BOLLYWOOD AWAKENS

Of late we have had a number of mainstream Bollywood Movies which have moved away from the prerequisite formula for a Masala Hindi movie. There has been a phenomenal change in the way the movies are made nowadays .These are movies which have an actual storyline, u know “An actual story” (and that too in Hindi Movie).I thought I had never live to see this day. These are movies that either inspire us or at least make us think. They have been successful in ‘bridging the gap’ or ‘breaking the barrier’ between commercial cinema and thought provoking art cinema. Earlier the general thought used to be that art movies are not money makers and that mainstream Bollywood movies are not thought provoking.

A point to be noted here is that do movies affect our lives? A very superficial answer might be No and it will seem to be an obvious one at that. But on a closer look one might feel that some movies do actually affect our life. They make you think about yourself, your lifestyle, the community at large and how we are part of the larger picture. Some of the movies which illustrate my points are:

SWADES (WE THE PEOPLE)


















The story here revolves around an NRI who leaves behind his riches and a comfortable life for the betterment and welfare of his country, his own motherland. How many of us would have the courage to even think about going through with such a step. Most of us would ridicule this and say that such things are only possible in movies. What I propose is an intermediate step between the two extremities. One doesn’t need to give up everything to help the society. A good cause done with a clean heart is all that it takes to be better person.

RANG DE BASANTI (A GENERATION AWAKENS)

Perhaps the best movie that I have watched till date. It displays careless young college students realizing that a country is made its people and its citizens are the ones who have to work towards its progress. Every time I see this movie it inspires me to do something selfless. Such movies fill you with a sense of pride for your country and make you look at the larger picture and how you can be a part of it.

LAGE RAHO MUNNABHAI

A fresh Perspective towards Gandhi-ism or as is called ‘GandhiGiri’ by the goonda Munna in the movie. This movie teaches the most important value that each one of us should have i.e. Truth. Our lives are becoming a bundle of lies. A lie to cover another lie and so on. Why can’t we just learn to say the truth? Maybe coz it’s difficult. As is said Truth Hurts (Sach hamesha kadwa hota hai).All we have to do is start speaking the truth. Whenever we know that I can lie and get from this situation we should try and gather up the courage to say the truth. It might be a big thing but it will help you in the long run.

Chak De India

The latest entrant in this list and it pleases me that a sports movie was able to implement the prerequisites to be on this list. Chak De was successful in breaking the caste and gender barriers embedded in the minds of the common man. It also brings to light the politics involved in the game and also the passion of the sportspersons for the game. The plight of the sportspersons of games other than cricket can be seen as they are never referred to as ‘Sports Stars’ like our cricketers. The deadly combination of hockey and girls was able to move a lot of people to actually go and watch sports other than cricket.



All these movies have something in common. They can either be inspirational, passionate, humorous or serious. But what all of them have in common is that ALL of them UNITE INDIA and empower each and every citizen of India.


So after a deep slumber Bollywood has woken up to the reality of the lives of common man and has started displaying this on celluloid. It feels great to watch such movies and hope for many more interesting and thought provoking movies to come in the future.

ARE WE CORRUPT????

Corruption is a plague which has affected our country in a very severe manner. It has clenched its jaws on almost the entire bureaucracy along with all the politicians. In these ranks there are hardly a handful of people who have moral integrity and honesty left in their hearts. But is corruption only limited to these few people who “govern” our country? It has slowly but surely descended into lower ranks as well. I feel that corruption is type of cancer which starts at the top and multiplies infinitely while moving towards the bottom.

We generally are made to believe that the easiest and the guaranteed way of getting things done is to pass the bucks under the table (for the naive reader it means to bribe somebody). This may happen either as a live demonstration from our own family members or friends, or else it maybe viewed regularly in the movies and the TV serials. With the abundance of news channels nowadays, we regularly get to see through their “sting operations “ that even the biggest of ministers or officials can be bribed into making deals through which they sell their own country along with each and every citizen of it.

