Life's been beautiful. I've completed my bachelors (B.E.) in Automobile Engineering and am now a manager at General Motors India. I enjoy listening to AC DC, Pink Floyd, Iggy Pop, A R Rahman, and Irshad Kamil. I like to catch up on the movies and TV series that I enjoy which include Supernatural, Heroes, Hannibal, and Young Justice. I enjoy reading graphic novels and comics as much as other books.
I had written a micro fiction for the Write Tribe 100 words prompt for ‘Strangers in the night’. I did read some of contributions by the other writers, and loved how people took a dark taste to it. I was discussing this with a fellow blogger, and the idea to write a more uplifting take came forward. This is another take on it:
The celebration of their fifth wedding anniversary was a tiring one. It had soon become an occasion for the whole family to gather. While it was fun to meet everyone together, organizing the whole affair at the last minute had been hectic. He was sitting on the bed and didn’t realize when she came and sat behind him. She just sat there behind him, hugging him. He felt a familiar comfort in her presence. Without indication, she playfully bit his shoulder. He laughed naughtily and turned around. After all these years, it felt like they were strangers in the night.
The family was cheerful as the dessert was being served. Everyone had come together for the first anniversary of the couple. They had had a long day with the celebrations and greeting all the family members, but were still looked as cheerful and fresh. Once everyone had left, they went to their bedroom. He lay down on the bed after changing into his pyjamas, and she joined him by his side. Neither spoke as they stared at the ceiling, before sleep came to them. A year after their marriage they were married by day and were strangers in the night.
Movies are an integral part of India. Be it the popular Bollywood which makes mostly Hindi movies, or the other regional –woods like Tollywood (Bengali), Kollywood (Tamil), Mollywood (Malayalam) and so on which makes movies in regional languages, cinema touches many people. The movies made can be split broadly into two categories: mainstream cinema and off-beat cinema. Mainstream movies are your run of the mill Bollywood movies. They either use well established or upcoming stars, are easy going on the story line (possibly with a bunch of plot holes), and have song-dance routines. Typically these are happily ever after movies, and are meant for enjoyment with friends and family as a welcome break from the drudgery of life. Their main motive is to reach out the most to the average movie goer and make as much money as possible. Off-beat movies are also called parallel cinema or art movies. These are not your average light hearted movies. Most of them involve shunning of the song and dance routines, which makes it difficult for everyone to watch. The movies are thought provoking, and dark. Some may make you laugh, but will utilize dark-comedy or satire to do so. Typically they deal with realism, or the morals and motivations of the characters. Off-beat movies generally don’t perform that well financially. It is easy for most mainstream movies to make millions for their makers and have wide viewership. Off-beat movies on the other hand are critically acclaimed and well made, but do not gather in as much revenue. These are generally viewed as a means to showcase talent, or experiment. That doesn’t mean however that they must be taken lightly. Some of the most interesting and thoughtful movies have been off-beat movies. Since people need to develop a taste for such movies, sometimes off-beat movies are made with a touch of mainstream masala. This may be in the form of having famous and popular actors, addition of songs that go with the plot (and do not have uncalled group dance sequences), or some sweetening of the story line. I would like to share 5 such movies with you that I believe are a must watch to develop a taste for more serious off-beat movies.Dev D: This is a modern adaptation of the old Bengali novel Devdas by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. The novel has been famously adapted into movies with Ashok Kumar and Shahrukh Khan as the titular character. Devdas and Paro are childhood friends, and develop romantic feelings for each other after Devdas leaves his village for schooling. When he comes back, he is not allowed to marry Paro as she is from a family of lower status. While Paro moves on, Devdas drowns himself in alcohol at the court of Chandramukhi, with the help of his friend Chunni. Soon she develops feelings for him, but Devdas does not return them. The alcoholism takes a toll on him and he visits Paro one last time before he dies.
