Today

Today is just another day.

Except its not.

Today has its own story,

Which is better not told.

Powerful Indian Movies

We were discussing events in World history yesterday, when the topic turned to movies (wholly based on real-life events as well as semi-fictional). The depiction of World War 2 in Saving Private Ryan, the brutalness of The Whistleblower, the masterful research and accuracy of the mini-series - Band of Brothers and The Pacific, the sadness in Schindler's List, the visuals in The Last King of Scotland, the brilliant mind in A Beautiful Mind, the barbaricness of Munich.. all were discussed. Not to mention the one not for the faint-hearted - The Passion of the Christ. Many other documentaries and movies chronicling the significant events in History were also discussed. The topic then turned to Indian History and we realised that there are very few Indian movies that successfully chronicle India's History. There have been attempts with movies like Mangal Pandey and Border, but the result was horrible.

Consequently, I am setting out to list Indian movies that depict significant events or matters of social importance. The criteria is that the movie should be great (good acting, great direction), realistic (atleast in its depiction if not the story and characters), should pertain to an important social/historic settings in India. Anything from Harappan Civilisation to Gujrat riots and 26/11 is acceptable.

Readers, I seek your contribution to the list too.

1) Black Friday - Anurag Kashyap's work on 1993 bomb blasts.
2) Parzania - Rahul Dholakia's film on the Gujrat Riots on 2002. Loosely based on a true story.

3) 1947 Earth - Deepa Mehta's (possibly) fictional film set during India's partition in 1947.

4) Water - Deepa Mehta's fictional film set in 1938 when widows were grossly mistreated.

5) Matroobhoomi - Manish Jha's depiction of a world where killing the woman child is so deep-rooted that it leads to a world devoid of women. The story of Kalki (Tulip Joshi) in this world is truly moving. 

6) Gandhi - A non-Indian movie.

7) Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi - Sudhir Mishra's movie set during the time of Indira Gandhi.

There are many additions to be made. Please do leave comments :)

Missing are movies from the Freedom Struggle (Vir savarkar, Subhashchandra Bose, Bhagat Singh, Tilak and their stories), movies from the Moughal occupation, Shivaji raje, movies on Kargil war, stories of people like Bhanwari Devi, story of Mahatme Phule, stories of sporting legends, etc etc.

Red Hot Chilli Peppers

Since I don't have wisdom to share with you, here is a brain-dead post. My top 10 Red Hot Chilli Peppers songs. RHCP doesn't break into my list of top 10 artists, but recently I had the opportunity to explore its songs and some of them are pretty cool. I'd like to share the top 10 songs with you - in the order I like them.

1) One ofcourse has to start with their all-time best - Californication



2) Second is a complete goof-off song - Can't stop

 3) Third up is a great upbeat song - Scar Tissue


Good quality un-embeddable video link is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzJj5-lubeM&ob=av2e

4) Fourth up is a soothing slow song - Under the Bridge (this one is for the sad times)


Good quality unembeddable video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lwlogyj7nFE

5) Fifth up is another slow song - By the Way



6) An intense song is next - Otherside


Good quality embeddable video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn_YodiJO6k&ob=av2e

7) Next up nice one - Snow


Good quality video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuFI5KSPAt4&ob=av2e

8) Sort of Hip-hop - Give it away



9) Another goof-off song : Aeroplane



10) Lastly, a mild song - Dosed



Hope you enjoy the songs!

What do I "want"?

I've had sleepless nights and apprehensive weeks thinking about "What
do I want in life?". It has bugged me the most in my worst times. In
some ways, the thought is like a Dementor - sucks the life out of you.
Anyone who is seriously bugged by this question of life is stuck in
the "want-loop". An unsolvable unending loop which has only one
solution : realization.

"Wanting" something is based on our experiences of life. I "want"
chocolate ice-cream because I've had it before and I like the taste.
What about an eggplant-icecream? Argggh! I don't knowww! That is
because I've never tasted. How can I want it or NOT want it?

Thats the chicken-egg problem : One cannot "want" anything before
trying it out and we usually don't want to try out anything major
before really "wanting" it. This is an endless loop. We'll never try
out things before wanting them and we'll never want things before
trying them out. Aarrgghhhh again!

What about people who've already figured out life? They are either
ones who were forced into it somehow or they've already tried out a
bunch of things before they settled in.

