The Nixon movie

"The assassination of Richard Nixon" - remarkable, remarkable movie. Sean Penn is mindblowing in portraying the character of Sam Bicke. You feel so much pity for him being a victim of the circumstances. I have never been a big fan of his but this performance changed my opinion of him. Somehow, I felt like I could relate to what he was going through, things getting out of hand through no fault of his, his staunch belief in a few principles that he had. Simple-minded fellow who, at times, is easily manipulated by other people. Much like myself. Poor soul !

Music

Such an integral part of human life (well, mine atleast). From the moment that I developed a modicum of musical sense, there has always been this association of a particular genre or an artist with a particular time in my life. And, listening to those oldies brings back such lovely and fond memories that I almost feel disgusted that things had to change to such an extreme degree. You never realise the true worth of anything until you have lost it & in this case, it's my past. Only memories remain. Even the most cheesiest of movies seemed awesome during those early school days, coz it was a new concept to me entirely. Tridev, Chandni, Tezaab come to mind immediately. And, the vivid imagery of the Queen Bee (a.k.a. Miss M.D.) dancing to the tune of "ek do teen.." will remain etched in my memory forever. I was so smitten by her that I made it a point to watch every single one of her movies. (That, she now lives only about 40 miles from my place is a whole another story for some other day.)

Anyhow, so time passed and so did my grandma. And in her last days at the hospital where I used to give her company, I listened to a lot of Iron Maiden & Metallica, a subconscious effort to wash away the pain of the inevitable loss.

A year later, I was not quite done with academics & landed up in Boulder, CO. And one of the first things I bought was an cd/mp3 player.

To be continued...

It's that time of the year again.....marriage mania!!!

Three of my bestest friends are getting married tomorrow...not too each other obviously...well..two of them are actually!!!

Such a joyous, wonderful occasion & I'm stuck here, half way around the world, in this godforsaken country.

Such is the irony of fate.

And these aren't the only weddings I have or I'm slated to miss in the future. These kind of moments, sometimes, make me question my decision to *move*...you know..those "What was I thinking??" kind. I haven't quite found the answer to logically convince myself that it was the right thing to do. And, I don't know if I ever will. I just hope I muster up enough *testicular fortitude* to do something about it one day.

My new baby... Nikon D50 digital SLR camera

Today's fortune on orkut

The luck that is ordained for you will be coveted by others.


Funny, people actually *covet* bad luck??

I'm a sucker for Cameron's movies

Elizabethown is simply an awesome, awesome movie. I have never felt so emotionally attached to one movie. Maybe it was the tragedy, maybe it was the music, maybe it was Kirsten Dunst saying things like "You're already breaking up with me & we're not even together." in her own cute little way. The whole movie has a warm rustic feel to it. A small town ambience that I have personally experienced in Boulder. People living laid back lives so much different from the constant hustling & jostling that comes prepackaged with a big city life. Not that I haven't lived that life but time makes the human mind a little resistant to change. For the 22 years, I had lived in Bombay(now Mumbai) where people literally *lived* on-the-go. I had become used to that. After that, 3 years in Boulder has slowed things down for me which frankly I did not like initially. But now I absolutely LOVE it. It has allowed me to appreciate life a lot more than before. I think I have matured as a person more so in the last couple of years than all those spent in Bombay.

This is not a religious rant but...

...this moron absolutely blew my lid off.
http://krishworld.com/politics/?page_id=4
He is so ragingly "anti-right-wing" as he calls himself that he proclaims to kick any conservative's ass who might stumble upon his poor excuse for a website, thereby proudly upholding his "Gandhian" principles that he wants to so passionately adhere to. Missed is the fact that, he is so conservative in his own views that he totally neglects any positive points that might be in the views of the other side.

Let's just consider the first one (I could actually provide counter claims to every single event in his so called hall of shame)

1. Distribution of 75,000 Trishuls by Hindutva forces:

Very funny, considering that I don't see a single word being said about the millions of Bibles and stories of Jesus Christ that are distributed FREE by the missionaries not only in India but all over the world and to children under the age of 10 nonetheless. I myself have been a recipient of quite a few of them actually. The organised campaign to exploit the economically backward by giving them assistance and converting them to Christianity (under the blatantly false pretense of altruism) has been going on for decades if not centuries. http://www.christianaggression.org/tactics_deception.php I guess Mr. Krish was soundly asleep then, snoring his ass off. His whole persona reeks of hypocrisy which is so typical of any conservative. So, going by his super-algorithm or flowchart or whatever it is,

"Conservatism –> Fundamentalism –> Terrorism",

it's ASS-KICKIN' time folks, coz we finally found a terrorist.

The sad part of the whole situation these days is, such wannabe-liberal-yuppies don't know the meaning of the word "liberal" in the first place. To be a liberal, you have to be able to entertain a thought without needing to accept or reject it. Why is it always that anyone who claims to be a liberal absolutely has to be anti-hindu (with the sole exception of me AFAIK)??? Why this collective outburst against the one religion that has survived the test of time?? Here's a pop quiz, name one unprovoked act of aggression in the history of humanity that could be blamed on Hinduism. By and large, hindus are generally passive in nature. Of course there are always bad apples but then should you really blame the tree for that?

Don't get me wrong, I am not a zealot ...... but I'm no atheist either. Yes, I do believe in GOD but then I also believe that GOD was a monkey.

Blissful Ignorance

I woke up rather early this morning. It was a bit chilly outside with a light drizzle. Seemed like perfect weather go out for a drive & grab a bagel and some coffee from Einstein's (they're the only ones who'd be open at 530am). Nothing beats sipping hot coffee on the patio on a chilly morning. There were hardly any vehicles on the road at the time. Everything was so quiet except for the occasional chirping of the birds. I just sat there, enjoying the moment, blissfully unaware of everything else. I know all this sounds too trivial but moments like these are so far and few that you need to savor each one. Just relax and let go of everything. You have enough time in your day to worry about everything else. For those 30 minutes, let your mind be free.

