust maadi.)
My dad was never around when I was little. I saw very little of him and I did not like much of what I saw. He was always curt, unfailingly grumpy, and seemed to turn up for the express purpose of telling me to get into bed, quit sitting joblessly on my fat arse, wash my neck properly or eat the tomatoes in my rasam. (*vomit*)
He was my mother's secret weapon at the Daily Battle of the Bath, otherwise known as Rowdy Reveille. My parents made an incredibly efficient army. My mother would mount the first offensive by informing me of the time (6.30am), and my father would bring up the rear by picking mine up and making off to the wash basin. He brushed my teeth for me until I was five years old. I did not like waking up and I liked brushing my teeth even less. Being the angel (idiot) child that I was, I made my opinion known fairly regularly. I inevitably threatened to bite his finger if he dared to stick it in my mouth, and I was inevitably hung, drawn, smacked on the butt and frogmarched into the Tower of Shower. I would emerge from the bathroom in a delicate mist of flowery scents and in possession of most of the dirt I went in with. I would be sent back in with (O, Ignominy!) a bucket, a mug, and threats of bloodthirsty violence. I would emerge again in a while- cleaner, pinker, humbler.
Our rather colourful, if somewhat one-dimensional relationship evolved quickly into a strictly commands (him) and strictly monosyllabic answers (me) dynamic. Amongst other things, I disliked mathematics, I disliked him for being good at it, and I disliked the thinly veiled pity he displayed when I questioned the intelligence behind the manufacture of bathtubs with pipes simultaneously filling and emptying them. This was made worse by sundry grandaunts and their voluble daughters who would pop up like fungus everywhere, refer to my blushing father as the 'family genius' (I kid you not) and ask for my report card in the same breath.
I have a creative soul! I wanted to cry dramatically to the Universe. I never want to go to IIM! I never want to learn accountancy! And by God, I never want to wear high-waisted pants!!!!!
(...high waisted pants!)
(...high waisted pants!)
(...high waisted pants!)
(silence..crickets chirping)
(That was the dramatic echo, dumbasses. I SAID the cry was dramatic. I warned you.)
Anyway. My cry reverberated through the Universe, and someone, somewhere, heard it. I have, by the Grace of Superman, never yet had to suffer accountancy, management, or chest pants.
Soon after I reached class seven, my father stopped teaching me math as well. The immediate effects included a drastic improvement in my marks, a drastic drop in his blood pressure, a visible spring in my step and twinkle in my eye, and in my father, the wearing of button-down shirts in the(by my father's standards) exciting, borderline racy shade of maroon... *GASP*. He must have been truly ecstatic. God knows I was.
[ Remind me to tell you one day of my father's extensive collection of shirts, encompassing a dazzling plethora of shades from Pale Blue to Pale Blue. ]
So the elimination of math from our lives reduced the tension between us a little bit. We never spoke casually and I did not have an easy relationship with him. I always felt I was a delinquent child, and a little bit of an academic disappointment. While I grew up kicking and screaming against his authority and his IIM-ness, I did, reluctantly grow to admire and respect him very much. No one has the quiet charisma, the work ethic or the intelligence of my father, and no one's standards will ever be higher than his, to me. As I grew older and calmed down, and he did likewise, I came to see my father as a person wholly apart from his job description as My Father.
I was never a remotely sentimental child, but in my old age I am surprised to learn that as little as I know you, I love you appa.
Have a happy forty ninth birthday; for both our awkward sakes, I hope you never have to read this, and if you do, by God, I never want to know.
.
.
.
.
.
.
(Umm. Dad, if you really are reading this - please don't read the last few blogposts. I say 'fuck' a lot. And by 'fuck' I mean 'shit'. And by 'shit' I mean 'ayyo'. Of course.)
My dad was never around when I was little. I saw very little of him and I did not like much of what I saw. He was always curt, unfailingly grumpy, and seemed to turn up for the express purpose of telling me to get into bed, quit sitting joblessly on my fat arse, wash my neck properly or eat the tomatoes in my rasam. (*vomit*)
He was my mother's secret weapon at the Daily Battle of the Bath, otherwise known as Rowdy Reveille. My parents made an incredibly efficient army. My mother would mount the first offensive by informing me of the time (6.30am), and my father would bring up the rear by picking mine up and making off to the wash basin. He brushed my teeth for me until I was five years old. I did not like waking up and I liked brushing my teeth even less. Being the angel (idiot) child that I was, I made my opinion known fairly regularly. I inevitably threatened to bite his finger if he dared to stick it in my mouth, and I was inevitably hung, drawn, smacked on the butt and frogmarched into the Tower of Shower. I would emerge from the bathroom in a delicate mist of flowery scents and in possession of most of the dirt I went in with. I would be sent back in with (O, Ignominy!) a bucket, a mug, and threats of bloodthirsty violence. I would emerge again in a while- cleaner, pinker, humbler.
