Dance on the tip of iceberg

Dance on the tip of iceberg without caring it will melt soon... dance in the dusk, without caring it will be dark soon... Dance as a metaphor of life is not new. In fact it is one of the oldest.

You have seen all dancing and singing in so called Bollywood-musicals, but 'Naach' is so satisfying an experience mainly because it uses dance and music for all the right reasons, not for what its counterparts use them shamelessly. The characters are real, representing different philosophies ranging from hard-line idealistic and hard-line practical, there are mature discussions between characters and this new-age-dance becomes the duct to ventilate out emotions, showcasing love to frustration to hard-core imagination.

Although the storyline is not new but director never show any guilt for it, all those seen-there-done-before scenes are handled with such smooth novelty that you can hardly point a finger. All this intensity demanded good performances and free-flowing images to match. Antraa Mali has done a brilliant work with all her body-work (elastic dancing) and eye-work (expressive acting). There are times when she hasn't much to speak, as all the dialogue department is given to Abhishek Bachchan. People can argue (including me) that the movie has a slow (rather placid) pace but on a second thought it looks that changing the pace of the movie had not matched the content of the movie, there may be other views for that too. On technical front, it is almost flawless.

This movie may be a hit or flop, but I am glad its made and I saw it.
There is scene in which Abhi (AB) tells Rewa (AM) that it is not easy to achieve what you want to, next cut shows Rewa walking deftly on the spine of an inverted boat, she replies 'Yes, I know'.

Back from Home

I went to my hometown and for the first time in 3 years I celebrated diwaali at home. I donot like meeting too many persons when I go home but if you go home during festivals the number of persons you can meet increases. Obviously, it has advantages and disadvantages both. But this time I met more ppl whom I liked interacting with. Most of them were my parents’ friends and there were others too - like the persons I met in the train and at friends’ house. For some time I will be blogging my experiences on my home visit and its very many interpretations.

As I told you, I met lots of papa's friends and mostly being from the business community give lot of respect to the educated sons and daughters of their peers and I too get share of it (deservingly or otherwise) and very often they discuss about their children and the life in general. Two of the papa's friends whom I met and they shared their view with me were Mr. Magendra Singh (Darogaa [Police] Uncle) and Mr Mithan Lal (Mithan Uncle).

Darooga Uncle was our neighbor when I was in class 5 or 6. We lost touch when he got transferred to Aligarh. He is again back to Muzaffarnagar but with lots of pressure to get transferred again to some non preferred location. When I met Uncleji that day he has just out of bed and was smoking ‘Wills’ instead of his old favorite ‘Capstan’. There were other things also that have changed about him. He was not the same tough guy and sounded very bitter at times. His promotion to Inspector is pending for about 3-4 years and according to him frequent change in governments and their policies are the culprits. He is also of the opinion that Thakurs are being neglected in the promotions. He then came to the transfer issue and rationalized taking bribes. He told about the rates of getting/stopping transfers to preferred/not-preferred locations. It depends on areas/Zila/tahseel/thaanaa etc.., more specific location, more price, it varied from 1 to 10 lac per transfer. He argued that we demand bribes to get the money to give for transfers. So all bad is done in name of police but the money goes to politicians. He also gave me advice to start taking bribes from the day one of the job (I joked that I'm not a Government servant, he joked back saying " Tum to hum se bhi gaaye gujare ho, tumhaare to haath hi kate hain”). Apart from it he also told about the advent of thakur clan and that he belongs to the most pure one and strongly advocated on the need to marry within your community and its social and other benefits.

All these talks over tea brought lot of things to think. First thing is about the the real root of corruption and the age old theory of blame. It also bring forth the frustration (whether right or wrong), when you donot get long due things like promotions. Thirdly, there is a strong points on the politics of transfers ( In UP, its considered next worse thing to Kidnaps). Also, his strong stand on the casteism showed how deep root it is, how much modern we try to pose. When I meekly opposed to it than he cunningly laughed saying " Saale, kabhi na kabhi to Muzaffarnagar to aayege hi". Also dishing out advice to be corrupt as soon as possible also needs to be pondered. This advice reminds me of my University days when I met one of UOR Alumni & he told me "Honest are those who doesn't get the opportunity to be corrupt".

Opposite of Love

I was thinking to write about love, but found it too difficult, it may be because my naivety in the field or its too difficult an idea to comprehend. so I thought why not write something about 'Opposite of Love'. So you have it.

Disclaimer: Before reading this post, I warn the softie hearts of its high senti levels. Also it is not based on any personal experience :).

I have long back heard that the opposite of love is not hate, its indifference. They say its as unmagnetic as magnetic love is.Love is such a universal feeling, indifference is such a closed, hopeless and irritatingly-empty feeling. Hate, in many ways, is better than indifference. Firstly when you hate( or hated by) someone, at least you care (or get cared). And its lot easier to hate someone you loved than be indifferent. Also, being hated by someone you loved is not as painful as getting indifference in return.

We hate because of many reasons, one of which is we have loved or loved by someone but unfortunately or otherwise, it is no more the case. Hate may be seen as an effort to write off someone and try to gain some comfort with it. It include things like lying to yourself and try to see all bad, like trying to paint a false picture to console oneself but the beauty of this is that we know its all false but we need to get in terms with it to go on but again we think if this is the way to go on, should we go like this or it make some sense or its beginning of some bigger compromise in life and is he/she so bad to hate or its just me, who is now making fool of myself, its complex but this feeling of hate is more like that of compassion. So it cannot be opposite of another feeling of compassion, love. To me their basic nature looks same, at least now.

The feeling of indifference is much more difficult to practice when you are still in love. Its like turning a blind eye to a bleeding limb. Being indifferent require a tough heart -to say the least. and on the other side when you are inflicted with such a thing, its most helpless of feelings to suffer with. Its more or less like the death of the loved, even more painful because he/she is not dead but living to haunt you to death or till you too become indifferent, but its not easy on being either side of this feeling, so unlike love.

My views may be amateurish, but its good to put down to verify them at a 'later day'....