Stardust..

In days filled with..

Assortments of garments piled high on display, a dizzying collection complete with for sale exclamations ..

A sea of humanity trying to out bargain the other..

A more "sophisticated" sea vying with the other for the more expensive purchase

A sea of consumerism..

Gucci clad women, high heeled and skinny jeaned, flamboyantly bagged, blue toothed cell phoned men, teenagers clad in shorts and black slippers (why does everyone look the same?)..

Amidst a head spinning array of merchandise.....

skin colored make up counters shimmering with blue and pink glitter, blue coloured perfume shelves, each fragrance more saccharine than the other, steel and diamond watches, cold to the touch, bags and belts glaring from the sidelines, shoes and accessories glittering and golden, coffee counters with a nauseating aroma of hastily brewed- muddy beverages in Styrofoam cups and crumbs of muffin on the tables....

In the midst of all this imagine..

A brown branch of a tree bent in the night breeze, with dark green leaves , specked with dew, and in the pale light of the moon, the bough is inky blue and the leaves inky green and the dewdrops glistening like globules of mercury swaying gently in the breeze..

The taste of bittersweet coffee drunk after a chunk of dark chocolate, the ones with nuts, smothering the sweetness with its subtle fragrance, the first few sips only, warm and invigorating..

A single pink rose, swept wildly in the breeze, in the windowsill of the house on the edge of the cliff, looking down on the chalky white sea raging behind, observed in the moonlight by the stranger in the house..

The sense of clam which pervades after you cry your heart out..

The first rush of love or affection at the sound of a long forgotten voice, or the involuntary smile at their messages..

Music which electrifies you in a movie theatre , spine-tingling , mesmerising melody..

Early morning paper reading sessions with a cup of tea..

Standing in an air conditioned room and feeling the warmth of the sun through a bay window..

A few flavours to get you started..

It was the stuff dreams were made of

When she was a child she had imagined a room full of innumerable mirrors, at all angles, of all shapes and sizes such that a single burst of light would make it sparkle and shine as brightly as a giant polished diamond.

And she would be inside too awed to speak, content to just bask in this sea of jewels, a queen in her own private fairyland.

The lights were dimmed now, pale blue and white.

She would dream of lands far away , smothered with clouds, pale blue and white, of sparkling fountains and snow capped peaks, of pale blue summers and white winters, of pale blue ribbons in white dresses.

Of a pale blue dawn seen through the whites of the mirrors, many mirrors, evoking a realm of possibilities, each mirror a vista silky white to the touch.

The lights that were falling were harsh and red, smouldering and fiery to the touch. the reflections were her own, many aspects, many faces, some whom she recognized, many whom she didn't.

Some enduring the harshness of the fiery light and getting lost in the darkness and shying away.

Some fighting the flames which would then glow orange and pink and illuminate a mirror, previously undiscovered, a face hidden in the shadows.

Broken shards from thunderbolts of light, broken dreams and broken personalities.

The room was dark and a single flicker of light would open a multitude of possibilities, a plethora of emotions.

But she knew that the sights would make her dizzy, so she stayed in the darkness.

And it was just another day

So being in Mumbai and staying alone at Worli, I have pretty much the same experience as many others , that of mute and horrified spectators. Much has and will be written about it, and my sense of outrage and disgust would be as good as any other. The weekend before i had watched two movies at Metro (yes the same one) and though it seems like an eternity away i shall do my best to return to normalcy.

So Yuvraaj happened to me the day it made its unwanted presence felt in the movie theatres. One time celebs rehashing a formula which might have worked once (and still makes me embarrassed that it did ). As if the effeminate, multi pierced, fake-accented , aging Khan wasn't enough, you had an eager to please by-copying-autistic-children Anil Kapoor along with the non descript(whats his name again?) Zayed Khan. Saas-Bahu inspired seductresses and holier than thou poison administering Mama-ji's completed the demented family picture (no Anil kapoor was not the only one). Katrina Kaif and Rahman were brought in to temporarily reduce eyesores, and calm nerves which had been frayed with trying to watch blubbering Khan's and hamming Kapoors. I rate it a sell (Ok so I am reading analyst reports)

Dostana was better than I expected and that is that.

There will be a time..

There will be a time when music would no longer accompany sorrow

When music would no longer accompany festivities

When outpourings of music would no longer mirror outpourings of grief or joy

When there would be endless music..

And it was not just the songs.

A chance remark evoking vague memories, innumerable objects, random people on the streets, making coffee and working nights, there was a bit of him in each of them.

