KrA wanted me to slide down a bit on the bed and guess what he tells me!!
"Scroll down!!" he says.Tee hee :D
Copyright © 2009, Impulsive Outpourings
paginate rocks and
6 months ago
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
A Techie In My House
Something absolutely hilarious happened last night and I have to share this with you all.
Tee hee :D
Copyright © 2009, Impulsive Outpourings
Tee hee :D
Copyright © 2009, Impulsive Outpourings
Friday, December 26, 2008
Ghajini - The Inevitable Comparison
Ghajini. And its much-anticipated release. Oh, yes! The movie turned even a disinterested viewer like me into a restless and fidgety mess for more reasons than one. I’d seen the Tamil version of the movie and was absolutely floored by the plot, Surya’s and Asin’s acting prowess, the music, the movie. All of it. I was curious to know whether Amir Khan, or should we say Mr. Perfectionist, could outdo or at least equal Surya in his performance.
And I am happy to announce, Surya Sivakumar remains UNRIVALLED!
Amir’s portrayal of a patient diagnosed with anterograde amnesia is one of mild confusion that severely undermines the plight of someone fraught with short-term memory loss and the consequent gut-wrenching disorientation. It is amusing to see him look bleakly perplexed in scenes that required him to struggle and search desperately in his mind for some semblance of comprehension. And he tries to compensate for that by exhibiting a torrent of rage in a couple of scenes. Big eyes, gritted teeth, animalistic snarls, and prolonged screams. All those histrionics that could not provide a veneer of credibility to his dismal performance.
Even if I choose to set aside Surya’s personification of the lead character and focus on Amir’s portrayal of Sanjay (the hero!) in his heydays, I have no good things to say. As a lover boy, which incidentally I thought was Amir’s forte, he iss nonchalant at best. He looks good, no doubt! I thought he even resembled Jude Law on several occasions. And those gorgeous six-packs. Bah! Only made for brilliant publicity and pre-release marketing. But even those could not save the movie as Amir delivered his dialogues with the air of someone bored out of his wits and with the arrogant cognizance of a superstar that the general public would feed on anything he hurls at them.
To claim that Ghajini is a washout would be unfair. The movie has its pluses too. The music is exceptional though I would not say the same for the song videos. Asin is flawless. Effervescent and vivacious, just like she was in the Tam version. The good thing is that she will get a lot of mileage out of the Hindi remake than the Tamil movie – better publicity, a wider audience – and I think she deserves it.
The bad guy, Pradeep Singh Rawat, pulls off a more powerful performance in the Hindi remake than in the Tamil one. In the Tam version, he passed off as a mere northie goon who hurled all the maa-behen abuses at the slightest provocation. Here he is nothing short of cruel and intimidating.
As for Jiah Khan, do we even need to mention her? She uses up all her screen time trying more to look sexy and less to act. The outcome? She is downright tacky. But considering that that is all she is capable of, let’s not even dwell on her lack of acting skills.
But the same excuse cannot be proffered for Amir. I would never count his role in Ghajini as one among his better performances. It is bleak and nowhere close to the standards we’d expect of someone being touted as a perfectionist and who gave us Taare Zameen Par that was released on the same date last year. Which is a disaster if you realise that Amir already had a benchmark set by Surya who, when it was his turn, did not have a role model to ape.
We can get into lengthy discussions about Memento and Ghajini but Hollywood and Indian movies fall into entirely different genres of cinema. No comparisons can be made even in the case of adaptations and blatant reproductions. So the debate remains restricted to Amir’s Ghajini vis-à-vis Surya’s Ghajini. The former is mostly an imitation of the latter. Perfect in the technicality of scene-by-scene reproduction but severely lacking in acting prowess. Riding high on publicity and fan following but scoring low on credibility. And the worst thing is, junta will love it. The plot is gripping, Asin is brilliant and all that. And Amir will walk away with one more accolade, though highly undeserving in this case. But try watching the Tam version. Here is the link for the movie on YouTube. It’s got English subtitles too. And come back to me with an honest opinion.
Move over, Amir! You are better off being original than emulative. Out with the imposter!
Copyright © 2008, Impulsive Outpourings
And I am happy to announce, Surya Sivakumar remains UNRIVALLED!
