"Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free..."

It is difficult. Trust me, it's damn difficult to create that kind of an impact again.

He chances upon, amidst hundreds of books, a long playing record. He slides it out of the blue cover, blows off the dust and carefully places it on the player. The officer, busy with attending nature's call is caught totally unawares as Mozart starts flowing and filling up the space. The officer calls out to him. He, by then, is in another world altogether. He locks the restroom from the outside, with the officer caught within, switches on the public address system and brings the microphone close to the record player.

Music fills the air in the prison. His fellow prisoners, who were on with their daily bone-crushing jobs stopped for a while, amazed, staring at the loudspeaker which till then had only blared out orders, abuse and the siren. The warden, with the other officers rushes to his office and finds it locked from the inside. Through the glass pane he was visible. Sitting, leaning back on a chair, his hands behind his head and legs crossed on the table. And with a smile on his lips.
The warden barks at him; asks him to open the door.
He leans forward, turns the volume higher and looks up at the warden. At this moment you can catch a glimpse of the sparkle in his eyes. The smile has broadened.

Yes, they broke the door open and he was switched from his prison cell to solitary confinement for two weeks. But even there, as he says later, he had Mr. Mozart for company.
But how? They surely wouldn't have left him the record player in the "hole", as solitary confinement cells are known.
He taps his head and his heart and smiles. and says "I have it in here".

One of the best cinematic moments ever, this definitely would have had Mozart smiling from the heavens. Also the Lumiere brothers and definitely me. In my case, though, from my room. (Not that it can't be called heaven. After all this is where I sleep hours together, keep staring at the ceiling, day dream, get nightmares, and keep making plans for taking over the world.)
Was it the sheer defiance or the celebration of freedom that makes it this special?
It has to be both.
For those few moments, the man was nobody's prisoner. He could unplug from the constraints thrust upon him by life and create a momentary world which was entirely his own. That is freedom at its unadulterated, purest form.
Probably therein lies the lesson for all who keep being led by life rather leading their own lives. It's always a free choice whether to create "the prison" around, or to dissolve the constraints or rules that tie us down.
There can be no 'statue of liberty'. Liberty is alive and fluid, like the red viscous liquid in our veins.

And squeezing out even one such moment would be enough for a lifetime.

What cannot be helped...

Let us all observe a two-minute silence.

The world deserved better.

Montu, Kanti Shah and Lenny

These days, when I am not sleeping or thinking about sleeping or recovering from oversleep fatigue, I am mostly watching.

Well, I am allegedly working on weekdays and on nights apparently solving puzzles on paper napkins in a South Indian restaurant run by unarguably the most mild mannered North Indian homo sapiens I have ever met.

But I am mostly watching.

And here's the round up:

Sarkar Raj is extremely ordinary.

Aamir is extra-ordinary. Hats off to the debutant director and his debutant team.

The Happening is good. Definitely better than Shyamalan's last few movies.

Blood Brothers, Vishal Bharadwaj's short film on AIDS awareness, was extremely disappointing. People might prefer the disease to this movie.

Ironman, to put it simply, is the best superhero movie to have come out in years. Far off from the usual syrupy stuff, this one has a tangy flavour of its own, and a brand of sarcasm that yours truly and a few other like minded demented souls devour.

Ghatotkatch puzzled me. I had trouble believing that Singeetham Srinivas Rao, the same man who gave us that Kamal Haasan gem, "Pushpak" could make such an apology of a film. The animation is of the tackiest imaginable variety. Any guy with a desktop and Macromedia Flash can do better, sitting in his drawing room. In fact, even the primitive cave-dwellers with stone hammers would have. Everything from the script to the treatment to the musical score, smells of disrespect to the intended target audience for the film - the kids.

Mr. Rao, making a children's film is no child's play. We don't expect you to do what the geniuses at Disney and Pixar are doing, but please don't do this either.

