An open letter to the Shiv Sena

Thackeray Saheb, ( BalaSaheb or Udhav , whoever is calling the shots )

Asa kai kela ?

I live in Mumbai. No; I live in Bombay. Sorry, I am using the dreaded “B” word as a mark of protest. Why am I in a sacrilegious mood? Because, I am upset and disappointed with the Shiv Sena’s attitude! I was so looking forward to this weekend. I had it perfectly planned and you ruined everything. How could you do this? We had such a great thing going over the years and in a blink of an eye you betrayed me for that over-rated Shah Rukh “Ham” Khan.

Valentine’s Day will not be the same anymore without the Shiv Sena disrupting itL.

Growing up in Bombay, if you ever put me in a rapid fire quiz show and asked me, “What comes to your mind first when I say Valentine’s Day ? “ Without any hesitation my answer would be “Shiv Sena”. Yes, Not Love, Not roses, Not cupid. You had entrenched yourself in Bombay’s Valentine’s Day folklore. And now you have abandoned all those couples in love who depended on you to provide the spark in their otherwise mundane relationships.

As I write this letter, it takes me back to my first V-day. You were at your peak that year. Most of the big hotels, pubs, and night clubs had canceled their parties. It was the perfect hide and seek game. How will the couples manage to sneak in some alone time, manage to hold hands in public, exchange those ridiculously expensive roses and paraphernalia and whisper sweet nothings without being caught by the minions of Balasaheb. So much more exciting than a quiet candle light dinner or a deafening Bollywood remix party. Looking at the expensive demands the chick I was taking out was making, I was sweating balls. But as it turned out, everything she asked for, you managed to get to it first J.. She wanted some expensive soft toys. That store I went to was destroyed by you a day earlier. So all the other stores around were closed. She wanted to go to this yacht party with some supercool DJ from Delhi. But your goons got to him a week before and made him swear that he will never set foot in Mumbai on V-Day. I ended up giving her a rose from my neighbor’s garden and taking her out to a romantic dinner to the local Chinese tapri and I didn’t even look cheap doing it. She was so impressed by what you had done in the run up to V-day that she was begging for this. I never properly thanked you for that. Aah the good old days.

As the years went by, I was amazed at your innovative methods each year. How funny my date and me looked when we had our faces blackened , or the time I wanted to break up with this girl but didn’t know how until you came along and made her tie me a Rakhi. That was easy J. Or the time when I was having a romantic candle light dinner and your sena broke the window of that restaurant. The tiny pieces of glass flying all over the place and falling all over our food and us, looked magical. Right out of a fairy tale!!! But what takes the cake was your campaign to force couples caught on V-day to marry each other. I was so pumped up about that. I even managed to catch a filthy rich girl that year. But somehow we never ran into each other. That would have been the jackpot.

Sigh, I’m all teary-eyed now. This year, I had met a girl from the “We love Shiv Sena on V-Day” generation. It was going to be perfect. We were planning to walk in front of protesters and then hold hands. This would have led to a high speed chase through the streets of Bombay.On being caught; we were looking forward to the new and innovative punishments you would come up with. It would have made both of us feel proud. But all that is just a dream now. You chickened out and decided to go after a SRK. It was so much below your dignity. Was it worth it?

I just cannot have a V-day without the excitement the Shiv Sena used to provide. So I became innovative and decided to do the unthinkable. If the disrupters don’t come to us, we would go to the disrupters. I was going to commit the sin of going to a SRK-KJo movie in its opening weekend just so that it would be disrupted and I could have a slice of excitement and reminisce the good old days. But, and it’s a big BUT… our government decided to actually do something for the first time in 10 years. Why now , Mr Chavan. Please go back to doing nothing. We loved you that way. That’s why we relected you time after time for the last 10 years. Now you have really done it. The one place I could get some action, and you stopped that too. Why ? I had to actually coax some local Sena Shakha guys to protest outside a local multiplex before they catch the Sunday evening show , pay off the local constables to wait for atleast 15 minutes before taking any action, just to get a feel of the good old days.. We are living in truly troubled times. This has cost me more than all the earlier V-days put together.

I hope you learn your lesson and we have a normal V-day next year. Otherwise I will have to move to Bangalore. Ram Sena is eating into your market share.

Sincerely

With Apologies to Bill Maher

New Rules

If I call a person on the telephone, I want to hear a traditional ring tone. I do not want to hear the love song which was playing the night you lost your virginity or the song your mom loves. When I hear of a song instead of a ring tone, it makes me feel, I am on hold with customer support. So dont be surprised if you get the same treatment I dish out to them, even though you pretend to be my friend.

More.. Coming soon

Shorts Standing Tall

Great Short Films I Stumbled upon

Woke up last Night at 3 am from a horrific nightmare involving my boss... again

Anyway that's besides the point..

I had recently hooked up my new Tivo HD and wanted to see if it had recorded something to put me back to sleep :)
It turns out it was recording these short films being shown on a showcase on IFC.
I have never been a fan of shorts. But the ones I ended up seeing really turned me into a fan, a high speed one at that.

The first one was called "Underground"

Details can be found on IMDB.

Underground

It was exploring human nature and how we perceive certain situations based on our own fears and notions. The viewers, in this case, were subjects and how we perceive the situation being shown is the purpose of this short experiment. It simply involves two guys following a girl riding on an empty subway train. What happens next will help you judge yourself and your perceptions.

It used a simple quote as a baseline and then launched from there.

"We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are."

Watch it and let me know what you think. I don't want to analyse it too much for the fear of giving it away.

The film is being shown on IFC and they have repeat dates. I have listed the dates at the end.