Amir’s portrayal of a patient diagnosed with anterograde amnesia is one of mild confusion that severely undermines the plight of someone fraught with short-term memory loss and the consequent gut-wrenching disorientation. It is amusing to see him look bleakly perplexed in scenes that required him to struggle and search desperately in his mind for some semblance of comprehension. And he tries to compensate for that by exhibiting a torrent of rage in a couple of scenes. Big eyes, gritted teeth, animalistic snarls, and prolonged screams. All those histrionics that could not provide a veneer of credibility to his dismal performance.
Even if I choose to set aside Surya’s personification of the lead character and focus on Amir’s portrayal of Sanjay (the hero!) in his heydays, I have no good things to say. As a lover boy, which incidentally I thought was Amir’s forte, he iss nonchalant at best. He looks good, no doubt! I thought he even resembled Jude Law on several occasions. And those gorgeous six-packs. Bah! Only made for brilliant publicity and pre-release marketing. But even those could not save the movie as Amir delivered his dialogues with the air of someone bored out of his wits and with the arrogant cognizance of a superstar that the general public would feed on anything he hurls at them.
To claim that Ghajini is a washout would be unfair. The movie has its pluses too. The music is exceptional though I would not say the same for the song videos. Asin is flawless. Effervescent and vivacious, just like she was in the Tam version. The good thing is that she will get a lot of mileage out of the Hindi remake than the Tamil movie – better publicity, a wider audience – and I think she deserves it.
The bad guy, Pradeep Singh Rawat, pulls off a more powerful performance in the Hindi remake than in the Tamil one. In the Tam version, he passed off as a mere northie goon who hurled all the maa-behen abuses at the slightest provocation. Here he is nothing short of cruel and intimidating.
As for Jiah Khan, do we even need to mention her? She uses up all her screen time trying more to look sexy and less to act. The outcome? She is downright tacky. But considering that that is all she is capable of, let’s not even dwell on her lack of acting skills.
But the same excuse cannot be proffered for Amir. I would never count his role in Ghajini as one among his better performances. It is bleak and nowhere close to the standards we’d expect of someone being touted as a perfectionist and who gave us Taare Zameen Par that was released on the same date last year. Which is a disaster if you realise that Amir already had a benchmark set by Surya who, when it was his turn, did not have a role model to ape.
We can get into lengthy discussions about Memento and Ghajini but Hollywood and Indian movies fall into entirely different genres of cinema. No comparisons can be made even in the case of adaptations and blatant reproductions. So the debate remains restricted to Amir’s Ghajini vis-à-vis Surya’s Ghajini. The former is mostly an imitation of the latter. Perfect in the technicality of scene-by-scene reproduction but severely lacking in acting prowess. Riding high on publicity and fan following but scoring low on credibility. And the worst thing is, junta will love it. The plot is gripping, Asin is brilliant and all that. And Amir will walk away with one more accolade, though highly undeserving in this case. But try watching the Tam version. Here is the link for the movie on YouTube. It’s got English subtitles too. And come back to me with an honest opinion.
Move over, Amir! You are better off being original than emulative. Out with the imposter!
Copyright © 2008, Impulsive Outpourings
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Winter..
It’s winter,
Not your best time of the year
The morning is bleak
And the sun has faded in the sky
It’s foggy, though
Not in an smothering way
I can still see your receding frame
Huddled in all your seasonal trappings
I’ll miss you and all that
We’ll never be the same again
You and me
And now this empty space in between
Not quite so empty anymore
The mist floods the vacant expanse
Swiftly
I prefer it that way, cold and brutal
Oh well, you changed
You’re different now
From the memories I hold of you
Nor am I any longer the same
You changed your moves
And I changed mine
Though we’ve played a million times
The same old funny game
Not that I am upset
I can always go back to last summer
Seems like aeons
We’d been together for too long
And thence walk down another lane
Through a different autumn
I’ll rewrite the songs, create new memories
Till I reach this foggy winter morning, yet again
Copyright © 2008, Impulsive Outpourings
Friday, November 28, 2008
In Which Even Death Fails To Quell Piffling Matters
To be honest in all brutality, tragedy remains a mere headline as long as it is inflicted on somebody else out there. Somebody who has lost a husband, a wife, a parent, a child, a friend. As long as that somebody can be written off as a stranger to us for all we could care. Just another name or number in the record of the casualties.
And, I would like to believe, most of us are still sensitive enough to react to the unfortunate episode with a lot of concern and angst while muttering a silent ‘Thank God, it was not me or my family or friends’ prayer in the same breath. We would vent out our frustration by talking about it in agitated tones, but for the most part rather objectively, curse the unhinged perpetrators of crime, blame the government and politicians for not being able to forestall the bloodshed, and eventually resign to the belief that nothing is going to be done anyway.