Jimmy: Aha! Finally I managed watching this. There is an old urban legend that when I was born, the first word I said wasn't either Ma, Baba or Rahman. It was "Jimmy". I was born so that quarter of a century later I could finally see what would be nothing less than Lord Vishnu's 11th avatar's leela.

And divine it surely is.

It is so invigorating, that show it to the physically challenged; they would get up from their wheel chairs and run. Screen it for the dead; they'd get up and curse you for bringing them back to life and beg you to turn it off.

And Mimoh? With his lampost-level expressions and oh-my-god-i-have-got-ants-in-my-pants brand of dancing, he is serious competition for all the cartoon characters you can think of. The fact that despite this movie Mithunda hasn't disowned him is probably due to the fact that Mimoh didn't disown him as his father 10 years back after his masterpiece called "Gunda".

Gunda: There is a theory that life originated from unicellular protein based beings and through successive multiplication and evolution life has reached where it has now. Let's call our ancestor, the first unicellular being, "Montu", for convenience. There would definitely have come a point in Montu's life when it had that weird butterflies-in-his-mitochondria feeling before he split into Ghontu and Jhontu and set the ball rolling for amphibians, monkeys and cave-dwellers to subsequently appear. The cave dwellers would evolve into city dwellers and some would turn out to be filmmakers. Like director Kanti Shah did. Had Montu been blessed with foresight and had he seen what millions of years later Kanti Shah would do along with Bengal tiger, He-Man's grandfather, Mithunda, then our unicellular ancestor would have preferred commiting suicide to giving into that causing-Kanti-Shah-a-million-years-later cell-division.

Want a detailed review?

Words fail me.

Oh, and yes. I watched that movie also, which made me pace my 12X12 room for around half an hour after it ended. And now, 12 hours later, I am still under influence.

I have seen very few films where the power of the medium called "cinema" has fully been utilized. And I have seen fewer films which challenge you mentally. And this is one of them. It's not like telling a story; it's like laying out a puzzle with clues deliberately thrown here and there. It's like involving the viewer into the proceedings. It's like throwing convention to the winds and creating a never-seen-before visual space. Where there is enough space for your imagination and interpretation. This is movie making at its best. Director Christopher Nolan, take 10/10 for Memento.

It's good that Montu multiplied after all.

Why...

Trams have never been so unromantic. These ones are trendy, sleek, popular and they refuse to get overtaken by every other pedestrian, or cyclist or an enthusiastic snail. I have got a pass made, to travel within 2 zones from the industrial hub and that takes care of my daily transportation. Even the pass looks quite nice and trendy and sleek, except for the part where it has a photo pasted to it.
This is about that photo. More precisely, about the face in that photo.

Okay, so we all have heard about phi, the "golden ratio" and that it's omnipresent in the different aspects of life. Be it architecture, science, or biology. They even say that conventional good looks have a lot to do with this ratio between the length of the face to the length of the part from the nose to the chin and a lot of similar mumbo-jumbo.
What many people don't know, is about the existence of another mathematical constant called why. Actually, it's better to call it a concept than a constant. This, like phi is omnipresent as well, but unlike the former, is not that talked about; neither written about by alleged plagiarists. Why is present in every shape that doesn't suit the eye or any harmony or symmetry. It actually exists as an interrogative as to why (don't confuse with why) that thing would exist.

Probably, to counterbalance the symmetry, the harmony, or similar so-called "nice" things.

Why in its most unadulterated form is found in the pass I got made. Precisely that the part where people stick up their photos. Actually not people, but the lady in that GVB counter does. Not her photo, but people's photo. My photo, in this specific case.

