Music has this amazing quality of empathy. When you are feeling romantic, there is nothing that can celebrate the sweetness of romance and take you away to Peter Pan’s never never land like a soft melodious soul stirring voice made magical in the folds of enchanting tunes. You can feel your heart skip hippety hippety hop alongwith the music. Here the music enhances your feelings, adds colour and rhythm to it and makes you really really happy and makes your imagination take a roller coaster ride of emotional highs.

What happens when you are feeling sad? Again music lends voice to your anguish. You can cry your heart out listening to a number that moves you and reflects your emotional turmoil but the best part is your tryst with music when in rage. I find metal the most demonstrative release of rage. When you are feeling happy or sad, music enhances those feelings, make them burn through you, giving you a high. When you feel anger, music, the heavy metal kinds, actually heals. I was listening to the Helloween band which has some amazing numbers. The best bit was the sarcastic humour laced ever so subtly within the lyrics. It makes you laugh in all the anger you feel. The pace and tempo of the music is so soothing to the soul….you got to experience it… to see what I mean, so next time you feel that rage building inside you, tune in to  album, The Dark Ride ( Band - Helloween), for a recipe on coming to terms with the rush of emotions inside you. HEAL YOURSELF.

Crash
“It’s the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.”

With these intriguing lines the movie opens on the scene of a traffic jam in post-9/11 Los Angeles and runs through a very insightful, engaging sequence of events in the lives of the people who are part of this scene. It is a movie that speaks of prejudices revolving around racial discrimination, how people develop the feelings due to the circumstances they find themselves in and how by a twist of fate the prejudices come undone giving them a chance to heal themselves the hard way. The movie describes how normal socially tolerant people overcome by the air of general mistrust, reveal an ugly side to themselves when they vent out frustration and misplaced anger on the innocent.

It is a fantastic script, amazing intertwining of plots that keep the viewer engaged and put them through an entire range of emotions. You hate a character one moment and feel for them the next. Some of the scenes are so involving and kindle such strong emotions that you thank god for being safe and secure in your own country atleast for now! A beautiful movie that takes an empathetic view of human emotions.

Mystery Men
A funny narrative of a bunch of wannabe superheros who eventually find themselves in a situation where they can make their dreams come true. Funny, laugh out loud, lines dot the entire movie. The use of “fork” by blue Raja (Hank Azaria) in his British accent coated dialogues, the bowler daughter and father exchange, Mr. Furious’s (Ben Stiller) expressions and pick up lines he uses to win a date with his sweetheart, the Invisible boy’s concept of invisibility, Spleen’s flatulence ( a gypsy’s curse) etc., is hilarious and fits in nicely with the script.

Captain Amazing who is considered the beloved superhero of Champion City suddenly finds that he has wiped the city of all the crime and therefore does not have a job to do. He realizes that he is losing out on his sponsorship and notices himself slipping into oblivion. He decides to rectify the situation by releasing some of the anti-social elements including the worst villain of all Casanova Frankenstein. His attempt back fires and he finds himself captured by CF. This is where the wannabe superheros hatch a plan to save Captain Amazing ending up in an interesting situation, which they have created and must undo to save Champion City.

The funny script that spoofs a variety of situations and all kinds of superheroes, the comical presentation and a nice cast form the crux of the hilarity.

Sin City
The first thing that strikes you about this movie is the uncanny resemblance of reading a comic and at the same time feeling overwhelmed by the difference the medium can create to your viewing experience. For eg., In one of the batman movies you realize that the character is saying aloud whatever is expressed in thought bubbles within a comic strip and find it laborious and artificial. In Sin City you find the camera work, heavy use of black and white with distinct reds, and behind the scenes technology that tries to create the comic strip feel in the characters and background, simply striking.

The movie dwells on the dark side involving crime, deception and cold blooded psycho criminals of Basin city. It is collection of stories intertwined and narrated in a spiral of events, which emerge into clear storylines when the plot thickens and unfolds. Bruce Willis and his sexy voice lend a certain quality to the visual presentation and the background music adds to the eerie feeling that the movie imparts. The movie is said to borrow influences from the Film Noir period (1940s-1950s) with heavy drama, lots of flashbacks with voice over narratives, femme fatale situations that are characteristic of this genre. A thriller which grips the user in an engaging story telling experience.