And then life will go on, ruthlessly. We will laud Mumbai and India for being resilient enough to spring back from the catastrophe, which really means nothing except that people will step out on the streets, go to work, chase deadlines, go shopping, and squabble over petty things just as they have been doing all along, in the strange comfort of the fact that lightning does not strike twice at the same place. We will be cocooned again in our false sense of security for as long as we are not directly affected by subsequent terrorist attacks.
The owners of the Taj hotel will move swiftly, riding on the strengths of their resourcefulness and business acumen, to restore the business establishment to its original splendour, and will perhaps create an even more beautiful structure than before. And in doing so, they will spare no efforts in wiping out the stains of the bloody massacre and the memories of the people who died in and around the place. And business will continue.
The episode will be archived in the annals of Indian and world history and November 26, 2008 in Mumbai will just go down as another date, place and event that progeny will bone up on. We will have writers authoring books set in the background of this episode and moviemakers raking in the moolah as they exploit a tragedy to dish out box-office hits.
And thus life goes on as we come to grips with the fact that some day death will wash over us and drag us mercilessly like a receding tidal wave. But death miserably fails to score on one point against life. Even death cannot be as cruel and tragic as the lives of those who’ve lost a dear one. Ask Khushboo Jha, the fiancée of the deceased Malayesh Banerjee, on whom fate could not have dealt a more deathly blow by snatching away her lover of seven years just a week before their wedding. My boyfriend had gone to college with the two kids and though he did not know them very well, the news left both of us inexplicably sad. And the sadness eventually gave way to a gnawing fear of the not so unlikely event of either of us succumbing to the cruel twist of fate. Without any warning. Anytime. Anywhere. We stayed up pretty much all night watching the télé, talking to friends, and holding each other for reassurance almost as if there were no tomorrow. And then life just slipped back to its routine this morning. Work, deadlines, and shopping and movie plans for the weekend.
But today has been different for me. I have been thinking a lot about life and I am beginning to have a few bones to pick with you, dear God. I totally acknowledge your ingenuity in coming up with this mind-blowing concept of mankind and life. I also understand that death is the only inevitability in a life that is otherwise fraught with uncertainties or, as I am sure you would like to word it, possibilities.
But maybe God, just maybe, would it have been better if you had assigned expiry dates to all of us? Do you think Malayesh would have lived a different life if he knew he was going to die on this fateful day? Don’t you think Khushboo and the two families and their friends would have been spared the torment of grief if they were cognizant of his impending death?
I know you had ‘the larger picture’ in mind when you allowed this to happen. But what is it, God? What is the larger picture? Is it to make people realise the value of their lives and the lives of others? Is it to sternly remind people to make the most of this gift of life you have bestowed upon us? If that was your intention, dear God, then I strongly suspect that it will serve its purpose. Yes, it will irreversibly change the lives of those directly affected by this tragedy. But the others? They will just go back to chasing deadlines at work, haggling and squabbling over petty things, piling up grudges against each other, refusing to forgive and forget, and letting life be devoured by piffling differences.
But, yes. Last night you put this remarkable idea in my mind when you asked me to do a little math. And so I calculated. I dared to assume that I would live till I turn sixty. Now, 60 years.. That sounds like a long life, isn’t it? But convert that to days, and I have a life of 21,900 days.. And that comes across as a startlingly small number even though my thought process defies the fundamental mathematical laws of equality and inequality. And considering that I am close to exhausting nearly half of my quota of life, that leaves me with just about 11,000 days. As I strike off each day from the calendar, life seems to dwindle at a remarkable pace.
And this is what you wanted to highlight, isn’t it, dear God? You wanted to rubbish the incredibly foolish belief that we tend to harbour about our lives stretching ahead of us till eternity. You want us to realise that there just may be no tomorrow to put our paltry spats behind us, no tomorrow to take a stab at renewing our relationships, no tomorrow to say a few kind words, no tomorrow to make life more memorable and meaningful, no tomorrow to even live? I understand, dear God. I am just wondering if you could have made your point in a less heart-rending way.