Bits she was trying to shake off but they were parts of her and clung too tight.

He was no longer her last thought when she went to bed, or the first thing she thought of as she faced another dreary day, but they were there, memories , dozens of them , lodged firmly in the back of her mind, weighing her down.

The day he left, the day he died, she felt a void so sharp, as he took away a part of her that was made for him, for their lives together, a void which just got bigger the more she let him claim.

There was a time when reason and emotion had walked together and indulged in devious games of power play.

There was a time when she welcomed Fortune as a fitting adversary and exhilarated by the test she put her to.

There were times when she just succumbed.

Of Drona and other inconsequential things

So obviously this post is not on the current financial crisis, since the likes of Krugman have been commenting on it and have received Nobels for their effort , and I cant obviously better that !(heh), so would stick to movie reviews which are more my realm. But as an aside, I should seriously stop giving the impression that I am blessed with the intelligence of a housefly who likes reading. People at my work place are quite willing and beginning to believe that, but impression management in the office environs will be the subject of another painful post. Sufficient to say that I do understand math and finance and CDO's and all those subjects outside the realm of your regular Economic Times reading house fly.
So back to Drona (pronounced drone (ur lazy and boring male bees) and rhymes with groan). I think I sat through the flick in a state of suspended stupor, dozing off occasionally since what comes to mind are intermittent scenes which are scarring nevertheless.
So AB junior taking his junior status to heart plays an oversized Harry Potter , the uncanny resemblance to Privet Drive and his bedroom making it clear , even to the meanest intelligence. He is surrounded by a clan of protectors, a sample set drawn from the United Nations, signifying solidarity and unity in the face of Rizz Raizada oppression (a lesson imbibed by all governments while dealing with the liquidity crisis). Talk about drawing parallels!! Coz if that was not the intent, I don’t know what was the purpose of the motley crew, except Priyanka Chopra of course. She made hr stance abundantly clear, when she sang the "Drona Drona" number, in praise of the great one with a dance routine to match. She was his greatest fan, philosopher and guide and the female lead (they could not afford different people for these characters I guess).
Since the director realized that he could not appeal to the rock-on going audience, after a few shots he decided to make it a complete family entertainer, to hedge risks so to speak. He needed to. So enter the mom (or the only one who could be persuaded to play the mom, purely out of maternal instincts), who begged to be turned into stone before she could see her son embarrass himself further.
So Drona who till then looked as stoned as his mom, comes into his avatar, by donning a Mahabharata costume (so that’s why the name!! and of course not the other way around, since there is no other reason why he should be a Drona and not say "The-Indian-Hancock", but I digress), overcomes his fear of water by coming face to face with himself in his costume (guess that was scarier than any water could ever be) and visits Baghdad styled secret cities. After which the director having by then lost faith in the human race, introduces a horse into the script, mass appeal so to speak , presumably hoping for some equestrian following for his vapid script. The horse is whiter than the Drona and tries to conceal him for the rest of the film, and manages quite successfully I guess, since the only other thing I remember about the film is a black and white chessboard fight and I-want-to-be-heath-leger-Rizz-Raizada making grotesque faces..

The Broken Song

I'll write a song for you. A song with words so green and fresh that it would remind you of the times you walked with me and the air was full of promise and the world was full of laughter and dreams were but an inch away from reality and home was warmth and shelter and love was the clear, bubbling water of the brook, unhindered and unshackled.
The words would twist around that happy moment and there would be words and games, a play on words, there would be less spontaneous prose and more calculated undertones, there would be lines between the lines, spinning a tale of sorts, spinning the picture into havoc and it would remind you of hurt and tears and willful acts , of times when laughter was more contrived and conversation more guarded, when the brook was dry and the remaining water listless , and the world held foreboding and the air was heavy with the smell of rain.
The words would slowly unravel as the tone would become calmer , there would be philosophy, there would be experience , words of erudition backed by learning, words of age and age old, words picked carefully with a wealth of meaning, for those few who understood(if it was and worth understanding in the first place )or thought they did, and it would remind you of patience and discretion and of wisdom over emotions, of icy cool water washing away the distortions in the picture, which would emerge new though faded and not so colorful , divested of its vibrancy but toned down and pleasant and the brook would fill again , but the water would not dance over the pebbles but be frozen into ice and the world would be a set of rules and the air would be devoid of feeling.
I would then raise the music to a crescendo, the beats would shake you from your reverie and tear through that page of written words, and it would remind you of the music in you, within you ..but would you remember how to dance??

