Monday, October 18, 2010

An amateur attempt

How will you define the movie? Movie, if you exclude the list of super natural, sci-fi ones, is depiction of real life with fictional characters that moves before you as a real life story as if everything is squeezed within a limited time-frame  For that time period, you suddenly become secondary and someone else takes your place to become primary to show his life – bad or good, left to you to decide. You watch the movie in one go, without taking breaks and mostly once. It suddenly transmits you in a different world that might be completely alien for that period. You laugh, you cry, you frustrate, you anger – all the feelings within few hours of time span that you otherwise would have felt them in your entire life. Certainly, it is one of the wonderful inventions of mankind.
After such a long time I watched a movie in a theater and the first one in the UK – interestingly, a Hindi one – Aakrosh. It was nice to see Priyadarshan taking a break from his routine comedy viands and moving into serious cinema. How can one forget that he had proved his dexterity on serious concepts with movies like Gardish, Virasat, Kala Paani and his National Award winner, Kanjeevaram? This one also is of same genre. It made me learn the word ‘Honour Killing’. And, after the movie I wondered whether it meant ‘killing for honour’ or ‘killing of honour’. Aakrosh is one of the movies that exerted a force on my emotion and almost made me cry.
The movie starts with a scenic view of Celebration of Dussehra in which the effigies of Rawana and his family are burn to ashes with fireworks, showing conquest of good over evil, followed by chaos created by Delhi college students for three missing students, Vinu and his friends, since 2 months then entry of two main characters, A Major and a CBI officer, who are given the charge of investigation. Then the movie goes on for further revelation and broadens itself to bigger perspective than missing boys. The story reveals one of sad love stories which moves toward tragic end. The hollow esteem tries to endure by all brutal means; in the end, virtue triumphs, but after losing everything. I leave rest of the story for you to watch, explore and feel, otherwise you would curse me for spoiling your entertainment.
This movie is more than a movie to me. My last three blogs are related to issues related to this. But, my blog may not quiver you from inside, but this movie can. It made me remember incidents that took place in the name of faith and honour.  For example, while watching the brutal genocide scene, I remembered Bathe massacre in 1997 that swept away a whole Dalit village within few hours. Besides, its cinematic synchronizations which give you a nice roller coaster ride of impotence, anger and vengeance. Vinu’s friends being of upper caste and killed by their own men by caste shows everything comes after human’s greed. Bipasa is bruised by her husband, unabashedly corrupt cop Paresh Rawal, who in turn is beaten for revenge by Ajay Devgn. Even the last scene was quite touchy, when devastated mother and wife took final step of killing everyone involved. There are many more. Although, there are some flaws e.g. a CBI officer with very high authority, is made mockery by local policemen and vicious gang lords, reporters are beaten before the heroes, but they did nothing and waited for appropriate moment, this movie is worth watching.
Now, you must be wondering why the subject line is ‘AAA' or 'An Amateur Attempt’. This meant my attempt of providing a review not Pridarshan’s attempt of making it. He can never be an amateur as long as movies are concerned. This is my attempt to move on from amateurism to purism. Your comment are always invited as, for me, they value more than my blogs.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Ayodhya: An eye opener to every Indian

In last 6 months, I have read almost 6-7 books on India. Before reading the book, I flipped the pages of preface in curiosity to know what provoked the writers that they put their vital time and energy to write about India. Some referred its growth in last 20 years and its claim of becoming super power in next 20 years, while some mentioned its diverse culture and rich history. While going through the book, I realized that their claim of their books were paeans of Indian achievements and valued culture vanished after every one or two pages. They moved towards the genuine topic they see in our everyday life. For them, one of the hot topics was Ayodhya. They could not resist themselves from discussing about RSS, VHP, BJP, Lord Rama, Babri Masjid and many topics associated to it. Yesterday, Verdict came out after 18 years of long wait that usually happens in Indian court. But this time, It was good for everyone as in last 18 years many would have moved much ahead for some important necessity of life than sticking to it for justice. Many of them, who have firm belief in what should have been the verdict, don't know what their justification is.

I am neither a journalist nor a historian, who can provide you minute details of what happened in last 2000 years, so that I can conclude whom the disputed land belongs to - Hindus or Muslims or both. But, I can say for sure, 1992's Babri Masjid demolition was a sign of pure cowardice to achieve greedy political edge. Whatever happened was a sharp blow on the face of secularism, in which India believed. Many claimed their favors by strongly stating that it was a process of restoration of one of the Hindus' most sacred places by wracking and ruining 550 year old monument. These people did not even know if Lord Ram ever existed on earth or he is just an art of fiction whose legacy was old and strong enough to disguise anyone. Even though, if suppose Ram took avatar, quite long before, what was the point of destruction? A religion never expects us to do something of this kind. A religion never asks us to attack on others' belief or take revenge.