Our rather colourful, if somewhat one-dimensional relationship evolved quickly into a strictly commands (him) and strictly monosyllabic answers (me) dynamic. Amongst other things, I disliked mathematics, I disliked him for being good at it, and I disliked the thinly veiled pity he displayed when I questioned the intelligence behind the manufacture of bathtubs with pipes simultaneously filling and emptying them. This was made worse by sundry grandaunts and their voluble daughters who would pop up like fungus everywhere, refer to my blushing father as the 'family genius' (I kid you not) and ask for my report card in the same breath.
I have a creative soul! I wanted to cry dramatically to the Universe. I never want to go to IIM! I never want to learn accountancy! And by God, I never want to wear high-waisted pants!!!!!
(...high waisted pants!)
(...high waisted pants!)
(...high waisted pants!)
(silence..crickets chirping)
(That was the dramatic echo, dumbasses. I SAID the cry was dramatic. I warned you.)
Anyway. My cry reverberated through the Universe, and someone, somewhere, heard it. I have, by the Grace of Superman, never yet had to suffer accountancy, management, or chest pants.
Soon after I reached class seven, my father stopped teaching me math as well. The immediate effects included a drastic improvement in my marks, a drastic drop in his blood pressure, a visible spring in my step and twinkle in my eye, and in my father, the wearing of button-down shirts in the(by my father's standards) exciting, borderline racy shade of maroon... *GASP*. He must have been truly ecstatic. God knows I was.
[ Remind me to tell you one day of my father's extensive collection of shirts, encompassing a dazzling plethora of shades from Pale Blue to Pale Blue. ]
So the elimination of math from our lives reduced the tension between us a little bit. We never spoke casually and I did not have an easy relationship with him. I always felt I was a delinquent child, and a little bit of an academic disappointment. While I grew up kicking and screaming against his authority and his IIM-ness, I did, reluctantly grow to admire and respect him very much. No one has the quiet charisma, the work ethic or the intelligence of my father, and no one's standards will ever be higher than his, to me. As I grew older and calmed down, and he did likewise, I came to see my father as a person wholly apart from his job description as My Father.
I was never a remotely sentimental child, but in my old age I am surprised to learn that as little as I know you, I love you appa.
Have a happy forty ninth birthday; for both our awkward sakes, I hope you never have to read this, and if you do, by God, I never want to know.
.
.
.
.
.
.
(Umm. Dad, if you really are reading this - please don't read the last few blogposts. I say 'fuck' a lot. And by 'fuck' I mean 'shit'. And by 'shit' I mean 'ayyo'. Of course.)
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Metathinking and Other Indulgences.
I haven't been writing because I thought I had nothing to say. This is not true. It turns out that I had - have - things to say, but nothing that I thought was fit to post here.
And why not? I OWN this blog, after all. But the problem with being slightly paranoid about the nature of the information one wishes to make public, is that it results in the construction of a blog with a distinct personality; my blog has gone from being a benign white template accepting of posts of EVERY description with loving, open arms, to a snarky, judge-y Cruella de Blog. Everytime I would approach her with a nebulous idea for a post, she would raise one skinny eyebrow.
Awww, shawty be intellectual and shit, y'all. Ain't that cute.
And while 'intellectual' is a word that will never be associated with me, it is true that I am in a little bit of a think-ey mood these days (hold the derisive laughter). Right now I don't want to be flippant, I want to be earnest, and really, who likes earnest? Flippant is snark and cigarettes, earnest is chest pants.
I'm not doing a lot these days except thinking about thinking; specifically about the way I think, the assumptions I rely on and the validity of those assumptions. The idea is to treat nothing as sacred... once you put your life deliberately on shaky ground, interesting results emerge. I'm still playing with the idea of starting a separate blog that will be for these things alone. To be honest it probably won't materialise, but it's worth a thought.