Too bad I can't 'make' this happen everyday.

Perennial Infatuation

OK, now I get why girls have the "hots" for doctors !!! Apparently, I have a thing for doc-chicks too. And it's not limited to those on-screen. Casually thinking about all the crushes that I have had in the past few years, I realised that more than half of them either were doctors in real life or wanted to be one or played that character on screen. Maybe it's the power to sustain life that they have, maybe it's those non-descript scrubs that they so subtly flaunt. This area definately needs some research. Should contact the psychology department at CU & ask them to write up a proposal for this ;).

Currently fixated on Ellen Pompeo (Grey's Anatomy) & Cobie Smulders (How I met your mother)

ElizabethTown

I'm a sucker for (sentimental but not quite teenie-pop) romantic movies. Sleepless in Seattle, A Walk in the Clouds, Serendipity, Kate & Leopold......and now ElizabethTown !!!

Oct 14th seems simply too far away. I dunno if I can wait that long.

Apples and Oranges

Most Forwarded Email to me in the last week

===================================================

I couldn't stop making this comparison..

inches of rain in new orleans due to hurricane katrina... 18

inches of rain in mumbai (July 27th).... 37.1

population of new orleans... 484,674

population of mumbai.... 12,622,500

deaths in new orleans within 48 hours of katrina...100

deaths in mumbai within 48 hours of rain.. 37.

number of people to be evacuated in new orleans... entire city..whoa !!!

number of people evacuated in mumbai...10,000

Cases of shooting and violence in new orleans...Countless

Cases of shooting and violence in mumbai.. NONE

Time taken for US army to reach new orleans... 48hours

Time taken for Indian army and navy to reach mumbai...12hours

status 48hours later...new orleans is still waiting for relief, army and electricty

status 48hours later..mumbai is back on its feet and is business is as usual

USA...world's most developed nation

India...JUST A DEVELOPING NATION..

oopss...did i get the last fact wrong??? Or am I just being proud of being an INDIAN?
===============================================================

No offense anyone else who forwarded this email to me ( i got this from a dozen odd people) but this was one of the most blatantly jingoistic emails I've seen in some time....you're comparing apples and oranges and concluding that oranges are sour....well apples simply CAN'T be sour, can they??

And taking glory in the fact that only 10,000 odd people were evacuated in a city of about 13 million is absolutely shameful. Much more people SHOULD actually have been evacuated. I dont know if its because of our perennially surging population but we've not quite learnt to place a premium on loss of life yet.

Finally some closure!!!

Thanks to this wonderful, wonderful old song by GreenDay. Had to dig this out from my HUGE music archive. Here's how it goes:

Another turning point
A fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist
Directs you where to go
So make the best of this test
And don’t ask why
It’s not a question
But a lesson learned in time
It’s something unpredictable
But in the end is right
I hope you had the time of your life


You bet I did :)

Talking toooo much

For the first time in 18 months of cellphone use here in the US, I exceeded my monthly quota of 600 mins. And not only that, I spoke for a good 30 more minutes after that, before realising that I had indeed overused. And the irony of the whole situation is...the last call that I made (which lasted those 30 extra mins) was very much postpone-able since today is the last day of the billing cycle.

Can my blog be pre-emptively nostalgic??

It's not a fancy-schmancy story with a happy ending. Nor is it a thank-you note where I should be expected to remember each and every little detail. It is an account of exactly what I feel at a certain moment when I finally take the pains to pen down the thoughts that have been going on in my head for the past 'X' days. X can be anywhere from one to a million days.

On an entirely different issue, I'm leaving Boulder today. Filled with happy memories but also sad thoughts. For three years I have lived here and it has become a second home to me. Funny how you can get attached to place so easily but realise the attachment, the belonging... only when its time to leave. When I came here, Boulder welcomed me with opened arms & now as I leave, I just wish those arms would close, hugging me in a embrace so tight as to not let me go. But I cannot be that selfish. Those arms have to remain open to welcome in another group of students from lands equally far as mine. Bye, Bye Boulder...I'll miss you. But wherever I go, I will ALWAYS call you home.

Serendipity

Last night I chanced upon this little known movie called EULOGY. Not exactly a star-studded cast but still generally consisting of people I knew or had seen onscreen, it seemed a risk worth taking for 90 minutes of my sleep. And even before the starting credits rolled off, I knew it had paid off. The story goes somewhat like this (and I quote IMDB here) "A black comedy that follows three generations of a family, who come together for the funeral of the patriarch - unveiling a litany of family secrets and covert relationships." Now this is a theme (of dysfunctional families) well explored in recent sitcoms n movies... Six Feet Under, Arrested Development, American Beauty & Spanglish to name a few. I kept wondering why they still base movie storylines on it?? Haven't they exploited the concept enough?? Movies, television, drama are supposed to be a reflection of the society, so has it become a prototype of the typical american family these days ?? Why has this nation gone so crazy all of a sudden these days? But if you really think about it, how do you know you're normal ? While we may not be perverted enough to ask Mom for an "erotic cheesecake" on our 11th birthday OR hide in a closet with Dad to see our lesbian aunts "in action" on the night before our grandpa's funeral nonetheless, we're all quirky in our own way. And that's what makes life interesting...worth living. All one can hope for is that his/her quirkiness doesnt drive a family member crazy enough to commit suicide. Not often these days, does a movie come out, that challenges your beliefs, perceptions about life and makes you wake up, take notice and think about it. No wonder it didn't make much money at the BO :D