This modern adaptation is quite different. Paro (Mahie Gill) is much more confident and bold unlike the soft spoken versions before. She can match Dev (Abhay Deol) in his passion and wants him physically just as much as he does. While the parents approve of his match with Paro, a misunderstanding causes the jealous Dev to not marry her. Paro harbours no more feelings for him and moves on. Chandramukhi (Kalki Koechlin) on the other hand is a teen, who has to shift as her boyfriend makes an MMS of her performing oral sex on him. When this becomes public, her family first leaves the country. After her dad’s suicide, she comes to back to the country and lives with his family in the village. Unable to come to terms with culture shock and misogyny, she runs back to the city where she becomes a prostitute under Chunni. Dev meets Chunni over drinks and drugs, and begins to spend time with Chandramukhi. What is wonderful to see is how both the women are strong willed and ready to take control of their lives, and how Dev is brought back on his feet by them. The movie has a wonderful soundtrack by Amit Trivedi which complements the psychedelic take on the novel. Aks:
Aks is the story of Manu Verma (Amitabh Bachchan) and Raghavan (Manoj Bajpayee). Manu Verma is a cop who is given the job to protect the Indian Defence Minister on a foreign trip. Raghavan is a skilled (albeit psychopathic) assassin who manages to kill the minister. Manu and his partner team up to catch Raghavan at the cost of his partner’s life. There is a fight in the jail when Raghavan is sentenced to death, and the two end up shooting each other. While Raghavan is presumed death, his soul latches on to Manu and tries to take control over his body. The movie is about this fight of the two souls in a body, and how Manu has to now save his family and his world from the evil spirit within him. The movie features wonderful performances by both the actors.No Smoking:
Directed by Anurag Kashyap, it is one the lesser known movies that utilize a fantasy dream world. The movie is the story of Kay (John Abraham) who not only is a chain smoker, but a narcissist. His wife (Ayesha Takia) cannot deal with it anymore and threatens to leave him unless he quits smoking. Left with no option he is lead to a rehab centre called the Prayogshala (Laboratory in Hindi) by his old friend Abbas (Ranveer Shorey) who started to smoke with him in the first place. He signs a contract with Shri Shri Shri Prakash Guru Ghantal Baba Bangali Sealdah Wale (Paresh Rawal) so that he would do ANYTHING asked to quit smoking. He is blackmailed into threats that for each time he smokes a worse punishment will dealt onto him. This includes from hearing loss, making his brother with a sick lung to breathe in a gas chamber full of cigarette smoke, cutting of fingers and killing of his wife. One he realizes that the Guru’s disciples have infiltrated his life to ensure that, he has to come up with a plan to escape them. The movie uses fantasy lucid dreams, the concept of karma and souls as well. Delhi Belly:
An air hostess (Shenaz Treasurywala) agrees to make a delivery for her colleague’s friend as her friend is unwell. She gives the package to her boyfriend (Imraan Khan) and his debt-ridden roommates (Vir Das and Kunaal Roy Kapur). The package contains smuggled diamonds which are to be delivered to a local gangster, but is mixed up with a stool sample when one of the roommates gets diarrhoea after some street food. Hence the name Delhi Belly. Taking this as insult, the gangster kidnaps the air hostess. The film is about the hilarity that ensures as they sell off the diamonds and try to rescue the girl. This is a relatively short film that features no intermissions. The movie contains generous use of Hindi curse words, and potty humor. The movie is made by newcomers Abhinay Deo, Akshat Verma. It is one of the few Bollywood movies to have most of its dialogue in English, with generous Hindi curse words thrown in. Gangs of Wasseypur:
Gangs of Wasseypur was shot as one movie which was 319 minutes long. Since it would be difficult to release a movie over 5 hours long, it was split in to 2. The movie is set in the Wasseypur and Dhanbad cities in the Bihar state. Sardar Khan’s (Manoj Bajpayee) father was killed by Ramadhir Singh (Tigmanshu Dhulia) who is a coal magnate and politician. Khan swears vengeance upon Singh, and promises to not kill him but make his life miserable. While he becomes a gangster in his own right, he is not able to fully deal in and gets the shot to death. After his and his older brother’s deaths, and spurred on by his mother (Richa Chaddha) the youngest heir ( Nawazuddin Siddiqui ) takes on the family business as he tries to exact the vengeance his father couldn’t. The movie is more just than the vengeance over dead family members, but deals with the politics of the region and how people come together or fall apart. The movie has generous use of the local regional language, and curse words. The soundtrack shuffles from rustic songs, old family songs, and some eclectic dance numbers. This one is a must –watch film that cover over 30 years of story. This post is a part of the Miss Lovely Activity in association with BlogAdda. Miss Lovely, an off-beat film directed by Ashim Ahluwalia is set in the lower depths of Bombay’s “C” grade film industry. It follows the devastating story of two brothers who produce sex horror films in the mid – 1980s. A sordid tale of betrayal and doomed love, the film dives into the lower depths of the Bollywood underground, an audacious cinema with baroque cinemascope compositions, lurid art direction, wild background soundtracks, and gut-wrenching melodrama. Miss Lovely is scheduled for commercial release on 17 January 2014. You can check the trailer of the film
He was wondering what had happened between them. He couldn’t bring himself to do the things he was asked to. Then, it became clear to him. He hadn’t stopped loving her. He had just begun to love himself too.