There are very few songs I know all the words to, and they are all either by the Killers or The Who. What does this say about me?
I'm reading the Bhagavad Gita, if an English translation alongside a mishmash of commentaries is 'reading'. I was simultaneously slightly icked out and intimidated by it. A few days down, the ick is gone. It's early days yet, but I'm beginning to understand why some people read this book every day of their lives.
I've hit that phase again where this blog, this template, this text, this font, they've all begun feeling constrictive. It's time for a change I think, so suggestions for a new blog-host are solicited.
Kindly do not suggest Wordpress, however. Wordpress makes me want to stab nuns. I cannot code to save my life and something very fundamental in me is deeply annoyed that I can't upload templates of my choice. Livejournal is a little..odd..and typepad is... middle aged? Shit, the politics of bloghosting.
Where do I go from here?
And why not? I OWN this blog, after all. But the problem with being slightly paranoid about the nature of the information one wishes to make public, is that it results in the construction of a blog with a distinct personality; my blog has gone from being a benign white template accepting of posts of EVERY description with loving, open arms, to a snarky, judge-y Cruella de Blog. Everytime I would approach her with a nebulous idea for a post, she would raise one skinny eyebrow.
Awww, shawty be intellectual and shit, y'all. Ain't that cute.
And while 'intellectual' is a word that will never be associated with me, it is true that I am in a little bit of a think-ey mood these days (hold the derisive laughter). Right now I don't want to be flippant, I want to be earnest, and really, who likes earnest? Flippant is snark and cigarettes, earnest is chest pants.
I'm not doing a lot these days except thinking about thinking; specifically about the way I think, the assumptions I rely on and the validity of those assumptions. The idea is to treat nothing as sacred... once you put your life deliberately on shaky ground, interesting results emerge. I'm still playing with the idea of starting a separate blog that will be for these things alone. To be honest it probably won't materialise, but it's worth a thought.
There are very few songs I know all the words to, and they are all either by the Killers or The Who. What does this say about me?
I'm reading the Bhagavad Gita, if an English translation alongside a mishmash of commentaries is 'reading'. I was simultaneously slightly icked out and intimidated by it. A few days down, the ick is gone. It's early days yet, but I'm beginning to understand why some people read this book every day of their lives.
I've hit that phase again where this blog, this template, this text, this font, they've all begun feeling constrictive. It's time for a change I think, so suggestions for a new blog-host are solicited.
Kindly do not suggest Wordpress, however. Wordpress makes me want to stab nuns. I cannot code to save my life and something very fundamental in me is deeply annoyed that I can't upload templates of my choice. Livejournal is a little..odd..and typepad is... middle aged? Shit, the politics of bloghosting.
Where do I go from here?
Saturday, March 6, 2010
The Sum of My Farts.
The first time I ever heard Daniel Powter's Bad Day, I was struck by the absolute wrongness of the phrase 'blue sky holiday'; it was an instinctive no-no-no response. I don't want me no blue sky holiday. I think this comes out of the summer afternoons I use to lie spread eagled with my eyes shut on the open-air stage in college, wondering what the fuck I was doing here.
(Free Advice - When you're contemplating existential dilemmas and you're located in a desert, it's probably not the best idea to pick a summer afternoon to do it.)
Kolkata was a nice surprise. I am seduced by the absolute lack of ambition that this city seems to possess. The city stumbles along in a comfortable sort of stupor... warm muggy days coalesce into warm muggy nights coalesce into warm muggy days and time doesn't tick by briskly as much as drip stickily, slowly, like honey; hesitating just a little bit before it goes plop. Everyone always has the time for one more tea, one more conversation, one more pakora. The malls seem to be the only real concession to Modernity (as defined by my beloved Bombay), the rest of the city seems perfectly happy to preserve the Great Colonial Hangover. Not even the malls are MALLS, like the ones in Delhi or Gurgaon. The malls in Kolkata are not as shiny, their displays not as snazzy, their paintwork definitely more on the side of 'grubby' than fresh; even the new ones seem faintly apologetic about their newness. You will note that this is in sharp contrast to the I AM SHINY MALL, HEAR ME ROAR attitude of the Delhi/Gurgaon malls.
