Nuovo Cinema Paradiso

It's just the kind of movie I love, simple and unpretentious. This one made no flashy promises in the beginning. It's a story about a village and in particular the relationship between an old man and a little boy and how the relationship grows and goes on to shape the little boy's destiny. The movie takes one back to the 1950's in a small village in Italy, a time when life was simple, everyone in town knew everyone else, when people walked to most places in town or used bicycles, when children played in the street in the evenings or sometimes during the day when they played truant from school. A time when children were mischievous, when there were only 20-30 odd children in one class  so that they all knew each other and grew up with each other. There is much more to that time than just these facets.

The thing that struck me most about the movie was the simplicity with which such a wide range of human experiences and emotions is depicted. There is the naughty six year old Toto who just can't help getting into trouble. With him, one experiences the small joys of childhood, the random crap that children collect and that is so precious to them - everything from negatives of photographs to weird shaped stones - and the extreme curiosity in all things new. With the adolescent Salvatore, one experiences the agony of being in unrequited love, the power of a first crush, the intensity of emotion and the silent endurance of a heart full of hope.

The relationship between Alfredo and Toto was inexplicably heartwarming. An old man who spent all his life in the same village doing the same job eventually convinces the small boy to go follow his dreams elsewhere. It brought a certain question to mind. Nowadays, with people moving around so much, I hear a lot of talk about losing touch with ones roots. I understand the importance of roots too. But what was depicted in the movie really made me think what we mean when we say the word "roots". People change and so do places, what gets left behind are the ghosts of memories past. Most people feel nostalgic about their past, thus resulting in an innate desire to go back to where we started from, at some time in life or the other. But they forget to discount for the fact that you cannot go back in time and hence going "back to one's roots" is literally impossible in that sense. In this context I can think of the feelings one experiences when you visit your alma mater after leaving. Yes, there are always memories associated with the place, certain places that mean something but most of all, our experiences are connected to people who mostly move on when you do. Hence I understand the joy at encountering an old lab worker in college or a professor who is still there, years after you left. But I also wonder if that void that one feels when you look at a new set of people living YOUR life and doing things that YOU used to do can ever be filled and if there ever can be a feeling of complete reunion with one's roots. Just a random thought...

I loved little Toto, brilliant acting, great character. It brought back so many memories from my own childhood. I love movies that are made about simple, unassuming souls in some small part of the world. It celebrates the fact that even the least important of human beings in the world (if your stature and notoriety in the world is a proxy for importance) has a story of his own, goes through ups and downs that, when viewed through his eyes, are very significant events. This movie celebrates life, at least that's what I felt after watching it. Yes, there is some sadness, sometimes related to the choices we make in life and the course our life takes based on those choices. But one should still be able to enjoy the mixed bag of experiences that life brings to us 'coz I believe that is the only things that define who we are.

I recommend this movie for everyone who wants to escape the complexities of life for a while, to forget about the next promotion or project, and to just sit back and let the joys of life wash over you!

Bridge to Terabithia

It made me think, made me think about things I hadn’t thought about in a long long time. But what a refreshing change! The mad pace of the past few months had almost made me lose touch with something that used to define me once upon a time. When I decided to watch the movie, I had no clue that it forayed into the realm of a child’s imagination, fantasy as many of the adults prefer categorizing the genre as. Every day I hear things and see evidence of the fact that children are growing too fast in the world of today. We don’t hear of imaginary friends anymore except when they are associated with some psychological disorder caused by anxiety or exploitation of some kind. We don’t come across flights of fancy which make forts of cardboard boxes and kingdoms of gardens and trees. All this has been replaced by much more sophisticated toys and games which leave no scope for a child’s own imagination. It is despicable how we pride ourselves on our progress and development without realizing how we are stealing and snatching away the very essence of childhood from our children. I remember my childhood which was filled with fantasies of fairies and pixies and enchanted castles and large kingdoms when I was 6. This soon turned into a thirst for adventure with Famous Five, Secret Seven and the Five Find Outers and Dog. Soon enough I discovered the wonderful treasure trove in the form of the classics, which again helped me to transcend boundaries, geographies and cultures to get a taste and flavor of what children in other places were like. Whether it be the naughty Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn or the wonderfully creative Anne of Green Gables or the The Little Princess, I grew up with children who lived in a free world with none of the complexities of today’s world, who did not worry about what they are wearing to school today or whether they own the latest tech gadgets. They were children of nature, who learnt from experience, who possessed sharp minds that were put to immense mischief of a harmless fun kind that taught them lessons that would define them as the people they would grow up to be. I’m not denying the fact that there was misery and suffering back then too, difficulties that a lot many children had to live through, issues they had to face very early on in life, but the others by far were, or at least seemed to be, much more blessed than the richest child is in our world in this day and age.  