This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda. The prompt is for the post to contain the word ‘love’ and complete the story in just 5 sentences.
Sherlock Holmes is a character that is known to many. If you haven’t read of him, then stop right now and go pickup Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes before you come back and read this. I came across the BBC TV Series titled Sherlock, in January 2012. I was reading up on Dr. Who when I saw that Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss had created Sherlock, which placed the eponymous character in modern day settings. The last episode of Season 2 was aired in January 2012, and all fans have been waiting eagerly and emotionally for the next season. Season two ends with Sherlock confronting his arch-nemesis Jim Moriarty, and jumping from a building (or the Reichenbach Falls in the original work) to his death. However as we knew, Sherlock had faked it and the reason why Season 3 is so anxiously awaited is because we find out how. Originally Sir Arthur wanted to finish of the story with his death, but he received so much pressure from the fans that he wrote more so that Sherlock would end up faking his death and have a low profile for some time.
Taking some pity on our souls, a Christmas special Mini-episode ‘Many Happy Returns’ was released which acts as a prequel to the upcoming Season 3, which will be aired on 1st January 2014. What a wonderful way to celebrate the New Year. You can watch it here:
We start the episode with a monk blessing (?) other monks who are sitting in line before him. He stops at the last monk. Could it be Sherlock?
He takes of the hood of the monk to reveal that it a woman the camera focuses on this monk who has his back to the light, hiding his face in the shadow. We can assume that this is Sherlock Holmes.
Cut to present day, we see that Lestrade is talking of this same incident. We see that he is talking to Anderson who has grown a beard.
Anderson thinks that it is Sherlock who caught the woman, while Lestrade thinks that it wouldn’t take much to find a blonde woman in a group of bald male monks. Anderson asks him of a second incident which took place in New Delhi as he points out the location, which is marked by a red X as a dotted line joins it from another in Tibet. It seems Anderson has been tracking situations which would require Sherlock’s abilities to deduct and solve.
Inspector Prakesh is holding a press conference about he tracked a killer ‘by working out the depth to which the chocolate Flake had sunk into the victim’s ice-cream cone.’ This is clearly Sherlock’s work, and the inspector later asks him in a room why he won’t take credit for it. Sherlock is still with his back to the light but we can make out more of his silhouette.
Anderson and Lestrade discuss it and some other cases Lestrade had worked when Anderson says “He’s out there. He’s hiding. But he can’t stop himself from getting involved. It’s so obviously him, if you know how to spot the signs!” Wow, Anderson isn’t so stupid after all. We must give him more credit than we did before.
He now speaks of the third sighting in Hamburg (calling it the case of the mysterious juror), where it is being discussed in a jury if a certain ‘Trepoff’ is guilty of murdering his wife.While everyone else says not guilty, we see a juror at the end of the table tapping his fingers on the table. He stops when his opinion is asked, and we can see the back of the collar of his coat.
The headlines in the papers is that Trepoff is guilty.
Back to the conversation, we come to know that Anderson lost his job as on account of his theory that Sherlock is still alive. Lestrade leaves the pub to meet an old friend. On connecting the other sightings on the map, Anderson realizes that Sherlock is coming closer to London.
The old friend Lestrade comes to meet is John Watson. He has brought a bunch of old stuff of Sherlock’s, one of which is the uncut recording Sherlock had Lestrade shoot as a video message to John as to why he couldn’t John’s birthday dinner. John pours himself a drink to prepare himself as he plays the disc.