Point is, and I've realized it only today, thinking about "what I
want" is pointless.. it better to just take the "leap of faith" and
see whether it works out. If it doesn't, you probably wanted the other
option. Anyway, you'll get the answer :-)

Happy ranting!

Asa ch..

May the stars carry your sadness away,
May the flowers fill your heart with beauty,
May hope forever wipe away your tears,
And, above all, may silence make you strong

(by Chief Dan George)

Raleigh - Impressions

Its been a week since I've landed in Raleigh, a townish-city in North
Carolina, USA. It a while before my college starts so I have had
plenty of time to explore and "form impressions".

The first car I saw when I landed in Raleigh was a Nissan. You can
easily catch sight of Ferraris and Fords and Volkswagons (the really
small cars). As Russel Peters says, if you see a Honda or a Toyota,
rest assured it belongs to an Asian. Cars here are just bloody
awesome. Almost no one has bikes and the ones who have them, have the
cool sport bikes. This is mostly because the speed limit is 60 mph =
90 kmph. Imagine driving an activa at that speed.

The traffic rules are very good. In India the whole traffic is in push
mode. We always try to push our vehicle before all others. Here, the
traffic is in Yeild mode. You almost always let others go. Pedestrians
are toh the king of the roads. If a pedestrian is crossing the road,
all the cars will stop to give them a passage (even on busy main
roads). Rarely does anyone break traffic rules. It kinda feels weird
at first. The first time I was crossing a road, I stopped at the
centre of the road to let a car pass by, he got pissed at me because I
wasn't moving and asked me to cross the road first.

Bus services are the most delightful. You can track buses online on
maps to see where they are. So, I leave the house only when the bus is
near enough so that I don't have to wait much. Only a couple of
minutes. The buses are free for students and the drivers are
super-jolly!

The entire campus is wifi-connected and I have an iPod touch! yayyy! I
use it so much, I have to charge it everyday!

I went to the gymnasium today. Damn is mesmerising. There are 4 effing
weight rooms, 8 basketball courts, many many TT rooms and squash
courts. It is so huge, it took us 15 minutes to just walk through all
of it real quickly. And it is all FREE! and ofcourse, I am not going
to use any of it, but I can brag about it on blogs like this one!

And now we come to the library. Okay, the library has 21' macs
available for public use. NCSU is rich! The library is no less than a
5-star hotel! There's ample space and you can take macbooks from the
counter to use them all you want. Is there a need to mention that the
internet is blazing quick? And ofcourse, there are books too!

The people here are very friendly. They'll wish you left, right and
center ("Hey, how are you today?", "Good morning. So, where are you
headed to?", etc) and casually strike up conversations. They are very
patient and go out of their way to help you (eg. One batchmate was
asking for directions and the girl in a car was like "Ohh! you'll be
walking in such heat? Let me give you a drive" and drive she gave!).
Also, the people who work here are almost always enjoying their job.
They do it because they like it and you can feel it! It is a nice
feeling.

There's so much stress on human-less work here. Anything that can be
automated is automated. ATMs accept money to deposit in your account,
vending machines for everything, self-checkout at malls, etc etc. It
is so automated that it'd take time for you to notice if all people of
the USA die tomorrow!!

I visited two beautiful places : Lake Raleigh and Lake Johnson. They
are just so so beautiful. I could become a monk and stay there in
meditation forever. There's a jungle trail which starts from Lake
Johnson. One of these weekends, I am going to explore it too.

You get used to walking around here. Everything is far away. Since
these guys have a LOT of real estate, they build complexes quite far
away. So each house has its own lawn, etc etc. But, it is a pain to
even walk down two houses away. I've never walked so much in my life
and yet it is not at all tiring.

Don't get me started on the females here. Since, it summer time, they
don't prefer to wear much, which works for me :-P.

The Indian seniors here at very very friendly. Its been only a week
here and yet I feel as if I've been living here for a year. We have
had late night cards sessions, went to Indian places for dinner,
watched serials together and cooked together! I have already made some
very awesome friends right here.

Over and all, I know I have missed a million points I had in mind and
didn't give fair treatment to many others but this is just a
brain-dump and a unavoidable subconscious comparison of US and India.
I like Raleigh, but I miss home too much! I hope the course doesn't
give me time to miss home :-)

Us

Always the confusion,
Always the anxiety.
Always the fear
Of abnormality.