PS: After this long hiatus, I accidentally deleted all the comments while reviewing them, but thanks to all those who took the time out to read these ramblings, and the time to tell me what you thought of it. Trust me it means a lot!!

The Chronicles of BW- Part 1

BW decided that it was time for some soul searching. Ever since her entry into the real world so to speak she had been riddled with AOL banners, power yoga techniques, meditation pamphlets, reiki, kundalini, you name it. So she set out on a journey to discover the deeper meaning of "life". Not that she had much of a life anyway, or so said some equally lifeless colleagues.
So she bought a Ferrari , since that showed that you were serious, it was like an induction of sorts. Since a journey it would have to be, to attain the elusive nirvana. After all it did one good to mix business with pleasure. Till she morphed into a saint-with-a-ferrari , she might as well make the most of it.
So the third dimension it was and Pratchett's discworld seemed the obvious starting point. It was a world where unreality was its one reality, the rest were just figments of one's imagination.
So Death was companionable, witches were friendly guardians though slightly coarse and satire was king. “Such was life”, thought BW. A sense of unreality was exactly what one needed to try out the most bizarre. Here at last one could become oneself or one’s vision of oneself at least.
So she rented a cottage, kept cats, danced with witches at moonlight and made tea 5 times a day. And waited for realization to set in. She would be free at last, and at peace, no strings attached.
Days passed and yet she felt nothing. She did feel a vast void welling up inside her. But nothing else.
She slept in one morning, and when she woke up the sun was in her eyes, its rays sharp and she felt a spasm of irritation. And she realized what she had been missing.
She felt the heat of the sun coarse through her, and went to the garden and plucked out the roses feeling their silken touch against her skin, and pricked herself with the thorns, oozing blood and welcoming the pain. She bathed in icy water and shed hot tears. The tears were real, as were the roses, the sun was real because of the heat, and she was real because she could emote and feel again. Joys, sorrow, pain, happiness, fear, anger made her what she was, her ability to think, feel, reflect and smile were her own, they were unique to her. She couldn’t do without a life which did not stir them to some degree. Without them she had as much personality as those rapidly wilting rose petals.
So she decided on the next fad. After all philanthropy had many takers and what could be better than helping the underprovided little kids. Why she could even adopt a few after she was sufficiently famous.
So she plunged into the good works, cried buckets at her first encounter with misery and set about her duties zealously, and it must be admitted a tad self righteously. She was vociferous about their rights and their privileges and would tell anyone who listened how rewarding it was.
But days passed and her unhappiness grew. For how could she admit to herself that their unhappiness no longer moved her, that she was hard hearted enough to become immune to it.
Familiarity kills emotions. Familiarity leads to numbness. Or was it just a sense of belonging since you could never pity anything you were a part of?
There would be feelings if there was love in the first place. In this case there was none.
So what was the solution? To find something you truly loved, something which would stir your emotions to the right degree, something you would never get tired of? And then you would find your calling, your own personal Nirvava. Till then you would keep looking.

The Chronicles Of BW-Preface

So BW stepped out of her fairy tale land and into our world of dark knights and kung-fu pandas( ok this is a serious identity crisis). It is a world where Joker surpasses Batman (though I still maintain that Christian Bale was my draw) and Kismat Konnection manages to rake in moolah ( or so Google News would have me believe). But seriously what were they thinking!!Given my attraction for inane films I was drawn like a bored fly to a pot of honey. So I was able to witness first hand the actress-who-should-be-the-mom working on her sex appeal(??) to seduce the actor-who-should-be the-son. Wild hairdos dont work( though the collection of hair slides is another story), pious than thou , helping the aged, the mother teresa of the NRI image doesnt work (the aged themselves get on ones nerves, they are like the Chopra kids, I have spoken about that species at length in previous posts) And so the director had to resort to the totally believable plot of her being the guy's lucky charm to help us understand why he falls for her.
Lucky charmer (heh) does have a purpose in life quite apart from being the arm-candy-cum-mascot of the failed hero. In fact she has too many of them. She divides her time between caring for the aged homeless and relaxes by waving to the remaining on solitary beaches , presumably to include them in her ever encompassing frame (..of love of course what did you think ?) , romancing the first bf and running protest marches, romancing the second bf and slapping the first..
Such is the scintillating storyline..But it is didactic too and before we leave we have one of the aged beach wavers espousing the cause of not just the profit motive in business (CSR anyone??)..I mean talk about insights..This is one community-love story..
But we digress..when dont I??
So back to BW ..but thats another story..