It pains my heart sometimes to see the indifference to all things natural nowadays. Yes, people do talk of going back to the basics and going herbal and healthy in eating and living but that too, is a very glorified, glamorous version of what I remember as nature from childhood. Even if the surrounding is left out of the discussion, one still wonders if the loss of the same experiences is costing our civilization much more than the innocence of childhood. The movie was a welcome break from the breakneck monotony of today’s fast paced lives lived by the children and adults alike. The realm of a child’s imagination is a wonderful place to lose one’s self. I loved this movie ‘coz it reminded me of all that defined my own childhood. A must watch for all adults who remember being children once!

The first sight of Hong Kong

I am currently sitting at the Hong Kong airport and it is just the most bloody brilliant airport that I have ever seen in my life. The airport is actually on an island. Our plane landed on a runway that ran parallel to the sea and when I say sea, I don’t mean that distant expanse of blue that I could see when we were landing, I mean the water that I could have waded into if I had gotten out of the plane and walked 200 mts to my left. I could see the boats and the jetties and the people on the distant island. It was just a beautiful sight and one that I won’t forget in a hurry. Here’s how I remember it.

Time: 7:30 in the morning.

The sky looked slightly overcast or maybe it was just the grey of a mild winter morning. Coming from the Indian heat, everything grey was a welcome change. I got out of the slumber I had fallen into after the horrible dinner served in the plane last night and was trying to peer outside through a light mist to see what Hong Kong looked like. I saw a huge expanse of aquamarine in the distance, extremely clear and calm, stretching out as far as my eyes could see. The plane was already in landing mode with the lovely green drawing ever so close which is when my hazy mind registered that we must be landing in Hong Kong and that this must be the sea. It was quite a breathtaking sight. Not any more than what I saw when I landed though. I walked down the steps and turned to realise that the beautiful water just a little way off. The slight breeze, though cold felt very liberating especially after the way I had been cooped up in the plane. The next connecting flight to Shanghai was 2 hours later and I had already fallen in love with the place enough to not want to go further, enough to feel sad at saying goodbye. I do intend to return back soon, someday in the future, maybe to share the sight with the people I love.

China, here I come!!

Last minute changes and rush jobs, that’s what can best describe the series of events that finally took me to the first week of my internship. The last minute change of location to Shanghai was unnerving in the beginning, only exciting by the end of the week. And thus began my first week with one training session after the other for a week, which in spite of the hectic schedule I ended up enjoying immensely. Some great free food will definitely give me “fat” nightmares in the days to come! But I guess with the prospect of decent Indian food in the next 2 months being almost minimal, I did not feel too guilty indulging in some good old gluttony. And thus arrived the final day, that most awaited Friday when all of us were supposed to fly to our respective locations. With a full day off to laze around in the hotel and pack, I spent time with mom packing and chatting about the time to come and times past. A hurried departure from the hotel in the evening, only to make it well in time to the airport.

Now, there were several things that I expected to see at the airport. Lots of Chinese people, lots of travellers from Europe etc. travelling to Hong Kong or further but what I saw was something so unexpected that it simple blew me off my feet initially. So, amid a mad rush of taxies, with blaring horns, guards shouting in the background and people bumping luggage trollies left right and centre, I saw a glimpse of the Indira Gandhi International Airport. And there is only one way to describe what I saw: there was Punjab EVERYWHERE. I heard people shouting in Punjabi, hundreds of red, yellow, blue, green turbans, huge suitcases and hand bags and every passenger usually accompanied by 10 other family members who drove all the way from their homes to say goodbye. My first thought was that there must be multiple flights flying out tonight to either “Amreeka” or “Caneda”. But it seems the Punjabis are out for world domination now. The check-in line for the Honk Kong was equally ethnically inclined. It seemed to me like the whole state was travelling to HK tonight. The biggest surprise came when I find the same distribution of people in line to board a flight to Gangzhou (heck I hadn’t even heard of the place ever!). Anyway, that’s my dear old state for you – completely ‘out there’. Made me wonder if there is any major city of the world that does not have a considerable number of Punjabis.

Anyway, it was quite an interesting start to my “Adventures in Shanghai” as I liked to call them. Waiting to see an exciting new culture, meet different kinds of people and experience the traditions, customs and rituals of one of the oldest civilisations of the world.