We start with the familiar wall from Baker’s street. This is the first time we see Sherlock clearly. He is talking to Lestrade, and asks Lestrade if he should “Smile and wink. I do that sometimes. I’ve no idea why. People seem to like it – humanises me.” He wonders how John can have a dinner with such friends who obviously (obvious to Sherlock) hate him. He had written an essay on ‘suppressed hatred in close proximity based entirely on his friends’ based on his observation of said friends. John smiles, probably thinking that he isn’t surprised at such behaviour from Sherlock. He goes saying that he knows what to do, to which John comments that “You can stop being dead.” Right on cue, Sherlock goes OK in the video, surprising John and me. We even had the same reaction.
The video continues to play and we see that the message he had left for John was
“Hello John. I’m sorry I’m not there at the moment. I’m very busy. However, many happy returns.”
John pauses the video and gets up to answer the doorbell. Anderson chuckles and comes to the realization that Sherlock is coming back.
Lestrade walks past a man (could it be Sherlock?) reading the paper on the last page of which he reads the headlines ‘The game is back on!’
He smiles wondering if this is a sign of Sherlock actually coming back.
Some one un-pauses the video John was watching, and Sherlock winks and smiles at us. All of this while the Sherlock theme plays in the back. How can you not love Benedict Cumberbatch?
I have watched this episode a bunch of times since I first saw it and grinned through it. This is such a small pity as we wait for the first episode of Season 3, ‘The Empty Hearse’ which comes out of New Year’s.
Credits to the show creators for the screen captures from the video. The transcript by Ariana DeVerve was of great help for the dialogue.
I was reading some status updates about how today is one year after the day (21st December 2012) a bunch of people believed that the world would end. It got me thinking and I made a facebook update. One thought lead to another, and I made in to a thread. This is what I finally ended up with.
What if there really was an apocalypse one year ago and only a handful of humans survived? But unable to deal with all the pain of losing almost of everyone we knew, someone developed a virtual reality which starts a day before the apocalypse, and in this illusion the apocalypse never happens.
You’re just living in a life of illusions and imaginations. I am not alive. I died when a meteor caused the mall I was buying chocolates in to collapse. You’re reading this because you mind imagined that I would post something like this. A figment of your imagination, just like everyone else around. They’re all dead. DEAD. DEAD. DEAD.
Now that you know that is not the real world you’re living in but just a simulation, what do you do? Do you continue in this virtual world, knowing full well what pain, the real world holds for you? What if you never wanted the illusion to get so out of hand that it creates an entirely different world for you? Now that you know it, you want out?
Plot twist… But you can’t get out. You’ve been put in a self-sustaining machine that is keeping you alive via a breathing and feeding apparatus. Your thoughts and actions in this simulation cannot influence the machine or the real world. The question here is, what is more painful? The real life where your world was ravaged by an apocalypse? Or living in an illusion knowing full well that it is so, and what the real world holds for you?
Another plot twist. You can choose to come out of the simulation, but for ulterior reasons the makers of the machine and simulation built this thought that you can’t get out of it as a fail-safe to keep the simulation going on. You can do it, but you’ve been lead to believe that it is impossible.
After some time you slowly come to terms with your life in the simulation. You don’t have much control over how the simulation plays out as it is reflection of the imaginations from your subconscious, but you accept this new life and embrace it. You now have a loving family with the person you always liked, and a dream job.
Plot twist. There never was an apocalypse, this simulation was built as a trial so that we can use it when something like this really happens. You are now taken out of the simulated life you had come to embrace. The people you loved, and lived with are no longer there. They were just how your imagination worked them out to be. You now live with these people, who are so different from how you remember them in your imagination.
You’re unable to come to terms with this, and your mind begins to play games on you. There are flashes, only momentary which are like glimpses into the life you had. After a period of substance abuse, you want to end it all and plan to kill yourself. By the time you are about to do it, some of faculties come back at you. There is someone who is screaming at you to not do it. You tell them about the lie of a life you were made to live in, and that you can’t take it anymore.
As you are about to take the final step, you are filled with doubt. Is this the real world or the simulated world? Have you actually come back to the real world, or has living for so long in the simulated world make you think that it is real world. It could be coping mechanism by your mind.
When you do kill yourself, will be it real or not? Will you die? If it’s not real what will happen to you? Will you find out immortality of yourself in this simulation? Will the simulation reset itself, and all of it feel like a dream that you cannot fully remember? What will happen?