Copyright © 2008, Impulsive Outpourings
And, I would like to believe, most of us are still sensitive enough to react to the unfortunate episode with a lot of concern and angst while muttering a silent ‘Thank God, it was not me or my family or friends’ prayer in the same breath. We would vent out our frustration by talking about it in agitated tones, but for the most part rather objectively, curse the unhinged perpetrators of crime, blame the government and politicians for not being able to forestall the bloodshed, and eventually resign to the belief that nothing is going to be done anyway.
And then life will go on, ruthlessly. We will laud Mumbai and India for being resilient enough to spring back from the catastrophe, which really means nothing except that people will step out on the streets, go to work, chase deadlines, go shopping, and squabble over petty things just as they have been doing all along, in the strange comfort of the fact that lightning does not strike twice at the same place. We will be cocooned again in our false sense of security for as long as we are not directly affected by subsequent terrorist attacks.
The owners of the Taj hotel will move swiftly, riding on the strengths of their resourcefulness and business acumen, to restore the business establishment to its original splendour, and will perhaps create an even more beautiful structure than before. And in doing so, they will spare no efforts in wiping out the stains of the bloody massacre and the memories of the people who died in and around the place. And business will continue.
The episode will be archived in the annals of Indian and world history and November 26, 2008 in Mumbai will just go down as another date, place and event that progeny will bone up on. We will have writers authoring books set in the background of this episode and moviemakers raking in the moolah as they exploit a tragedy to dish out box-office hits.
And thus life goes on as we come to grips with the fact that some day death will wash over us and drag us mercilessly like a receding tidal wave. But death miserably fails to score on one point against life. Even death cannot be as cruel and tragic as the lives of those who’ve lost a dear one. Ask Khushboo Jha, the fiancée of the deceased Malayesh Banerjee, on whom fate could not have dealt a more deathly blow by snatching away her lover of seven years just a week before their wedding. My boyfriend had gone to college with the two kids and though he did not know them very well, the news left both of us inexplicably sad. And the sadness eventually gave way to a gnawing fear of the not so unlikely event of either of us succumbing to the cruel twist of fate. Without any warning. Anytime. Anywhere. We stayed up pretty much all night watching the télé, talking to friends, and holding each other for reassurance almost as if there were no tomorrow. And then life just slipped back to its routine this morning. Work, deadlines, and shopping and movie plans for the weekend.
But today has been different for me. I have been thinking a lot about life and I am beginning to have a few bones to pick with you, dear God. I totally acknowledge your ingenuity in coming up with this mind-blowing concept of mankind and life. I also understand that death is the only inevitability in a life that is otherwise fraught with uncertainties or, as I am sure you would like to word it, possibilities.
But maybe God, just maybe, would it have been better if you had assigned expiry dates to all of us? Do you think Malayesh would have lived a different life if he knew he was going to die on this fateful day? Don’t you think Khushboo and the two families and their friends would have been spared the torment of grief if they were cognizant of his impending death?
I know you had ‘the larger picture’ in mind when you allowed this to happen. But what is it, God? What is the larger picture? Is it to make people realise the value of their lives and the lives of others? Is it to sternly remind people to make the most of this gift of life you have bestowed upon us? If that was your intention, dear God, then I strongly suspect that it will serve its purpose. Yes, it will irreversibly change the lives of those directly affected by this tragedy. But the others? They will just go back to chasing deadlines at work, haggling and squabbling over petty things, piling up grudges against each other, refusing to forgive and forget, and letting life be devoured by piffling differences.
But, yes. Last night you put this remarkable idea in my mind when you asked me to do a little math. And so I calculated. I dared to assume that I would live till I turn sixty. Now, 60 years.. That sounds like a long life, isn’t it? But convert that to days, and I have a life of 21,900 days.. And that comes across as a startlingly small number even though my thought process defies the fundamental mathematical laws of equality and inequality. And considering that I am close to exhausting nearly half of my quota of life, that leaves me with just about 11,000 days. As I strike off each day from the calendar, life seems to dwindle at a remarkable pace.
And this is what you wanted to highlight, isn’t it, dear God? You wanted to rubbish the incredibly foolish belief that we tend to harbour about our lives stretching ahead of us till eternity. You want us to realise that there just may be no tomorrow to put our paltry spats behind us, no tomorrow to take a stab at renewing our relationships, no tomorrow to say a few kind words, no tomorrow to make life more memorable and meaningful, no tomorrow to even live? I understand, dear God. I am just wondering if you could have made your point in a less heart-rending way.