Here’s to a “happening” two months ahead. May they be filled with interesting times!!

The rest is still unwritten!

Sometimes I struggle to find words to express what I want to say and then there are times I discover that someone already said what I wanted to say and in ways infinitely better than anything I could have come up with. So, here's a reminder to myself that TODAY is the first page of the rest of my life and the rest in unwritten. Here's to the endless possibilities and the beautiful uncertainty called LIFE!

I am unwritten,
Can't read my mind
I'm undefined
I'm just beginning
The pen's in my hand
Ending unplanned

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words
That you could not find.
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten.

I break tradition
Sometimes my tries
Are outside the lines,
We've been conditioned
To not make mistakes
But I can't live that way.

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words
That you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
the rest still unwritten...

The Bridges of Madison County

It’s been so long since I read a decent book, any book for that matter. Ages since I last reached the last page of the book, unsure of my own feelings, confused about whether to feel glad to know how things finally went or sad at having no more to read. I remember that sense of helplessness at the end of Gone with the Wind, the feeling that you want to somehow intervene in the course of events to put some things right. I know it sounds crazy but I really love these books that by their very nature can get me so deeply involved in what they talk about. The satisfaction one has at the end of a good book is unparalleled by any other medium, music or movies. The mad rush of life in the past few years had made me lose touch with this awesome escape from reality. It’s actually unfair to call it an escape, it’s more the recognition of a newer reality, a reality that is subliminal, subconscious and yet more real than the actual thing. A book is an amalgamation of 2 people’s realities – the author and the reader which is why reading is almost an art, a test of a reader’s ability to connect and interweave someone else’s reality into his or her own and the author’s ability to relate his or her reality to the intended reader.

The Bridges of Madison County was one of THOSE books, the kind that I just talked about. At the end of the day if one gets down to dissecting it, it’s just a love story, nay a love affair to be more precise. But there were some things about the way it was written and about the people it was about that really struck a chord with me. Made me wonder about things that lead nowhere, made me ask questions that I know have no answers and yet to not wonder about those things and to not ask those questions seemed sacrilege.  I love books that make me uncomfortable, that force me to look outside the shell of everyday life that I inevitably end up building around me, that make me look at newer aspects of life, that give me new perspectives and question old ones, and especially the ones that shake my idea of right and wrong, that show me shades of grey, that cover life spans of protagonists to prove that in the long run, everyone is just dead and nothing else.

The book talks about a very powerful kind of love, the kind that very few people on this planet are ever able to experience. The rest of us it seems just go through the motions. I sometimes wonder if I’ll be one of the fortunate ones, if in fact I already am. I wonder if there ever will be a moment in my life that will merit me thinking or saying: “In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, and never again, no matter how many lifetimes you live.”  I wonder if THIS is the lifetime when I will be blessed with that certainty or if I ever will know that kind of certainty in another place or another life.  And then who is to say, maybe I already have. It seems like it, except that the shades are different, the hues are subtler and the tinges less pronounced. Robert Kincaid, the last cowboy, one of the last cowboys, a thought that struck my heart like none other had in a long long time.

“There’s a breed of men that’s obsolete or very nearly so. The world is getting organized, way too organized for some people. Everything is in its place, a place for everything. Rules and regulations and laws and social conventions. Hierarchies of authority, spans of control, long range plans and budgets. Corporate power, a world of wrinkled suits and stick on name tags.”

It said things about the way I’ve felt sometimes, in a way which was infinitely better than any words I had ever used to describe it. I sometime do wonder if I’m one of those people who are slowly becoming obsolete, if I was meant for another time and place. After all, not all men or women are the same. Some will do okay in the world that is coming, some will not. And as the number of the soon-to-be-obsolete kind dwindles, what are the odds of experiencing the kind of certainty that every man and woman, by right, should crave for. After all, it takes one to know one, right?

But then such instances also make me wonder if such chance encounters with our true soul mates or alter egos are so special only by dint of the fact that they are “chance” encounters, never to be repeated, only to be preserved in the recesses of one’s memory and the secrets of one’s heart. Wouldn’t these encounters also become ordinary at some point of time or the other if they were pursued? Yes, there are times in some fortunate people’s lives when they happen to run into their alter egos, an opportunity to see themselves with their own eyes, to know someone who is intellectually, spiritually or physically their other half. But I wonder if the sanctity and purity of that happenstance meeting is lost due to prolonged association. Is true love a function of the serendipitous circumstances or is it a hardening bond of trust and familiarity built with someone who’s been there for a long time? I wonder…