Dreams are such wonderful experiences. They can range from the odd funny thing you dreamt of, a surreal metaphor for something you’re going through in your life, or an experience that leaves a happy or sad impression based on who you dreamt of. Then there are two different types of dreams, normal dreams where you experience what you are dreaming of, and the other is called lucid dreaming where you can control what happens in your dreams. It can be in the manner of being in control of your actions as if you’re not dreaming, or influencing the ‘environment’ of your dream. You may or not be aware that you’re lucid dreaming, and it may seem like something out of your ordinary life.
I’d like to share some dreams of note.
In this dream I was with a female whom I did not know. The first thing I remember is jumping with said female. I felt as if I had just gained consciousness, but had been jumping with her all the while. We were jumping from one torrii to another. A torrii is a traditional Japanese gate which is generally found at the entrance of shrines or temples in Japan, and marks the end of the corrupt and start of pure from that gate. This is what it looks like.
It was a series of endless torrii as far as I could see. I looked at the woman jumping with me.
“Good, you’re finally awake.”
I still didn’t recognize her. I didn’t bother to ask her who she was, and was more bothered about why we were jumping away. The jumps were incredible. The distance between two torrii seemed to be 50 meters.
“Why are we jumping?”
“We’re being chased.”
“Chased? By whom?”
Curios, I turned my head midway in a particularly long jump to see that two people were indeed chasing us, jumping in the same manner as we were.
“How are we able to jump so far?”
“Telekinesis.”
“If we are using telekinesis why don’t we fly away instead?”
“Because we can’t use it in continuous flow, only in bursts.”
“Oh.”
We kept on jumping. It was a series of endless torrii, as I wrote before. I then realized that if we could use telekinesis in bursts, then why just use it from our feet to jump. I stopped on the next and torrii and aimed a burst of telekinesis from my hand at the top of the torrii where my chasers were about to land on. The torrii was destroyed, and with nothing to land upon they fell through and crashed on the ground. I felt a momentary sense of elation before I realized that it was all too easy.
Then it dawned upon me that I was dreaming. This meant that I was sleeping, and it was a morning that I had planned to not sleep (on account of the need to be somewhere early) and woke up. Sometimes I think a lot in my dreams, and when I come to the conclusion that it is not in the waking world, I either wake up or am able to take control of the dream. In this dream, as you can see, I was able to think and process information, and control my actions long before I realized I was dreaming.
***
There is another dream that I had quite a few months ago that had a huge impact on me. It was a mid-week holiday, and I had slept late. I dreamt that I was at work, and everything was going wrong. One after the other, things were falling apart and I was telling people to do something. No matter what I told them to do, and how much I yelled, they were doing something else. I started to become frustrated. It didn’t matter what I said or did, things started to fall apart and soon the walls around me started to crumble.
I couldn’t take it anymore, and closed my eyes. When I opened my eyes, I was in the Ahmedabad house. A moment later mom walked in through the door and asked me something. Then there was someone else who walked in through another door and asked me another question. Soon there were people who were coming out of the walls and ceiling, started asking me questions. All these people were asking me why I was doing something, and why couldn’t I do something like what they said. Soon it became too much for me and began to realize that it was just a dream. I woke up to find myself in the Baroda house. I was lying on bed, and saw a man comforting me. He told me to relax and take it easy. I was looking at things as another person in the room.
I realized that I was still dreaming and finally woke up for real. I was a nervous wreck. I was shivering and sweating heavily. My body was aching, I had a temperature and when I could muster enough strength, I had to visit a doctor to get medicines. This was the dream that had the most physical impact on me.
As Jim Morrison once crooned, people are strange. There have been times when I have found it easier to understand Thermodynamics (and I had failed it in my first attempt), but have not been able to understand people, and how or why they could do what they did.
I remember one of my job interviews in which I was asked which according to me would be my most important resource at work. I took a moment to think and said that people would be my most important resource. When asked to explain why I thought so, I said that I could be face with a simple task but if my team mates didn’t come through, it would be extremely difficult and frustrating. On the other hand, if I had an extremely difficult task, the struggle and pain would be reduced on account of the help and guidance from the team. My opinion on this still holds true, however I have experienced more of the former scenario than the latter.
As much as people’s motives are interesting to think about and understand, it is their faces that sometimes give things away. You can mask your motives and thoughts and once can’t ‘read your mind’, but can observe/notice your face and its expressions. One passage from Fountainhead gets it right. It is a conversation between Ellsworth Toohey and Kiki Halcombe, when Kiki has a party at her home.