When I was in second year, I was told by one of my seniors about ragging. He told me if I wanted to control our juniors and instill fear inside them then I should find the weakest link. In other words, remedy was to find out a shy, introvert and scared guy and slap him hard in front of his other batch mates. 99% were the chances that I could control them for entire ragging period without any fuss. Those words made me remember how I had been hit first time in front of all. I had to swallow that humiliation without any resistance as I had not had enough confidence and courage to oppose. Though it was just a part of college ritual and it ended after sometime, but when I see this scenario in context of what happened in Ayodhya, I feel the situation of minorities was as good or bad as first year juniors. If Hindus has been in minority in this country, I suspect that anyone would have thought of restoring Ram in this way.

We can't go into the past and change it, but definitely we can change the flow of future by doing good in our present. This is a time of realization that digging old cemeteries will give us rotten dead bodies, nothing else. There are many creative and positive things to do, then why to waste time in such fights. I wish there would not be any more Ayodhya anywhere. It is a wakeup call not only for Indians, but also for every human being.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Marriage - Love Vs Arranged, Intercaste Vs Intracaste: An Overview

Recently, Nirupama Pathak from Koderma, Jharkhand, an alumnus from Indian Institute of Mass Communication New Delhi, a journalist with Business Standard, is killed by her family members. She was opposed to get married to her batch mate Priyabhanshu from her institute, as he, a Kayastha, was not from her caste Brahmin. In order to stop her from getting married outside the caste, Nirupama’s family did not find anything but to kill her.

As we are moving ahead, we feel that the distinction between Inter-cast and Intra-cast is slowly fading away, because people are becoming educated, mingling with other cultures, beliefs and principles, and so open to accept it gradually, though old generation still exists to resist against the gradual changes. But, this incident fired up the debate in many minds about Love and arranged marriage. Some people of my generation also still have a firm belief in old value system, inherited from their cultures and want to stick with them, whereas some want to embrace new changes to eradicate the limitations put by the castes and creeds. Whatever be the case, a life is lost in this fight – a loss that can never be recovered, a heinous crime that can never be pardoned.

Let me put my point of view on this. 'Love and arranged' and 'Inter-cast and Intra-cast', these four words that I mentioned above have some connections with each other. Unfortunately, they get related in very limited sense. If you put these words in a simple matrix, you should have four different combination. But, only two exist in our society. Love and arranged marriage always go with Inter-caste and Intra-cast respectively. And other two possibilities: Inter-caste arranged and Intra-caste love marriage are too rare to be considered. Our society can never think of Inter-caste-arranged-marriage presently and probably in near future. It still has to wait for considerable time to appear. I believe, arrival of this will end the caste system from the society, and will be able to establish ideal atmosphere where people will be distinguished by their expertise and abilities. Intra-caste-love-marriage is the best form available, but I never understood why people find their love outside their communities to trouble their parents. I wonder if anyone would have asked his/her counterpart’s community she/he belongs to, before being committed. One of the reasons might be the existence of a number of religions, castes, sub-castes and sub sub-castes. It narrows down the probability to the negligible. So ideally, there exist two forms of marriage - fighting against each other to proof their superiority. One existed since long and dispersed its roots so dominantly that it has been ruling since long in our mind despite many flaws. Another is trying to come out of its womb to fight against the existing one to get some place to surface.

Let me explore the other dimension of marriage – without considering whether it is love or arranged. For me, it is sanctity of a union of two incomplete halves doomed separately on this earth. One has to bear the pain and put sufficient effort to get the other part to make life complete and meaningful. It must be independent of any religion, any boundary and any kind of constraint, which can distort its shape. Caste is one of them. God never created us with any label; it is us who named it. It is us, who made it complex.

If caste is such an obstacle for anything specially marriage, then how did it emerge in our society? One of appropriate explanations is that our ancestors created the caste system in accordance with the role different coteries played in the society. Initially, it was based on the profession of the person he chose, not on his family background he belonged to. But, as it happens with every noble cause, upper and powerful caste exploited the opportunities and confined their knowledge and abilities to themselves and passed on only to their descendants. Marriage was the best tool to execute what they wanted. Therefore, one’s birth decided one's worth.

What is needed to do is to break the shackle and produce a system independent of any such fuss – a society, which will be able to dissolve all these and become transparent and clean with no specific constituents.