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The second film was called "Disposal"

IMDB link:

Disposal

This is again a character study of Human nature or a certain aspect of it in 10 minutes. It shows how people react in a naive fashion during times of unexpected crisis and the repercussions of actions taken to resolve the crisis. A couple in the city accidentally hit and kill a homeless man, while a father and son are hunting in the jungle. The two couples don't know each other, but accidents will cause their lives to intertwine and change forever.

fascinating!!!!

I think shorts are a great way to explore human emotions and the way we think. You can make a point very quickly and then post mortem all you want, based on it. In Feature length films, there is usually just too much going on to really have a good character study done. Not that it hasn't been done. But, I just think shorts can really bring out the point trying to be made to a diverse and wider audience.

Anyways, Comments are always welcome, and if you cant catch the films or don't have IFC, I have them recorded on Tivo, so I can help out.


IFC Short Films Showcase Schedule:

Thu, May. 15 at 12:35 PM EDT

Sun, May. 18 at 06:55 AM EDT

Thu, May. 29 at 06:00 AM EDT

Tue, Jun. 3 at 08:50 AM EDT

Fri, Jun. 6 at 05:30 AM EDT

Thu, Jun. 12 at 12:30 PM EDT

Enjoy...

Random Thoughts

Slipping away

Time slips away
Slippery like the ground outside
Drenched in Winter rain
Inviting the gullible
Welcoming one and all
To admire the green that comes with the rain
To take in wisps of the wet soil
Distracted from the goal
"I can get it done"
"This will only take a few minutes"
Minutes turn into hours
By the time they return
Its too late
Time has slipped away.

With apologies to Bill Maher

Bill Maher has this great concept of making new rules which take on existing meaningless shenanigans. I thought I could use that concept to come up with some of my own. Il keep adding as I come up with it.

New Rule: Politicians, stop hitting out at Amitabh Bachchan to revive your non-existant popularity or clout or whatever it is you are missing out on in your otherwise fulfilling life.
Trust me if people ignored you before, it actually did your social barometer a lot of good. Now, you are seen as as plain ignorant and stupid. If you think what Amitabh does or doesn't do will really save this country, then you are the ones who needs to be put on the hot seat.

New Rule: Just beacuse you have chewed and digested every word of a word list doesnt mean you have to use only those words in your entire sentence. Writing is about expressing something you feel in the best possible words that would convey the message. Using hard to understand words, totally out of context in sentences just proves you are not sure what you want to say and are hiding your inability to write behind those words.

5/7/2008
New Rule : Anderson Cooper from CNN needs to stop going gaga over the touch screen he has been using to show election results. Maybe your mom didn't let you paint when you were a kid, maybe you are an artist at heart and only a broadcaster by profession. But stop painting on the damn touch screen. Im sure there is software out there to do it for you, or maybe you can have a lovely assistant do it for you, because you doing it sure doesn't make a great picture.

Simple Yet Powerful poetry: Stuff I like

This is pretty powerful writing by Wislawa Szymborska. She is a polish poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. Notice the simplicity of the poem. Yet It has so many layers. Simply mind blowing


The Three Oddest Words

By Wislawa Szymborska


When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.

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Utopia

By Wislawa Szymborska

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.




Possibilities


By Wislawa Szymborska

I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here
to many things I've also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.

For more from Wislawa Szymborska

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1996/szymborska-poetry.html

Forbidden zone

The Forbidden Room

Im parched,
Eyes fighting to stay open
Legs gave way to my knees
Fingers searching in desperation
for a knob, a key, a lock even
No way in, Rock solid
Covered in sweat and smears of blood
Breathing heavily as if I ran a marathon
But all I have done is wait outside the forbidden room

It sends out a shine, a radiant glow
which beckoned me to it, at first sight
How would I have known
to get inside would require an effort as seen by none.
I came as a knight, bravado in tow
My first attempts at it left me shell shocked and sore
Finnese and wit, my pillars of strength
fell apart and shattered against its mighty door

Bruised but not beaten, "its time to regroup", I said to myself
Slowly but surely, I started looking for loopholes
"This is not worth it, I can find other rooms, with treasures far greater and easier to explore"
"Stop making excuses, and focus on the door"
Conflicting thoughts, and frustration crept in,
Suddenly!!!
a beam of light....Hope.... is it?
Halucinations galore

I would watch it for hours, observing every inch,
thoughts would criss cross about how to get in.
Ah.. a small opening here.. Success!!!!
Alas.. a dead end .. "no more"

Realization dawned
The room needs to trust. it needs to believe
I am deserving, I am the chosen one...
I need to believe, I need to trust
I need to push on, I need to try harder
Tired but hopeful, I linger along
Trying to show, there is only one..

Sweet glow .... of Happiness, of prosperity divine
This is my destiny, I know its mine.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kal Aaj Aur Kal

Staring into the unknown, the future
The future stares back
What are you looking at?
I will destroy you, unless
So stop staring and work on your present
and let me get back to mine

I tried my hand at the current
But it didnt make sense
So I looked back at my past
Having been snubbed by the future
The past was much more accomadating
inviting me to revisit
retrospect,
The past was kind
It had taught me valuble lessons
It gave me fond memories
I was slipping away
What a wonderful past I had
Unlike the future, dark, and gloomy
the past was a light beckoning me towards it

Wait a minute!
My present is still good,
It was because of my past,
which was my present some time ago.
Thats the reason, I have fond memories
because I worked on it when it was my present
But the future conspires
By working with my past
to make me ruin my present
So I wont look back, I wont stare forward
I will put my head down
And work it out one day at a time.