“There’s nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we’re not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge. Have you ever thought about the style of a soul, Kiki?”
“The … what?”
“The style of the soul. Do you remember the famous philosopher who spoke of the style of a civilization? He called it ‘style.’ He said it was the nearest word he could find for it. He said that every civilization has its one basic principle, one single, supreme, determining conception, and every endeavor of men within that civilization is true, unconsciously and irrevocably, to that one principle…. I think, Kiki, that every human soul has a style of its own, also. Its one basic theme. You’ll see it reflected in every thought, every act, every wish of that person. The one absolute, the one imperative in that living creature. Years of studying a man won’t show it to you. His face will. You’d have to write volumes to describe a person. Think of his face. You need nothing else.”
“That sounds fantastic, Ellsworth. And unfair, if true. It would leave people naked before you.”
“It’s worse than that. It also leaves you naked before them. You betray yourself by the manner in which you react to a certain face.”
Before reading this book, I had seen a video of Marina Abramović and Ulay. Marina and Ulay are performance artists who had been in a relationship before calling it off. Later when the relationship became too tense to continue, they took a journey to the Great Wall of China in 1988. They decided that both of them would start from the opposite ends, and would meet at the midway. It was there they would bid goodbye after having walked about 2500 Kms.
Marina put up a performance titled ‘The artist is present’ in 2010, where she would spend one moment with the people who would walk in. She would close her eyes, and wait for the person to take their seat across the table and then open her eyes and share a moment of silence with them. This is a video of the reaction she had when Ulay happened to sit across the table, and she opened her eyes.
Some of my most comfortable travel trips have been by train or bus. Not that I have not travelled by an air plane before, air planes are quick and cover the same distance covered by trains in ten hours in one hour. However I don’t get the same sense of joy from them. Train rides are a different experience in to them.
I generally plan a train ride with at least two books, of which I am likely to read only one. One can also read a book in the flight, but the duration of it so small that one cannot read much. A typical train ride for the places I usually visit is 10 hours or so. So I can spend at least 3 hours of it reading. I like to sit with me back to the back rest, leg stretched out in front of me and a book in my hands while the wind blows in from the window. The wind blowing on my face is such a comfortable feeling, which is another reason why I am partial to trains and busses. I read a little, and sometimes pause and look out the window and enjoy the changing landscape from city to fields and city. This also one reason why I don’t finish my reading as I tend to engrossed in the changing views and the cool breeze lulls me to sleep. It is much more comfortable to sleep in a train or a sleeper bus than an airplane seat.
Another aspect of train travels that I enjoy is the food. I had taken mom to Jaipur just before Diwali. Mom lived in Jaipur before getting married, and her brother and sister still live there. We had gone for some Diwali shopping this year. I was excited about the Palanpur Railway station to have its famous Puri-sabji when the train would stop there, and the rabdi at the Abu Road Railway station later. There’s tea and gajak at Ajmer, bhajiyas at Mehsana, and so on. Each state has its fair share of the local food that one gets on the railway stations, or from the sellers who board the train.
Rabdi at the Abu Road StationPuri Sabji at the Palanpur Station
I haven’t been to many road trips myself. The few that I have been to were so long ago, that I was too young to appreciate them and have any memorable experiences. But I do know of friends who would rather a car down to wherever they plan to go. It gives you a more interactive experience, where you can choose to stick to the highways or try and go through the cities as well. You’re closer the local flavor and stop to eat the highway dhabas.
Sometimes I tend to think, what does it mean to travel? I don’t remember when I last travelled. If you look at the definition of the term, then it means to move from one place to another. By that definition, I had travelled to Jaipur this year to help mom in shopping, or to Pune earlier for work. But Jaipur also had me going to my family’s home (mum’s side) and Pune was a business trip. I have begun to associate travel with leisure. So while I may have travelled in the technical sense of the term, it was not a leisurely or vacationing manner.
I know people who are serial travelers. They undertake a leisurely trip at least twice a year. These include some blogger friends, and a colleague from work who makes at least a small trip every three months. These are people who have itchy feet, and like to visit new places, marvel at the sights and sounds of a new place, and absorb the culture over there. Travelling to a different city or country can be such an enlightening experience, where the people, food, smells and culture are far different from where you live. It seems at time like an entirely different world to learn from.