Life is beautiful

An endearing movie that moved me to tears. The movie starts out with the charming, effervescent Guido (Roberto Benigni) wooing school teacher Dora (Nicoletta Braschi). The romance is a delight to watch with Guido’s innate humour, and his affectionate way of addressing Dora as his “Principessa”. They get married and have a son and we get glimpses of the very happy life they lead together. Set in 1930s the characters become victims of the war situation, when Germany invades Italy and takes Guido, who is jewish, to the concentration camp.

The family is separated and find themselves in different zones of the camp. Guido makes a valiant effort to keep his family together, communicating with his son and making him believe it is all a big game where you get to win a real tank for a prize . It is so heart warming to watch him help his son cope with the situation as he explains three ways to lose points in the game, one is being a crybaby, two is asking for his mommy and three is saying he is hungry and asking for something to eat. Your heart goes out to the father and son duo during the closing scenes. The conversations Guido has with his son and wife always manage to make the viewer very happy or very sad. They are delightful during the happy times and torturous during the sad.

Not wanting to make his son witness the ugly face of racial discrimination when they come across a board that says “Jews and dogs not allowed”, the delightful manner in which Guido talks to his son about his trip to another store with a Kangaroo who was not allowed brings a lightheartedness to the whole situation, which is what Guido strives to accomplish at every critical instance to keep hope alive. This is what the movie is all about. Eternal optimism, keeping hope alive to win a moral victory in adverse conditions.

Importance of communication is often stressed in whatever walk of life you exist. You need to break ice, you need to communicate, you need to express your anger, you need to speak your mind, you need to ask for what you want, you need to do this and and you need to do that.

However, speaking whatever runs in your mind becomes a very difficult proposition when you are caught in an emotionally vulnerable situation. Subtlety doesn’t help in such cases either. There is always the benefit of doubt.

When egos loom large, as they should under certain emotional temperatures, the power of expression is lost. Images, thought maps and dreams and fantasies churn your mind in a wild frenzied, rollercoaster ride, that gives you a hazy, racy glimpses of highs and lows of a volatile emotional graph, that makes you go nuts. You are so confused. There are so many permutations and combinations, that you know will simply dissolve with a little exchange of thoughts but the courage to bare the soul is at odds with the need to hold on to your pride.

When your confused mind assembles the thoughts in the right order, clears the cobwebs of uncertainty and lends a shine to the one truth that stands out… you hold your breath. You come to terms with the truth. You are no longer afraid. You no longer need to communicate. You know. You are aware. That knowledge is very powerful and it heals.

Movies can have a profound influence on you. When you are a kid, they can make your imagination go completely berserk.

While I was growing up, our range of entertainment options was limited unlike now. Some weekends were picnics to nearby picturesque spots armed with hampers of mom’s delicious home made food and other goodies and on most weekends it was either a concert, drama or the movies. If it’s the movies the option of choosing it will go to my elder brother, Veera, short for Veeraraghav, who would flip for Bachchan and Brucelee movies, big time. There were several instances when I, under the influence of some movies, indulged in make believe antics.

After I saw the movie LoveBug, I nicknamed our vintage fiat, the one that is small, cute and bald, Herby, and have long conversations with him throughout a make believe race on a track. I think it had some kind of effect on the vintage vehicle except that he seems to have adopted my eldest brother, Raj, short for Rajshekar, now as his favourite. The orange car is still around and stops mid-way if someone other than my brother tries to drive him!

The other instance was a nightmare I had when I saw this old classic tamil movie screened at some random get together with a projector and film roll! It was called the “Pachai Malai Thirudan” ( Green mountain Thief..hehe). Anyways it must have been the effect of all the icecreams I hogged instead of food. There is this shot where a huge ghost like `Raakshus’ transforms into a Gandharva. Somehow this scene stuck to my head.

In the middle of the night I woke up howling with tears and tried to wake up Veera, my elder brother who was sleeping next to me, imagining him to be a character in that movie. No avail though, my brother blissfully slept on, as only brothers can do. Suddenly I had this horrible feeling that something evil was coming towards me. I got up like a shot, jumped out of the bed….went racing down the stairs and banged on the front door, pleading with the caretaker outside, to open the door and help me, claiming something was chasing me.

