How do you like Pankaj Tripathi

I remember seeing Pankaj Tripathi for the first time in Gangs of Wasseypur as Sultan; How can I ever forget Nawaz's immortal rendition of "Sultan, M***", with that quiver in his voice, long before Arjun Reddy made the cuss word mainstream. Anyway, I noticed Tripathi in that film, and we know he was very good because if he was anything but he'd have gotten more popular with the thrashing he'd be received on social media for ruining a film that had Manoj Bajpai, Richcha Chaddha and Nawazuddan Siddiqui giving the performance of their lives. He shone brightly but, sadly, everyone else was more eye-catching. The next time I remember seeing him was in Masaan. I must've seen a couple of his other minor performances in the interim, because that was the period when I was truly obsessed with all movies coming from that UP-Bihar, and he is the sort of guy who inevitably is in those movies like Deepak Dobriyal or, during a short period, Pitobash Tripathy.

I was spellbound by his character in Masaan. I didn't like the movie very much but I fell in love with his character. Not just because he vocalized a dream I had since I was a kid, and which I later built on a 27 Down scenario, of just getting in and out of trains, traveling across India with no destination in mind - "Bas train mein chadhenge aur jahaan mann kiya utar jaayenge." - but also because he'd found the essence of what I think of when I think of a middle-aged male government employee from UP and found things in that stereotype to turn it into a living, throbbing being. Sadhya Ji doesn't seem like an easy character to inhabit and I was awestruck by the ease with which he played this gentle, romantic man who may have fought with life at some point but now has completely given up.

JM Coetzee, in his review of VS Naipaul's Half a life, writes that the thing Naipaul hates so much about the India psyche is the fatalistic view of life. The quintessential Indian man, according to him, does not want to take responsibility for his own betterment, does not dream because then he'd have to work towards it and to validate his inactions has invented the most convoluted of explanations in Hindu philosophies. I see some truth in that analysis and I see it manifest in Sathya Ji's character. He proclaims grand truths and poetic visions and yet he lives an unfulfilling life, timid and afraid of life itself. I realize that the previous statement is quite a turn from the earlier statement of him being a "gentle, romantic man" and it is because its hard to pin down his intentions or feelings. When you live long enough away from the core of your being, it becomes hard for you to really remember what it is like to be genuine. Sathya Ji could've had his reasons and maybe he did the noble thing by choosing to live with his father and stay unmarried but atleast part of it was fuelled by his fear and lethargy. The morality he follows is top-down, tradition-oriented, right simply because its socially approved.

It is a compliment to Tripathi's acting that he manages to turn this weakling into a character you care about, sympathise with, maybe even grudgingly admire. Then a few weeks ago I saw him in Barreily ki Barfi, and really was excited to see his performance, but he hardly had an inspiring moment. I really liked how Seema Pahwa infused a bit of charm in her equally small role but that film belonged to Rajkumar Rao. Man, what an actor! BR wrote that Tripathi was excellent in Gurgaon but I won't watch it because the trailer put me off. Talking of trailers though, Sriram Raghavan's Andhadhun's trailer is outstanding.

Off to more movies.

Owen Wilson is amazing

"I know you don't always like it, but I love it-it's my son's face". Man I love this line from Wonder. And Owen Wilson just kills it with his delivery. The way his voice drops to a whisper as the line ends, it feels the guy really, really, really means it. I think Wilson's a phenomenal person. Ofcourse, I don't know him but his sort of acting, where the personality of the actor shines through, can seem more genuine, and effortless, than highly crafted, dramatic acting who's famous exponents are folks like Daniel Day-Lewis and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Anyway, I wanna rewatch some of my favourite Wilson moments from Bottle Rocket (the banana suit sequence is hilarious and melancholic at the same time), The Darjeeling Limited ("I love you guys but I'm going to mace you in the face") and Marley and Me ("I want you to remember you're a great dog, Marley"). He can make cheesy lines like that from Marley and Me work and also convincingly do a Wed Anderson line; To be honest though, nobody does an Anderson line as good as Ralph Fiennes, not even Bill Murray. ("..get me a Courtesan au chocolat. If there's any money left, give it to the crippled shoeshine boy.")- And that pan of the camera.. Wham!!!