It has been the story of the birth of a new superhero. Armed with his photo, who could and would change the world. One flashing of the pass would ensure a hearty smile and "Dunk u wel". But then any knowledgeable person would know that behind that smile is a heartstopping dread at the sight of something which could make the mirror turn its silvered side and cause clocks to move anticlockwise and even cause sunset at 12 noon.
Powered by that WMD, I go on routine excursions...saving the world from all symmetry and beauty; fighting crime and injustice and similar stuff which comes within the job description of any superhero, knickers out or in.
No one risks prolonged exposure to the upper half of the inside of the left flap of the pass where the lady in that GVB counter stuck up my photo.
In the last few days we have had Green Goblin turning blue, Lex Luthor turning to bee-keeping and other petty villains lining up in front of the missionaries of charity for parttime jobs.

...It's again the moment of truth. The judgement day. An approaching monster opens its jaws, threatening humanity and world peace and similar important sounding words and its again me jumping to the occasion with lightning fast reflexes. Faster than a speeding bullet, lighter than a floating butterfly, I fish the pass out of my pocket and flash it open...


The hearty smile and "Dunk u wel"

Inside at the Outside

" How to act: Never under compulsion, out of selfishness, without forethought, with misgivings. Don't dress up your thoughts. No surplus words or unnecessary actions.
Let the spirit in you represent a man, an adult, a citizen, a Roman, a ruler.
Taking up his post like a soldier and patiently awaiting his recall from life.
Needing no oath or witness.

Cheerfulness, without requiring other people's help. Or serenity supplied by others.

To stand up straight - not straightened. "

A skeptic is enjoying these words and many more, in his exclusive moments. Inspite of his reactions having been acidified with time and numbed by experience, sometimes he unknowingly drops his doubts and peeps out of his shell. To be influenced. To be taken for a ride.

Sometimes it becomes a refreshing act. Taking things at face value. Arguing against arguments. Trusting someone. Finding a significance. Appreciating glory.

This whole business of believing.

Broken News

What made it even tougher for the home team was the pathetic fielding. Lux-me Ratan Shukla and U-mar Gool were guilty of letting through some regulation hits. If that was not enough, Mahaakash Chopra — a strange inclusion — and Gourav ran on to each other in the deep in comical fashion before flooring a catch.

--- The Tell-e-graph (26th May, 2008)

A lot of newsprint has been wasted in the last few weeks about a few players being picked again and again, inspite of their far-from-impressive performances. Experts have scratched their heads, beards, microphones, wallets and each other's backs, thinking their brains dry to explain why some people would be repeatedly selected in the team inspite of their sincerest efforts to contribute to the team's win - the opponent team's, that is.
We caught up with the greatest expert to have ever walked this Earth and probably Mars too, ace Roy-terse correspondent, Purr-knob, to throw some light on the matter.

Purr-knob writes:

We know now. Even the Eucalyptuses in my prince-mega-tonne campus know.
That IPL for Gourav stands for I Profess my Love (for Mahakaash). The manner in which they became inseparable entities, both on and off the field, reminds me of the great legends of Row-meaow and Julie-ate. The conclusive evidence was found in the last match, ably reported by a renowned daily, where the two of them, ran in perfect slow motion towards each other, without a care in the world and with eyes only for each other. Damn the ball. Damn the dropped catch.
You could almost visualise them running through the lush gardens of Europe or mustard fields of Punjab a la Yash Raj films, accompanied by a typical romantic background score. Then they collide, and sparks fly (in this case, the ball flies).

Their jodi is made in heaven; sanctified by Bow-canon.

As one great poet has said:

Teams win, teams lose,
But to love you need no excuse;
Non-performance is of one's volition,
Long live, mid-air collision.

This is where Purr-knob ended his article.
When we asked him about the poet he quoted, he gave us a dirty look and said,
"Don't you see the stamp of class? I would have got the "no-bail" and not Tagore, had my manuscript reached on time. "
"How old are you?" we asked.
"It's not about the age, it's the mileage!" he said.

As we were wondering where we had heard this dialogue before, Purr-knob started running to catch his personal aircraft and collided mid-way with Mahakaash, who, incidentally was running to catch the next UFO to where he came from.