One happy discovery I made was that Kolkata is full of sexy smokers. As I have previously described in gratuitous detail, my physical intolerance for cigarette smoke is only matched by my fascination for people who smoke sexily. Somewhere at the beginning of my walk (along Esplanade) I discovered that I was apparently in the middle of the annual meetup of the Sexy Smokers Society, Kolkata Chapter, and for the next twenty odd minutes, I could barely walk straight. Everywhere I turned there was a someone lighting up in an aesthetically pleasing fashion. By the end of my walk I had 1. asthma and 2. whiplash.
And of course, I was DELIGHTED with the Metro, a little bit because of the nice Tagore poetry (translated!) in squiggly text on the walls, but primarily because of the HUNDREDS of weighing machines on the platforms! People who know me know that there are few things I love as much as a weighing machine that has a glass case with shiny glass spinning awesome thingies inside it (you know what I mean), and a slot for coins and another slot that spits out a ticket with your weight in the front and a tactless judgment on your life, on the back. I literally cannot resist these machines, I am helpless in front of them. I only have to look at one and I am a drooling idiot. I have to physically prevent myself from walking over in a hypnotic daze and surrendering all my loose change at its altar. That shit is IRRESISTIBLE.
My most recently obtained ticket has '54.5 kg' on the front and 'Expediency is not an excuse for Falsehood' on the back. I laughed till I cried.
A good friend matter-of-factly refers to my blogposts as 'farts'; there has never been any preliminary or any explanation for this . I am struck anew by the uncanny accuracy of her observation every time I think about it. In any case, I am more than the sum of my blogposts, as of my farts.
I hope.
Which brings us to the last and the most important question - Asterix or Tintin?
.
.
.
.
.
.
(Hint: The correct answer is Asterix. Seriously, what is the appeal of Tintin?)
-----------------------
(PS - To JD and anyone else who cares - I have not forgotten about a follow-up to the last post, it's planned for a later time.)
Monday, February 8, 2010
Where We Interrupt Regular Programming to Kick Our Own Ass.
I've forgotten what it feels like to be proud of the work I do. There used to be a time when I would vouch for my work in absolute confidence of its kickassawesomeness as a reflection of my own competence.
Not anymore.
There are more excuses than there is proof, and I am tired of trying to prove desperately to myself that this is not true, by taking on more work than I can deal with and letting it all settle down into an incoherent, incomplete, heartbreakingly average mess. Such a deep sense of shame, that sinking, dull feeling in your stomach when you hand your work in and you look up to see first incomprehension, then understanding, then - and this is the absolute, punch-in-the-gut worst of all - pity.
I am being pitied. I can see it.
I've had enough.
Tomorrow onwards I kick ass again. Nothing leaves my hands without being up to my standards. I am not going to get through college feeling sorry for myself, I am going to make other people sorry they aren't me.
Tomorrow.
---
PS - While I do not put up anything intensely personal here, as a rule, I need to see this on a regular basis to shame myself into doing something about it.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Lips of a Scumbag.
So, WTF Song of the Moment - Hinder's Lips of an Angel. Why was this song such a hit? What could possibly be remotely appealing about a whiny man-child who whines to his ex on the phone in between nookie with his current girlfriend, in HER HOUSE? The mind boggles.
Nickelback is an equally infuriating band. I may be bizarre, but I even I have limits, and one of those limits is a stringy-blond man with no balls and a fake growl. And I am not even sure whether the worst part of that is the fake growl or the lack of testicles.
(I could be wrong about the no-balls bit, of course; maybe they just retract back into him in shame when he sings things like look at this photograph, everytime I do it makes me laugh )
I think I'll go with the fake growl. Either you've got a creepy-but-hot voice or you haven't, and everytime you put your fake bedroom voice on, I run screaming out of my door and kill a small animal. (Hear that, Chad? Every time you sing 'Photograph', a kitten dies. Think about that.)
Since I am on the topic of music, let me say I enjoy lots of music. I am not barbaric. I even like classical music, though as a dyed-in-the-wool Tam Bram, I was brought up on a wholesome diet of curd rice, rasam rice, fried papad and Hindustani-music-is-NOT-classical, with a healthy side order of HA-HA-those-deluded-Naarth-Indians. But I am sophisticated. I like qawwals (Altaf Raja) and Sufi music, though I draw the line at A R Rahman's heartfelt but indisputably Tamil-accented 'kwaaja jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee'. It's supposed to be a cry from the heart, but I always snort.