Whether it is the media, or any Tom, Dick and Harry on the streets, everyone has two common complaints that the government is corrupt and the system is flawed. Our parents and their forefather’s favourite pastime had been blaming the corrupt government for its flaws. Their forefathers blamed the British rule for messing up the whole system. Maybe in this blame game we have lost the essence of the problem. These complaints might be true and maybe it has been so for the last few decades. But what do we do about it? This is the question that each and every INDIAN should ask himself/herself.

The past is beyond us and we can do nothing about it (until I start work on my time travelling donkey. I am thinking of mutating his genes by mating him with this Martian I found on my way home. But I think that would be part of another blog…). The future is upon us and the present is where the work needs to be done for improving our future. This is not the time to crib over our past and blame others for their mistakes. It is time for action. RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW!!!!

What we need to realise is that corruption has been embedded deep into each strata of our society and to completely eliminate it we have only one way. The way of truth, the way of purity. We have to first of all weed it out of ourselves, then our family, then our relatives and then our neighbours, friends and so on. This is not the time to question: What can I alone as an individual do? How can a single entity change the whole corrupt system? It is the time to believe that: I CAN change myself and my country with my actions. Understanding that change is not a ‘2 minute noodles’ but rather it is the ‘wine’ which gets its taste only after years of patience, is the first step to improving the system.
We have to be ready to do things the hard way and not look for the easy way out. We have to follow the law and believe in our judicial system (which off late has become really proactive). We can only expect the system to be fair if we first of all change ourselves.


This reminds me of the dialogue of Aamir Khan (DJ) in Rang De Basanti : “zindagi jeene ke do hi tarike hote hain. Ek, jo ho raha hai hone do, bardasht karte jao. Ya fir, zimmedari uthao usko badalne ki”(There are only two ways of living life. One, let whatever’s happening go on and keep tolerating and enduring it. Or else , take up the responsibility of changing it).


Kind of sums it up doesn’t it…………….

K.I.S.S.

As I sit in the comfort of my room writing this blog, I wonder if I am lucky to have all of this. All throughout my 21 years (or at least for the last decade) I have wondered why I couldn’t have the things that I liked (e-gadgets, sports goods, etc. and the usual stuff that any teenager craves for). I envied those who had them and despised myself for the lack of these “luxuries”. All my demands which were not met made me angry and frustrated. I was angry at my parents for not buying me those things and frustrated for not having the freedom to buy them myself. My parents have provided me with the best possible facilities that they could have provided. But I always wondered why I couldn’t have more.

Maybe this happens to all of us. Maybe everyone is swayed by the excitement and the fun of these luxuries. And maybe there is no real problem in craving for these things. But there is a larger issue at hand here. We are not kids anymore who will be swayed by such glamorous things.


We always envy those above us in the financial ladder (if not explicitly but sometimes in our hearts) and all we can do is frown upon those below us. This might be because we (not our parents) have not risen from those bottom levels and reached at this position. We were given these comforts from the start and we have learned to accept them as part and parcel of our lives.

Some may argue that our parents have worked hard for it and they don’t want their kids to go through what they have seen and been through. They just want to provide a nice environment for their kids to grow up and they want to fulfil all their wishes which they couldn’t fulfil for themselves. I completely agree with this if the kids understand how much their parents have sacrificed for them. Have we ever tried to imagine the hardships that our parents have gone through for us?

In a country like India where a large chunk of the population lives in rural areas, which are devoid of basic amenities like electricity and drinking water, and where kids of our age or younger are dying of hunger and their parents are helpless about it. I just want to convey to the kids of our generation and those of the forthcoming generations should understand the value of their parents hard earned money, spend it judiciously and not squander it away. We should be thankful each day of our life for getting two square meals a day.


Never during the last 21 years did I ever realise that there might be kid just some km’s away from me who might be in dire straits just because he has not had proper food for the last couple of days and is wondering (and in his little heart wishing for the best) whether his father has been able to earn enough for the family to decent meal after a week. In his little heart this kid is also angry with his parents. But the reasons are completely different as compared to mine. He is angry and frustrated at being born to parents who are not able to provide him proper food. He is envious of the rich kids who get everything they want. But the need of the boy is food (a basic necessity for life) as compared to mine of e-gadgets (hardly a necessity for life).