I have been meaning to travel to escape for some time now. A travel to escape, albeit temporarily from the drudgeries of everyday life and routine. I understand that vacationing with family and friends is fun, and will do that as well. Mom for instance had a wonderful time in Jaipur this year. But this a trip I would want to make alone or with a select friend or two. I don’t plan to do much. I think some days might just have me lazing around in the room, or be in a garden or on the beach with my book reading something at peace. I would love to sample most of the local cuisine. The street food appeals to me as much as fine dining in a different city. I even consider visiting a place where I have blogger friends who are very close to me, but whom I have not in person (yet or for a long time).
A travel where I am myself and in the company of those whom I enjoy to be with.
I was relatively not concerned about music till my teens started. I used to stay with my uncle in Bombay for schooling, and we moved every 11 months to a new rented place (if we couldn’t get the contract extended). The previous tenant had left some of this belongings in one of the drawers of the table. There were some joke books, and audio cassettes. One of them had Guns ‘n’ Roses. That is how I started to love music.
In the free time I had post shifting, I spent time listening to GnR and then Bon Jovi. Quite naturally, I had to keep the volume low on the cassette player because all that was being played was ‘people yelling and screaming themselves hoarse’. A cousin sister of mine introduced me to old Bollywood songs. Now you might ask me, why one needs to be introduced to said songs when one is already in India where such songs are aired aplenty on the radio waves? The answer is simple, that I took it for granted and didn’t appreciate them. I was particularly indifferent to most of them, but did enjoy some of the romantic ones. We did have a station on the FM frequency back then that aired English songs, but I remember very little of it. Some songs by Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, N Sync were on loop when they were new on the scene, but there was no love for them.
For quite some time, there was nothing of note about for my love for music as I stuck to mainstream Indipop and Bollywood. Come college, and I heard friends rave about the music video of Linkin Park’s ‘In the end’. While the video itself didn’t catch my fancy, I was in awe of the lyrics and music. I had found a band that finally ‘got me’. I listened to more of their songs, and I formed a routine with them. Every day, I would plug in my earphones, turn on my LP playlist while we took the bus to college. My friends had grown accustomed to me nodding or shaking my head as I would get lost. I have since moved on from LP, and have even stopped listening to most of their old tracks. It’s just that I have lost that connection.
Now that we have earphones, let me tell you that they are mortal enemies of most parents I know, my mother. I don’t entirely blame her for that. You see when I leave the house for a walk, or to buy groceries, I plug in my earphones and become oblivious to everything that is behind me. I am bothersome of what is there in my line of sight, but should something happen from behind, or someone calls my name out…I don’t even know that is happening. A couple of times mom has had to chase me and grab my shirt to get my attention and then give me something that I forgot. In my defense, I do tell her to call me on the cell instead.
A friend of mine asked me to check Pink Floyd out. After listening to some of their tracks, and hitting random on his player my love for rock came back. Soon I was listening to Pink Floyd, AC DC, Iggy Pop and much later Bob Dylan. Do you watch Supernatural? Apart from being a wonderful show which had story arcs across seasons, about a family of hunters who hunt down monsters. That show is also responsible for introducing me to different artists and their tracks, as it uses them in the first sequence. House M.D. is another show which I love, not just for House and how it has parallels to Sherlock Holmes but also for using the song ‘Baba O’Riley’ which had me listen to more of The Who. Two Bollywood songs of late that have been on repeat on my playlist are Yaaram from Ek thi Daayan and Mann Marziyan from Lootera.
Since I listen to Eminem as well, I leave you with this song by him. Lyrics of note are:
Or for anyone who’s ever been through shit in they lives
‘Til they sit and they cry at night, wishing they die
‘Til they throw on a rap record, and they sit and they vibe
We’re nothing to you, but we’re the fuckin’ shit in their eyes
That’s why we seize the moment, and try to freeze it and own it
Squeeze it and hold it, ’cause we consider these minutes golden
And maybe they’ll admit it when we’re gone
Just let our spirits live on, through our lyrics that you hear in our songs
And we can
(Come on) Sing with me, (Sing), sing for the years
(Sing it) Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears (Come on)
Sing it with me, just for today,
Maybe tomorrow the good Lord will take you away
(Come on) Sing with me, (Sing), sing for the years
(Sing it) Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears (Come on)
And I write 