And by snort, of course, I mean laugh delicately but cuttingly. Derisively.
Anyway, winter is over. Or that's what it looks like from inside the cave I'm in, which consists of two sweaters, a sweatshirt, a muffler, a scarf, two pairs of socks, leg warmers and two pairs of track pants, two woollen blankets, a fleece blanket and a bunch of pillows. My pillows wear sweaters because I find that they get really cold otherwise, and I hate the feeling of cold cotton on my neck. All this warmth makes it difficult to haul myself out of bed early in the morning. I start out grimly determined, but the inevitable happens.
So, a couple of things to be noted here -
1. I am too cool for Photoshop.
2. I think I may be too cool for MSPaint also. :( alternatively,
3. Don'tcha love my mad MSPaint skillz? :)
Ahem. Moving on.
Wearing too many warm clothes makes you physically schizophrenic; wherever you're covered, it's the Bahamas, but where you're not, it's Siberia. What I mean is, I remember a couple of weeks back, I was typing out something pointless and formatting it perfectly, when I realised that my fingers and nose-tip were freezing, but I was probably reading a 103 degrees Fahrenheit on my tummy. There is something truly creepy about that.
In other news, I am in love with Amy Winehouse. Such an amber honey, midnight sky voice. A shiny crimson pointy nail stroking black velvet voice. A smoky nightclub, beaded dress, flapper party voice. A voice to fall in love with for a few hours and then go home alone to a cold bed. She says she's trouble, she's no good, but she's lazy drawling like she knows you'll follow her anywhere.
And you could follow her anywhere, if you wanted to. She's orange, and her implants look like they'd glow in the dark. She's a little hard to miss. Such is the magic of fake tan and silicone. Things like this are the reason that I hate watching music videos of the songs I fall in love with. You should form your own fucking images and never let anyone else's images mess yours up.
These days I like music that makes me unhappy. It's almost as though I don't know how to unlock all the sadness inside me unless the right song comes along, and then all is sweet release.
And so it is
Just like you said it would be
Life goes easy on me
Most of the time.
And so it is
The shorter story
No love, no glory
No hero in her skies..
I'm entirely aware that this blog is one Dashboard Confessional lyric away from being an emo blog.
But life has to get better than this. I am too awesome to be sad.
Bye.
(P.S. - Please send me icecream.)
Nickelback is an equally infuriating band. I may be bizarre, but I even I have limits, and one of those limits is a stringy-blond man with no balls and a fake growl. And I am not even sure whether the worst part of that is the fake growl or the lack of testicles.
(I could be wrong about the no-balls bit, of course; maybe they just retract back into him in shame when he sings things like look at this photograph, everytime I do it makes me laugh )
I think I'll go with the fake growl. Either you've got a creepy-but-hot voice or you haven't, and everytime you put your fake bedroom voice on, I run screaming out of my door and kill a small animal. (Hear that, Chad? Every time you sing 'Photograph', a kitten dies. Think about that.)
Since I am on the topic of music, let me say I enjoy lots of music. I am not barbaric. I even like classical music, though as a dyed-in-the-wool Tam Bram, I was brought up on a wholesome diet of curd rice, rasam rice, fried papad and Hindustani-music-is-NOT-classical, with a healthy side order of HA-HA-those-deluded-Naarth-Indians. But I am sophisticated. I like qawwals (Altaf Raja) and Sufi music, though I draw the line at A R Rahman's heartfelt but indisputably Tamil-accented 'kwaaja jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee'. It's supposed to be a cry from the heart, but I always snort.
And by snort, of course, I mean laugh delicately but cuttingly. Derisively.
Anyway, winter is over. Or that's what it looks like from inside the cave I'm in, which consists of two sweaters, a sweatshirt, a muffler, a scarf, two pairs of socks, leg warmers and two pairs of track pants, two woollen blankets, a fleece blanket and a bunch of pillows. My pillows wear sweaters because I find that they get really cold otherwise, and I hate the feeling of cold cotton on my neck. All this warmth makes it difficult to haul myself out of bed early in the morning. I start out grimly determined, but the inevitable happens.
So, a couple of things to be noted here -
1. I am too cool for Photoshop.
2. I think I may be too cool for MSPaint also. :( alternatively,
3. Don'tcha love my mad MSPaint skillz? :)
Ahem. Moving on.
