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Saturday 22 February 2014

What I want to be when I grow up

I want to be rich.

Upper middle-class won't do.

Upper middle-class can get you branded clothes, access to expensive restaurants, high-end technology, a reasonably fancy car and an occasional foreign holiday. None of which I particularly desire.

Rich will get me the mansion in New Friends Colony that I have had my heart set on, since the age of twelve. Rich will get me the holiday home in Goa.
Most importantly, rich will get me my private movie theatre.

I don't mean a home theatre. I mean a proper theatre that you have to commute to, the one with the darkened halls and the giant screen, screening the newest trailers (and the anti-tobacco lectures).
Just minus the people.

Okay fine, I am perfectly happy watching Dhoom 3 or Phata Poster Nikla Hero or Chak de India with other people. I can even ignore the crying, screaming children then. But not all films are given to collective viewing. Or maybe not all movie-goers are given to watching all kinds of films. Children certainly are not. Nor were the adults at the theatre where I caught Highway.
What is with all the talking? What is so important that people have to immediately tell their friends, during Veera's  (Alia Bhatt) outpouring about a childhood trauma? (I would understand if they were sniggering about the dialogue, in a film like Prince or Love Story 2050 or Race 2, I really would). And what's with the inappropriate laughing? Twenty minutes into the film, when a goon is pawing Veera, there was laughter from the audience. The scene wasn't even being played for laughs (There was a brief sequence earlier with the man, that was). Here, Veera was visibly disgusted. And so was I, with my co-audience. That apart, I loved Highway. Even though I went in expecting a love story, and got...I don't exactly know what.

I can't possibly talk about the film giving the crucial bits away (I know because I spent an hour on that post). Just go watch, preferably by yourself, in a theatre.


Friday 21 February 2014

It is the mark of an educated mind to be
able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
                                                                                
                                                                         -Aristotle

If you keep an open mind, people will throw a lot of trash in it.

-Anonymous

Tuesday 18 February 2014

 

When the facts change, I change my mind.
                                             What do you do, Sir?
                                                                            

                                                  -John Maynard Keynes

Sunday 16 February 2014

You Know You're Growing Up When^...

·         You have insurance.

·         You use the insurance premium to save taxes.

·         Rebellion means watching television beyond 11 pm on a weeknight. And then feeling guilty about it the morning-after.

·         You exhibit withdrawal symptoms after skipping the morning cuppa.

·         You understand that job satisfaction is not the abstraction that social workers have, and investment bankers don't.
The social workers don't have it either.

·         You are comfortable being called a nerd. Or any other label you may have dreaded during your school-days.

·         You frequently have trouble recalling the names of actors/ Big Boss participants/ regular panellists on We the People/ News-hour/ Big Fight.

“What's the name of the hero in that Parineeti Chopra movie?”
-“Dhruv something, no Varun-something, arrey the tall guy in the Karan Johar movie with overgrown school-kids.”

·         The only bit of gossip you have heard through the week is that of the corruption charges on a business tycoon and a Minister being true.

·         You are alone in the elevator with a CCTV camera and you resist making faces into it.

·         Your mother hints vaguely at "settling down" when you share your rambling, long-winded, career plans with her.

·         You tip the waiter.




^Didn't she say she wasn't doing these bullet-point posts anymore?
*Deafening silence*