The caretaker was rudely woken up from his slumber but still had his senses about to tell me that he cannot open the door as it was locked from inside. I tried bravely to pull up a footstool and reach for the door bolts but as soon as I got up on the footstool an eerie feeling overtook me and I fled up the stairs again and straight into my parents’ room which was all along, adjacent to the room were I slept ! The minute I entered my parents’ room, I felt a sense of peace engulf me, whatever was chasing me had stopped doing so. I felt so calm and rushed to the cool white sheets of their bed and buried my face and even now I can recall the serene feeling.

My mom moved in her sleep and fearing I would wake them up, I rolled under the bed, however at that instant my dad half woke up and mumbled to my mom, “I thought I saw someone at the side of the bed… is someone hiding under the bed? Now where did I keep my pistol?” What I heard scared the living daylights out of me and not wanting a confrontation with my dad in the dead of the night with explanations being demanded, I scurried out of the room and settled myself into my bed and to my complete indignation, my brother continued to sleep peacefully. Ofcourse my mom made out my small figure dart out of the room and came in to check on me. I was determined not to narrate my adventure and pretended to make a huge protest at being woken up from deep slumber. Ofcourse the next day my whole family had the time of their lives when Veera getting the story of my strange behaviour from the caretaker, narrated it with many exaggerations like how only brothers can!

The next instance is probably the most hilarious one of all, in fact I had sent this across to Uncle Pai of Tinkle publications, for their memorable narrative series, and by selecting the entry for publishing, Uncle Pai made me dream of writing as a career, when I was in school. I didn’t really see myself interested in anything else with a few exceptions like Physics and the Dramatics Club. We had just seen two movies in consecutive weeks, one
was “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World” and the second could be “The good the bad and the ugly” for I cannot quite recall the name, it could also be some other movie which had a lot of horses in it.

Anyway the deal was this. I was so impressed with the men on horseback, racing away so swiftly that I badly wanted to imitate them. There was just a small problem, where would I find a horse? Just then my eyes fell on this short and stout cow, whom we nicknamed “mottai”, (his horns were shorn by our vet, as the cow had this habit of charging with her head down). I quitely went over to her side, stood on a ledge nearby and swung myself over gracefully…doubt if I can do it with the same grace now…

The bewildered cow stood still for a while. In the meantime I untied her from the post pretending the ropes were the reins, at that same moment she just bolted out of sheer fright and wanted to shake me off to the ground. I hung on for dear life with my torso dangling on one side, with a leg slung over on the other side, two hands holding on tightly to the cow’s neck while the ground, a blurry brown now, was rushing past, inches below me in a mad frenzy. She came one full circle covering vast expanse of ground, for what seemed like an eternity and finally shook me off. I had a hard landing but even before I could grimace it was my turn to bolt with fright to the backdoor of the kitchen, which was within sight, as “mottai” kept her head down and was charging straight at me, at an accelerated pace.

P.S : This post and quite a few others in the nostalgia section is dedicated to my three nephews and two nieces who are going to have a ball with this trip of mine down memory lane.

Surprise Surprise! It is around 5.30 in the morning and I am awake. Extreme thirst woke me up. The next hour or so is my favourite hour where you are in what mind researchers call the “alpha” mode and I like lolling around trying to find a snug corner to curl up, not wanting to wake up from this blissful state. Today however I decided to bring a change in routine. Filling myself a tall glass of carrot juice, the welcome drink for the day, I am writing on nostalgia. Nostalgia of the days when I used to love waking up early. It was the days of transition from a child to a teenager.

I must have been around 12 years old. We had just moved into this rambling old house ( which my friends used to tag as a “haunted house”) with parliament fans dangerously swinging from the very high tiled roofs, a legacy of the colonial rule and courtesy, my dad’s job. The first few days after we moved in there, it took me a while to get used to sleeping in a room where there were more doors than windows and where large trees swayed in the breezy night engulfing me with the smell of salty sea air, with the sound of sea waves seeming dangerously close that sometimes I woke up thinking I am on the deck of a ship. There were times when I was so tempted to run to my parent’s room and crawl under their bed and go to sleep but I was much too proud for that.