Wearing too many warm clothes makes you physically schizophrenic; wherever you're covered, it's the Bahamas, but where you're not, it's Siberia. What I mean is, I remember a couple of weeks back, I was typing out something pointless and formatting it perfectly, when I realised that my fingers and nose-tip were freezing, but I was probably reading a 103 degrees Fahrenheit on my tummy. There is something truly creepy about that.
In other news, I am in love with Amy Winehouse. Such an amber honey, midnight sky voice. A shiny crimson pointy nail stroking black velvet voice. A smoky nightclub, beaded dress, flapper party voice. A voice to fall in love with for a few hours and then go home alone to a cold bed. She says she's trouble, she's no good, but she's lazy drawling like she knows you'll follow her anywhere.
And you could follow her anywhere, if you wanted to. She's orange, and her implants look like they'd glow in the dark. She's a little hard to miss. Such is the magic of fake tan and silicone. Things like this are the reason that I hate watching music videos of the songs I fall in love with. You should form your own fucking images and never let anyone else's images mess yours up.
These days I like music that makes me unhappy. It's almost as though I don't know how to unlock all the sadness inside me unless the right song comes along, and then all is sweet release.
And so it is
Just like you said it would be
Life goes easy on me
Most of the time.
And so it is
The shorter story
No love, no glory
No hero in her skies..
I'm entirely aware that this blog is one Dashboard Confessional lyric away from being an emo blog.
But life has to get better than this. I am too awesome to be sad.
Bye.
(P.S. - Please send me icecream.)
Saturday, January 9, 2010
A Confederacy of Idiots.
So I watched 3 Idiots, and it was ..um...how shall I put this? 'Terrible' sounds like it would fit, but 'saddening' sounds closer to what I'm feeling.
An IIT-graduate is the Indian Elvis-cum-pornstar. I know that. I grew up in Tamil Nadu, for Christ's sake. I was interested in this movie because I thought the story had a fertile premise; three young men make it to an institution that everyone and their brother wants to go to. They all have their issues and they deal with them. Eventually they learn that happiness is when you do what you enjoy. And of course, there is an endearingly awkward romance alongside the main story. I thought it would make for a good movie, because of all the above, and also, um, because of the inexplicable crush I have on Sharman Joshi. Ahem.
But it wasn't a good movie. It wasn't even an indifferent movie. It was a ridiculously bad movie, and a large part of the problem was the shallow characterisation.
I mean, who was that shifty-eyed guy with the permanently guilty expression of a four year old caught with its fist in a jam jar? I've never seen a seventeen year old with that expression, and it annoyed me because it was clearly meant to be 'cute'. I am not a fan of 'cute', especially when the allegedly 'cute' person is employing said 'cuteness' to come off as childlike and endearingly naughty. I also intensely dislike it when the whole deal has the 'Look at me! Aren't I cutely childlike and cutely naughty? Aren't I just so irresistibly cute?' vibe about it.
Along with being cute, Aamir also multitasks as a saint. He has no flaw. Not one. He never gets angry, impatient, tired or frustrated, would risk his career for his friends, who, incidentally, he neither ever fights with nor grows impatient with, and is basically a ray of freaking sunshine. He eats rainbows and shits butterflies. He divides all of his time between being -
1. cute
2. shiny
3. a genius, and;
2. preachy
Which brings us to another itchy spot; isn't it enough being a genius these days? Or is there a group of critics somewhere complaining that they're tired of plain ol' geniuses, and that geniuses who are also saints are the new in-things?
My point is, Mahatma Gandhi wasn't a playback singer, a gymnast, an Olympic gold-medallist and a mathematician alongside being a political activist. He was just a political activist. And he was a genius. And that should be enough for us, unless we plan to convert the IIT-JEE into a qualifying paper for the priesthood. Which we haven't, so there's no need to be this creepily saintly.
As for the preachiness, my God, seriously. It's almost as though the moviemakers are telling us, "See, here is the point!Have you got the point?" And then they pick up the point and hit us on the head with it multiple times, just to make sure we've got the bloody point. What happened to subtlety in filmmaking? Perhaps more importantly, what is this precious point?
Who knows? It's there somewhere, suffocated under all the rubbish that was put in to, I don't know, accessorise it? But seriously, why disguise the perfectly simple and interesting point of the movie with a stormy-night-childbirth, a runaway bride, Ladakh, Shimla, 400 patents, an identity-swap and Javed Jaffrey's father's ashes in a toilet bowl? Why was there so. much. clutter?!