Have we ever thought about this kid when we go out for shopping and munch on chocolates, ice creams and burgers and purchase any of those unnecessary necessities that we have created for ourselves? Do we give the slightest thought to this kid and his family when we throw away a half used bottle of water or a half eaten burger?

I am not here to preach or to tell anyone on how to live their lives. I just want everyone to realise how blessed we are and what we could have been.

Another question that may arise here is: What should we do, it is not our fault that we are being provided these luxuries and we obviously cannot say no them.

My answer to this is that yes, no one will want to say no these things, but what we can do is to abstain from ostentation. In short, my mantra for achieving this is a simple four letter word.

K.I.S.S.

KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID


P.S.: For those of you who do not me I am not a social activist nor am I a politician (Thank God for that). I am just a kid who has realised that whatever I have is more than enough and whatever I need will never be enough.

HAIL SHANTARAM!!!!!!!!!

Hi ,

The following lines are not my work; these are just a few lines that I found to really good while I was reading SHANTARAM . Some of them are funny while some are really deep. The novel is simply awesome; I think everyone should give a read at least once. So here goes ………………………



· The only force more ruthless and cynical than the business of big politics is the politics of big business.

· Civilisation is defined by what we forbid , rather than what we permit

· When you judge the power of a person, you must judge their capacities as both a friend and as an enemy.

· Truth is a bully we all pretend to like.

· Now sadly there is all attitude and no style. It is the mark of the age in which we live that the style becomes the attitude, instead of the attitude becoming the style.(the context here was attitude and style of gangsters in their work)

· Optimism is the first cousin of love and it is exactly like love in three ways , its pushy, it has no real sense of humour an it turns up where you least expect it.

· The real trick in life is to want nothing and succeed in getting it.

· One of the reasons why we crave for love and seek it so desperately is that love is the only cure for loneliness and shame and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about you are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.

· When the wish and the fear are exactly the same, we call the dream a nightmare.

· The worst thing about corruption as a system of governance is that it works so well.

· Justice is not the only way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way by which we try to save them.

· Poverty and pride are devoted blood brothers until one, always and inevitably, kills the other.

· Nothing grieves more deeply and pathetically than one half of a great love that isn’t meant to be.

· One of the ironies of courage and the reason why we prize it so highly is that we find it easier to be brave for someone else than we do for ourselves alone.

· Guilt is the hilt of the knife that we use on ourselves and love is the often the blade, but it’s the worry that keeps the knife sharp and worry that gets most of us, in the end.

· Cruelty is a kind of cowardice. Cruel laughter is the way cowards cry when they are not alone and causing pain is how they grieve.

· It isn’t a secret, unless keeping it hurts.

· Men reveal what they think when they look away and what they feel when they hesitate. With women it’s the other way around.

· It’s a fact of being in love that we pay no attention to whatsoever to the substance of what a lover says, while being intoxicated to ecstasy by the way it’s said.

· Depression only happens to people who don’t know how to be sad.

· Love cannot be tested. Honesty can be tested and loyalty. But there is no test for love. Love goes on forever, once it begins, even if we come to hate the one we love. Love goes on forever because love is born in the part of us that does not die.

· Every human heartbeat is a universe of possibilities. He’d been trying to tell me that every human will has the power to transform its fate. I’d always thought that fate was something unchangeable; fixed for every one of us at earth, and as constant as the circuit of the stars. But I suddenly realised that life is stranger and more beautiful than that. The truth is that, no matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love.

· In the long run, motive matters more with the good deeds than it does with the bad. When all the guilt and shame for the bad we’ve done have run their course, it’s the good we’ve done that can save us. But then, when salvation speaks, the secrets we kept, and the motive we concealed, creep from their shadows. They cling to us, those dark motives for our good deeds. Redemption’s climb is steepest if the good we did is soiled with secret shame.