Monday Morning Activity

One ought to be glad if one finds oneself with no work at hand on a Monday morning. That, is exactly the condition I am in right now. But this once, just this once, I find myself so bored out of my wits that I'm really wishing some work comes my way soon. In the interim, I have decided to crack my knuckles and subtract one from the population of my long-overdue drafts.

You know sometimes when you're sleeping and you can't shake of the "what if something is lurking in the other room" feeling, every little creak makes you get up and wonder what that was; that's when you know you've seen a good horror flick. That happens very rarely with me, almost never. I saw Paranormal Activity the other night, lights switched off and all (have you seen the words "spoiler alert" flashing yet?). I'd already threatened my sister with a royal beating if she woke me up to switch on the lights when she wanted to go and have a drink of water in the middle of the night. The aforementioned condition agreed upon, we started up on the 90 minute thriller. You know what? Not half bad a movie, this. I was a little disappointed when I noticed at the very beginning that this one was shot in first person like the Blair Witch Project, but the scenes shot in night-vision while the couple was sleeping, though not as creepy as Paris Hilton's movie, were quite something. A great horror movie is probably one that relies heavily on suggestion rather than gore. The beauty of a movie like that is that it recognizes your brain's amazing ability to play games with you. So throughout the movie, you don't really see a ghost. A good horror movie has a really well-written ending. I would have gladly rated this one as one of the best horror movies that I have seen, if I had seen one of the better versions. Apparently the movie has three different endings. The theatrical version is different from the original and the version that I saw. The ending in my case was rather anti-climactic, and took away much of the intensity of the pre-climax. But the movie is quite a great watch. That's reflected by the fact that it grossed over 192 million, after having been made on a budget of just 15,000 dollars. I definitely recommend this one for any horror movie fan. Go watch it.

Just as I write that, work has arrived. Happy Monday.

You Can't...

...always get what you want.


But if you try sometimes, you might just find...


...you get what you need.

That Could Be Me

This is one of those rare posts on my blog; the rarity of which keep the word "musings" out of my blog title (not saying that my blog title is terribly original, but the very thought of two words in particular as part of my blog title makes me cringe, "random" being the other). So yes, this time around, I choose to muse. This is also where I issue a formal spoiler alert for Up in the Air, which I saw last night.

I have to admit, I liked the movie. I can't quite call it a "feel-good" movie, because it doesn't exactly end on the happiest note. Rather, it ends on a hopeful note. Having said that, the movie carries you along quite beautifully, probably because of a very simple storyline. I won't go so far to say that it's one of the best movies of our time, but it is definitely one of those movies that get you thinking. So as I sat there and cruised through the movie, my thought process started wandering in a direction which may or may not have been the intention of the movie-maker.

At various points of time in my life, whilst having the odd conversation or two, with the odd friend or two, I have found myself discovering their struggle against their hardships. In some cases, they seem trivial; generated by their own needlessly complicated perception of the situation. In other cases, it really seemed like life had dealt them a really bad hand at the given time. During some of these conversations, I have been stuck in a complex rut of my own; which is when these conversations have had the deepest impact. Watching these people fighting out much harder battles than my own and eventually winning them, has been a constant source of hope. The awe and the hope notwithstanding, these conversations have quite often also filled me with dread and trepidation. When I hear these experiences, a strange realization hits me in the face like a ton of bricks. Things could be much worse than they are right now. A question stares me in the face- if I'm finding it hard to bear the situation now, do I have what it takes to fight it out when things become worse?

Last night, I watched sequences depicting people getting fired and reacting to it. I wasn't surprised when I later found out that the people in these scenes were people who had recently been fired because of the recession (found the fact here), given that the emotions seemed so genuine. As I watched those sequences exposing how vulnerable your life is, I found myself thinking, "At some point of time in my life, that could be me". And the same question plagued me again. If I woke up tomorrow with bills to pay and a family to feed with no conceivable way of doing it, would I have what it takes to fight? I was reminded of my own father just over a decade ago when things had hit rock bottom. I saw him at home when I came back from school, every single day for the three months that he was unemployed. Not once did I see his spirit falter. He picked himself up, dusted the dirt off and at the end of that struggle, found himself the best job he'd ever had. Can I do the same if I'm faced with the same?

What is the point I'm trying to make?

That the first thing I want to do with my life is to know that it's vulnerable and yet not be fazed by it. I want to get rid of the "that could be me" fear. That makes my backpack a lot lighter.

Today...

...majority of Delhi's autorickshaws stayed off the road, because no one gave into their demand to raise meter rates, so that their "arre sir, meter se kaun jaata hai" excuse could fetch them more. On the plus side, the roads at 9am and 5pm were the emptiest that I have seen for a really long time. One smooth ride.

...I noticed an amusingly large number of cows and bulls squatting in the middle of the road blocking traffic. For all my dear non-Indian readers, I'd like you to know that it amuses us only when the number of the said cows crosses a certain threshold. Also noticeable, was the fact that they mostly appeared in pairs, or in even numbers (barring the one bull that was sauntering against traffic on the wrong side of the road) and refused to budge. So we did what we do best- let them be, and jugaado-ed our way around them. One suspects that many calves may see the light of day very soon.

...I decided to give up the inertia that has for long, prevented me from writing anything.

...is April Fool's Day.