P.S: There might be different points of views from you on this. Thus, you are requested to comment.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Winds Of Change

In recent past, many things happened in sheer promptness. Firstly, Indian authority showed some reluctance in choosing Pakistani players for third edition of IPL, simultaneously followed by the statement from King Khan for his grievances about some of his team mates had been shown exit gate that would affect his team the most. Then, Sena proclaimed SRK’s statement unpatriotic and suggested him to shift source of his livelihood to the neighbouring country. After that, Rahul Gandhi’s journey to Mumbai, his local train adventure and his ideology of Indianness fuelled the fire. What followed afterwards were King Khan was upset for his team having been kept away from some regular players, for his forthcoming MNIK and for his statement having been distorted, Sena got the chance to boost up his adamant dogma and Rahul addressed a group of college student to think beyond regionalism and help this country uplift from the current position. These events happened in such a harmony that it can easily depict the current circumstances of the country. Though many faces are trying to save India and make it at par with other developed country, some or other factors are still responsible for its sauntering pace. Sometimes, it seems battle of good and evil never ended, though it started long back, and our Gods and their counterparts gave the responsibilities to us and took the permanent rest.

Let me be back to reality and take the honour to scrutinize my own country, nonetheless I will not utter anything new. Everybody knows the true, although I like to put it into my words.

Everyone says India is a unique country of diversity where people of different language, culture, clan, geography, and most important, different mindset live together. I rather call India peculiar than unique. The reason I can give that most of the people don’t have time to enjoy its uniqueness lest they will have to sleep with half fed or empty stomach. For more than half of the population, above mentioned events are either unknown or of no use, since they can’t even gather what is called essential for existence. In such scenario, it is very easy for political parties to make them believe in what they think is right. Worse is the case when you have many factions. Numerous factions mean numerous parties with numerous ideologies, always contradicting to each other and leading nowhere. Be it any state of India, chaos created by these parties is more or less same. These parties did nothing good irrespective of what their intentions were – good or evil, result came out the same in each case.

Still, It is our fortune that we got some great entrepreneurs who brought some opportunities for us by sacrificing their lives, even when environment was not business friendly. Companies like Infosys, Wipro, Tata group, Birla, HCL etc are the results of incessant perseverance of some great sons of India, who dared to start their business in total unfriendly and protective environment. But, they are not sufficient. Also, these developments have limited themselves to some of the cities resulting in creating significant density difference across the region. All development projects are being located to opportune places only. Lack of proper infrastructure, basis amenities, regularities in law and order made people reluctant to move into 2-3 tier zones. Despite maintaining good growth rate, we are not able to stop migration to cities like Mumbai, Delhi and NCRs, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and a few others from deprived regions, mainly Bihar, UP, MP and North East. It is estimated that around 400 families move to Mumbai everyday in search of job. So, it is almost obvious for local residents to show wrath against migrants that unknowingly became leading cause for disruption of the normal life. Indian cities are so chaotic that you have to struggle for everything, no matter how insignificant it is. In such conditions, if any political party hold the migrants responsible, it seems obvious to locals and they provide full support. The word ‘India’ started losing its significance in the aftermath and its states’ names became more prevalent. What are happening in India are the results of mistakes over mistakes. We put all the eggs in one basket, now we are trying to separate fresh from rotten. Let’s take the example of US. If they have New York as their financial hub, they also have LA, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Atlanta etc, which take the responsibility in case of any burden. Unlike US, we have only Delhi apart from Mumbai. Rest of the cities are still under process and they will take time to reach at that level.

Now another big issue: Pakistan. It is an irony, how two parts, which fought together for freedom, perceived exactly different paths, once they got apart. Pakistan did every possible thing to harm India in order to grab Kashmir. Pakistan’s recent attacks in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Ahmadabad and many more depict his malevolent intentions. In such situation, expecting a cordial relationship with the neighbour in any form could lead to disaster. Same applies to cricket as well. What is the big deal in keeping their players aloof without any fuss? SRK’s issue should not have started at all at very first place, though it is related to a sport not politics. It is now confirmed that no players for Pakistan will participate. Even though, we certainly will have the great season this year also. May be Indians get the chance in place of Pakistani players and beat the expectations. Who knows?

In the midst of all these, we can still expect hopefully that we will solve all these issue in next 10-15 years, so that our next generations don’t become prey of this useless chaos. We can still hope we will have harmony with other nations including the nearest ones. We have the bigger labour force than our counterparts have. And, the best thing is that our generation is energetic, enthusiastic and ambitious. Winds of change is blowing at full pace to pluck every obstruction from its root.

So, why to wait??? Let us prepare for the worst and hope for the best!!!!!!!!!

Saturday, February 6, 2010

An anecdote from me

Long ago, I heard a story. It was about a scientist - a lone scientist, who every time used to try something to reach to his destination. He was doing some research about existence of the sixth most abundant element ‘Carbon’. During his quest, he used to spend most of his time in the lab and try weirdest things possible. He found many unique properties. He proved that graphite in nothing but one of its allotropes. Having seen his discoveries, his king became so happy and threw a party for him; and in his reverence, he gifted him a beautiful and costly diamond. The scientist returned home, sat before the chimney fire, saw the diamond and started thinking what to do with this. He could not find any usefulness. After sometime he became very irritated with himself and threw it in fire. When he was cleaning the area in the morning, he happened to see that the diamond became totally black. Then, some idea triggered into his mind. He investigated further. Finally, he found the third allotrope that was nothing but diamond.