However in a few days a total transformation happened. It was as if the sea, the nature surrounding this quaint building and the place itself was wooing me. From initial wariness to intimidation and then to cautious enjoyment to total abandon, my relationship with the place went through one complete cycle of falling in love. From the corridors running around the rooms one can witness a breathtaking view of the sea in all its mammoth expanse. With a beautiful moon adding silvery shimmers to the moving sea, it was a romantic sight to behold.

I would rummage through my brother’s music collection, (he was the first to introduce me to mind blowing music, which was mostly awesome guitar work, the likes of dire straits, pink floyd, eric clapton and santana), turn up the volume and gaze at the sea for endless hours. These were also the days when I used to jump out of bed at the first light of dawn break, rush to the rickety railing of the corridor, watch with awe, the orange glory of sun rise with the now papery moon fading away. I would flip open my pocket notebook and pen out an amaetur poem, caught in the glory of the moment. Ouch! the doorbell rings, am rudely shaken up from my reverie. It is time to continue my mundane activites of the day but yeah want to travel back in time again for another cozy memory that has been tucked away

If astrology and Linda Goodman are to be believed then I have this cancerian ascendant, which kinda makes me cling on to the past and guess what ‘am loving it and won’t let go!

Last night was watching a program that investigated the reasons behind what could have been a disastrous air crash. When the investigation started out, fingers were pointed at the flying machine for the failure of one of the engines. However, weighing the pros and cons and several attempts at recreating mock situations some surprising findings were unearthed.

The aircraft had actually delivered more than what was expected of the machine. It was discovered that some unintentional blunders were committed by the flight crew. Both the captain and the flight engineer had made blunders that could have cost them their own lives along with that of the passengers. Fatigue, lack of sleep and the high pressure situation they found themselves in, mid-air, took away clarity from their thinking.

In cricket one often hears talk about performance in a high pressure situation with crowds watching, with sledging bowlers giving you dot balls dished out with insults and sixes waiting to be hit for a win. There is a difference in the two situations. The previous is fatal where the circumstances can never be reversed, lives lost are lost forever unlike a game where you can await your turn to win, where you can practice and correct those flaws.

The air crash that never happened actually made heroes out of the captain and the flight crew. They managed to ground the flight with a relatively smooth landing. Though they got the passengers into a critical situation they managed to get them out of it and the machine initially viewed with suspicion got its due credit for being able to pull through inspite of adverse handling.

Now what is the point of all this discussion? Nothing path breaking really. It is just that when we go through pressure situations in life, we should stop and think about its insignificance compared to the kind of pressure situations people face in more adverse situations like the instance narrated above. In other words it would help not to make a mountain out of a mole hill. If we could enjoy these lilliputian situations, take the time to savour a game for its own sake, either literally or tackling the games people play around us in a figurative sense, then we would essentially avoid creating complex situations in our daily lives where none exists. Are you game?

Human relationships are a fascinating subject. It is difficult to fathom why we like the people we like, it never helps to logically seek reasons for why we cannot stand the sight of somebody or why we become intimidated by the one we love and when you often hold conversations with them fluently in your mind, why it becomes exceedingly difficult to accomplish a friendly exchange in person.

When through your life it is so easy to fall in and out love with different subjects, people, places, cultures, cuisines it is a daunting task indeed to define your feelings for a particular person, place or experience in black and white. Life has numerous shades of grey, it is never easy to isolate an experience or feeling and glorify it as the mother of all feelings. Such an impact is the stuff only writers can contain within the power of their words. The emotions contained within a person often vie with each other for attention that often they become an avalanche that gathers momentum and takes the individual completely by surprise. When this avalanche rolls over the person who feels the emotion, he can but feel the impact of each of these fragments for only a fraction of a second.

I suppose that is why we often get glimpses of something special, fleeting glimpses that come and go. In all this frenzy one needs to capture the moment, savour it and make sense of it before you can even blink. It is a hide and seek game indeed!

This blog is a scrap book of some fragments of my thoughts, some of my dreams, a hundred wishes, some fears, some figments of the imagination all penned out for me to mull over. You are welcome to offer your thoughts in response to mine.