Copyright © 2008, Impulsive Outpourings
Monday, November 24, 2008
A Patchwork Of My Dreams
They spring from the sable dome of night
And haunt the hidden recesses of my mind
Flitting in and out of my unconscious
Casting their spells, seeking to bind
But when the stars dissolve in the morning light
Another day looms large ahead of me, steadfast
And my dreams of the night wither away
Like memories discarded in a forgotten past
But they gather at the horizon as the sun sinks
In the soft hues of twilight, they come out to play
And that’s how we come full circle
Frenzied dreams by the night, ordinary life by the day
But now I’ve run out of dreams for you and me
And all that remains is a shimmer, and perhaps a sigh
For they long to live on, even unobtrusively so
Scattered like lonely stars in the Stygian skies..
And so before they fade into memories at dawn
Dispelled by the sunny spear of beams
I think I will swiftly weave into my living days
An ethereal patchwork of all my forgotten dreams..
Copyright © 2008, Impulsive Outpourings
Saturday, November 22, 2008
When Relatives Spy On Me In The Guise Of Social Networking
Sometime ago, I updated my status on Facebook to 'In a Relationship' with 'KrA'. It completely slipped my mind that my friends' network includes a second cousin of mine, who also happens to be a first cousin to my mother as a direct consequence of the inter-generation marriages in my mother's family that has had its share of more damaging outcomes than fruitful ones. I received in my inbox a very direct and inquisitive email not at all befitting a 32 year old man but sounding more like it was scrawled by a gossip-loving teenage girl whose sole driver in life is scandals in others. So anyway, Big Bro wrote to me asking me about my status update. Do I need to clarify that I ignored his email?
I turned a year older day before. It is funny how you can go to bed one night and wake up the next morning a year older as if all those 365 days of your last year have been suddenly gobbled up by stealthy shadows lurking in the darkness of the night. And considering that I will turn 30 some day really soon, I think I will just dive into bed on the last day of the 29th year of my life and pray that I wake up and find myself still in my twenties. Anyway, I am digressing. Now birthdays inevitably mean early morning calls from relatives down south. It was seven in the morning and I was all groggy when I got my first call, already having missed three that came in during the last half hour that I was cozily asleep.
My little cousin (come to think of it, he is not all that little anymore. He will step on to the other side of adolescence and legally enter into adulthood in another nine days) literally yelled 'Happy Birthday' into the phone. That totally shook me awake. I had barely mumble an incoherent 'Thank you' when he started badgering me about my 'Committed' status on Orkut. Damn! I think it is so bloody unfair to catch someone unawares in their sleep. I mean, the surprise element gives the intruder an advantage and all that, but that unduly tips the scales in their favour.
I think I got lucky because it was my birthday and all that and so I managed to get away with an excuse I had used ages ago when a mere acquaintance had tried to poke a very interfering nose into my private affairs (*ahem* private affairs that were made public by yours truly to all on Orkut). I said, 'Oh you know. Strange buggers started to scrap me wanting to befriend me when they saw my status of singledom. So I decided to update it to 'committed' to keep all the potential stalkers and could-be harassers at bay.' And dear 'little' cousin of mine was totally convinced with my explanation.
I have been going around with my boyfriend for quite sometime now and I have no qualms in publicly declaring my affinity to him. (Love is an overused and exploited word, so let's keep it where it belongs - in the obscure realms of poetry!) And that's where all the explanations end. I adore my relatives and cousins and all those people out there who try to exercise their right over my life and my doings riding gingerly on the frail bonds of kinship that put us all together in our own exclusive community of blood relations. Sadly, the only time they choose to exercise this self-proclaimed right is when any of us tries to rope in a non-Tam-Brahm into the community through marital vows. It is shattering enough for them to even get a whiff of the southie-northie affair de coeur that is steaming up here ... I wonder how they would react if they were to get the wind of spliff-alcohol-sex way of life. Now that's what I call delicious food for thought for my gossip-loving second cousin and my conservative adolescent little brother.
P.S. I have been utterly lazy in replying to comments on my blog for quite some time now.. Please don't mistake that for rudeness.. Just been thoroughly lazy.. Will get to it soon, I promise. :)
Copyright © 2008, Impulsive Outpourings
Thursday, November 20, 2008
;)
I could not NOT post something today.. :)
Thank you, God, for giving me all these days, all these years ..
Thank you, God, for life!
Copyright © 2008, Impulsive Outpourings
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