Th clutter really really annoyed me.
But what annoyed me even more than all of the above multiplied by 100000, was fellow movie-goers admitting that perhaps the central character was ridiculously saintly, the principal cartoonishly evil, and movie clumsily made, but it was a brilliant movie nevertheless because it had a message.
Now the above statement is so very WTF that it is difficult to immediately respond to it.
The message - howsoever goodhearted - of a movie, can never excuse bad execution. Especially when the message is nothing original; that is not to say that all good messages are original. I firmly believe that the education system in India requires some serious reconsideration.
However that is not the message in this movie. The only message in this movie is that you could die from peeing on a spoon. (Corollary - Spoons are potentially evil.)
And that, my friends, is simply not good enough.
Badly played, gentlemen.
An IIT-graduate is the Indian Elvis-cum-pornstar. I know that. I grew up in Tamil Nadu, for Christ's sake. I was interested in this movie because I thought the story had a fertile premise; three young men make it to an institution that everyone and their brother wants to go to. They all have their issues and they deal with them. Eventually they learn that happiness is when you do what you enjoy. And of course, there is an endearingly awkward romance alongside the main story. I thought it would make for a good movie, because of all the above, and also, um, because of the inexplicable crush I have on Sharman Joshi. Ahem.
But it wasn't a good movie. It wasn't even an indifferent movie. It was a ridiculously bad movie, and a large part of the problem was the shallow characterisation.
I mean, who was that shifty-eyed guy with the permanently guilty expression of a four year old caught with its fist in a jam jar? I've never seen a seventeen year old with that expression, and it annoyed me because it was clearly meant to be 'cute'. I am not a fan of 'cute', especially when the allegedly 'cute' person is employing said 'cuteness' to come off as childlike and endearingly naughty. I also intensely dislike it when the whole deal has the 'Look at me! Aren't I cutely childlike and cutely naughty? Aren't I just so irresistibly cute?' vibe about it.
Along with being cute, Aamir also multitasks as a saint. He has no flaw. Not one. He never gets angry, impatient, tired or frustrated, would risk his career for his friends, who, incidentally, he neither ever fights with nor grows impatient with, and is basically a ray of freaking sunshine. He eats rainbows and shits butterflies. He divides all of his time between being -
1. cute
2. shiny
3. a genius, and;
2. preachy
Which brings us to another itchy spot; isn't it enough being a genius these days? Or is there a group of critics somewhere complaining that they're tired of plain ol' geniuses, and that geniuses who are also saints are the new in-things?
My point is, Mahatma Gandhi wasn't a playback singer, a gymnast, an Olympic gold-medallist and a mathematician alongside being a political activist. He was just a political activist. And he was a genius. And that should be enough for us, unless we plan to convert the IIT-JEE into a qualifying paper for the priesthood. Which we haven't, so there's no need to be this creepily saintly.
As for the preachiness, my God, seriously. It's almost as though the moviemakers are telling us, "See, here is the point!Have you got the point?" And then they pick up the point and hit us on the head with it multiple times, just to make sure we've got the bloody point. What happened to subtlety in filmmaking? Perhaps more importantly, what is this precious point?
Who knows? It's there somewhere, suffocated under all the rubbish that was put in to, I don't know, accessorise it? But seriously, why disguise the perfectly simple and interesting point of the movie with a stormy-night-childbirth, a runaway bride, Ladakh, Shimla, 400 patents, an identity-swap and Javed Jaffrey's father's ashes in a toilet bowl? Why was there so. much. clutter?!
Th clutter really really annoyed me.
But what annoyed me even more than all of the above multiplied by 100000, was fellow movie-goers admitting that perhaps the central character was ridiculously saintly, the principal cartoonishly evil, and movie clumsily made, but it was a brilliant movie nevertheless because it had a message.
Now the above statement is so very WTF that it is difficult to immediately respond to it.
The message - howsoever goodhearted - of a movie, can never excuse bad execution. Especially when the message is nothing original; that is not to say that all good messages are original. I firmly believe that the education system in India requires some serious reconsideration.
However that is not the message in this movie. The only message in this movie is that you could die from peeing on a spoon. (Corollary - Spoons are potentially evil.)
And that, my friends, is simply not good enough.
Badly played, gentlemen.
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