Before, you start digging unknown pages in history, just to find out the authenticity of this story, I must confess I have no proof about whether it truly happened during the entire history of Carbon or not. But, this story taught me many great lessons - even I can list them. Winners don’t do different things, but they do things differently - obviously, most of the times amusing and to the some extent insanely. They see things from a different frame of reference. I doubt any achiever would have evaded himself of being declared insane in his entire life. He must have gotten the tag of sheer lunacy from the eyes of sympathy at one point of time or other.

When you follow the aberration, you find yourself alone. You can hardly see anyone alongside you. At the best of your luck, you will have few people around following some different aberrations. It might give you little solace, but in the end, you will be all alone. Your journey will be tortuous and torturous and full of new challenges and adventures. You might succeed or fail. If you succeed, you will make a new path for your followers. And you fail, you will be known as a born loser or an absolute fighter at your own terms. In both the cases, you will be an example to be given – either about following you or exactly opposite. People will love you or hate you. But, they will not be able to ignore you. This is nothing but a generic story of any success or failure.

So, now a question arose in my mind. Is it only success, which has been given utmost importance, which shapes our life? I suppose ‘No’. When you fail, you eliminate the ways which not to be followed. For example, Edison had tried almost ten thousand ways before he succeeded to invent a bulb. When he was asked about the same, he replied I found ten thousand ways from which a bulb could not be made; they only showed me the way, how to make a bulb.

The most important thing in life is struggle. It is present at every step. You never know when you will hit the right chord. You just need a single opportunity, just a single impulse to blow all the obstacles you have been obstructed by. You suddenly start feeling lucky. It is rightly said that luck is the rendezvous where preparedness meets opportunity. You may not be sure of when you will get opportunity, but you can definitely prepare yourself for the awaiting opportunity.

Now, I must end my blog here. I know it is full of serious fundas. My friends are definitely going to kill me after reading this. This one, I have written for myself. Whenever I feel low and dejected I can read it and increase the flow of blood in my veins.

As usual, your comments are required. They are not options but compulsions.

Friday, January 1, 2010

About Me

So, here I am!

Finally, I started blogging. I started it - Just like any other blogger, who wants to put his thoughts in words, and most importantly online. The advent of IT and unremitting adaptation of it by human like us replaced the diary pages with online blogs. Nothing has changed but one that everyone wants everyone to know what he has written, unlike diary pages, which used to be his confidante.

It is almost a ritual to introduce yourself in the very first blog before getting any comment like who on earth you are. So here I am – to introduce myself, to answer the most difficult question that has ever framed, to let others know what I think of myself and decide whether I am wrong or right in my own perception. (Actually, Sunil’s first blog inspired me to write this one :) :)

‘I’ never bothered me till I reached to final year of my college, when I had to face interviews to get a decent job. When it was asked for the first time, I really wondered I had no proper answer. I asked my friends and they had the same problem. It gave me enough idea that it is a not an easy task. Then I sat down and started thinking from the beginning where I started my journey from. My journey till Pune or you can say till Infosys is the longest possible one I could take.

I got almost all possible privileges from my parents. Those were enough sources for my fulfilling the dreams I used to see when I was a kid. My father is a great raconteur and he use to tell me his life struggle about how he fulfilled his dreams. I wanted to become an engineer. So, I prepared for different engineering entrances and it gave me a ticket to enter into NIT, Surat. Four years of college life was more of enjoyment than learning, at least I can say it for me. After college, I changed two jobs before settling myself in Infosys.

I used to be a frustrated soul who always cursed everyone but me for my deteriorating performance. I used be a guy who wanted to achieve something big without knowing what it was. I lacked focus, determination, dedication and commitment. That did nothing good but dug hole where I was standing. It took me ample time to realize that I was on the wrong path and almost the entire college life to correct it. When I look back and analyse it, it gives me immense pleasure that I finally made everything right.

I am the guy with high ambition that is yet to be achieved. I have the same hunger for success as others have. If you ask me to list my attributes, I can say I am honest, naive and sweet. (But don’t know if you have the same opinion). Almost most of the time, I am quite an extrovert who can’t hide anything. You can read me as an open book. I have a lot of friends who always curse me for not being in contact with them (Here, I must thank orkut and facebook, for they abridged the gap:) ). I love to roam around, mostly alone- little weird, but it’s true. My family and my friends have always been my strength in any situation. Other than these, I am fully a GenX guy. I believe in work hard and party harder. Our existence on earth is transitory, so why to become very serious for anything that will not last forever? Our life is a gift to all of us from the God who had faith upon us that we would participate to make this world a better place for our descendants.

That is about me in brief. You comments are always required to complete rest of it. :)