Update from Oz

Australia is beautiful. In a different way from Italy. Italy was filled with astounding cultural sights, breathtaking natural views, amazing food and wonderful people. Australia, atleast going by what we've explored in Sydney so far, doesn't have many beautiful buildings or wonderful ethnic food. But I am in love with its vast expanses, beautiful skies, community culture (free library, large parks and grounds that are free for all, well-functioning public transport) and the idea of an adult life that ventures beyond work and immediate family. We've been here 10 days so far and most time has gone into staying at home hunched infront of the computer. Despite that, we've visited the Opera House, Royal Botanic Gardens, gone on a ferry ride to Watson's Bay and abandoned the highly touted walk from Coogee to Bondi. More than that though, I like walking on these everyday roads. The grounds are breathtakingly large and green, every county seems to have its own fitness and sports centre, and I spent a lot of time today evening just watching a Net practice in a nearby ground. I'm also continuously googling for meetups in Art, Literature and Film areas and though there aren't as many as Id've liked (I keep hearing Melbourne is the larger cultural and sports centre), there are quite a few. This place also makes me want to go out for a walk or a run and I feel like there's more freedom for an individual to do what he wants or wear what he wants without attracting as many stares as in India. It's funny because I always thought I wouldn't like living in foreign (read first world, western city) but I really seem to be enjoying the opportunities available for an individual to pursue interests and passions. The orderly life, unlike the unnecessarily glorified India's 'Ordered Chaos', leaves enough mental space to venture beyond worrying about work, commutation and saving money. We noticed it a lot in Italy too. People not worried about bank balances (although it could be argued that we were only tourist-observers and don't have a real idea of how everyday-lives work) but spending time and money to find happiness now- eating out, meeting friends, taking a run, indulging in passions, discussing finer things. Pay more taxes and let the government help you with medical and educational expenses as and when you need it and don't worry about saving up for the children. Liking it, liking it a lot.

discussing films

• We spent a good two hour discussing films: Dhiraj, Sandeep and I
• Pathaka trailer, Bhardwaj's previous films, Shahid Kapoor's strange career graph where his memorable roles are unfrequent and are interspersed with horrible film choices
• Manto and its phenomenal cast 
• Cast Away, Wilson and minimalist movie posters
• Scorsese and his dichotomy: Gangster Rock and Meditations on God
• The genius of Wes Anderson and his inimitable, literary sensibilities
• Kieslowski's Dekalog
• Shaun Carruth, Primer, Upstream Color, Predestination (which I wrongly called Proposition)
• Richard Linklater, Before Trilogy, Boyhood and how he makes films on the events that happen between the events other films are made of
• Ramu and how Shiva paved the way for Satya and Black Friday
• TVFs brilliant content- this, this and this
• Biswa Kalyan Rath's astounding standup and that 1 min episode of his in IIM that comes in Comicstaan S1E1
• Recommendations to watch Laakhon mein ek and Yeh meri family

music in gibberish

చెరగనిదే ఈ స్నేహ గీతం

తరగనిదే మనలో వేగం

సరిగమలే పలికేను గానం

ఉరికెనులే గమ్యమెరుగని పయనం

యే చోటవున్నా మనమేం చేస్తువున్నా

ఈ జ్ఞాపకాలే మది విడువనన్నదే

యే తీరమైనా మనకే దూరమౌనా

ఈ స్నేహబంధం ఇక కరగనన్నదే

I really like this song. I heard it for the first time maybe 8 years ago as the credits rolled for Nakama Planet Green's first(?) short film. If you remember that time, you can recollect that Telugu short films were a major fixation for students and recent graduates. A popular meme from a little later went like this:

Things you did-

2009- DSLR
2010- Guitar
2011- Shortfilm
2012- Standup comedy

For some reason it popped into my head a couple of days ago and I've been humming it since. The poetry is beautiful and though quite simplistic it has a certain naive idealism to it- A lack of cynicism and a belief in the future being atleast as good as the present.

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I like Vivek Sagar's music for Tharun Bhascker's films (haven't heard Yuddham Sharanam or Sammohanam yet). Like is probably not the right word, I find it so interesting that I choose to listen to it consciously. Usually I'm either paying attention to the lyrics or if its a beautiful melody, humming it absent-mindedly. With #Pellichoopulu, and especially with Ee Nagaraniki Emaindi, I find the music (and I use the word loosely) very captivating. There is so much happening here- a variety of sounds, titbits of sentences, different little sound structures coming together to mingle and separate, the main melody played as whimsical staccato and then abruptly changing into a very different tune. And despite all this cacophony, the whole thing still sounds good somehow. I find it impossible to hum at a later time but I find that the parts I love keep looping in my head (case in point, the part that starts with Niseedhi dhaarilona in Aagi Aagi). Until I learnt later in some interview that Raalu Poola is a new song that was specifically composed to make it feel the remix of an old one, I thought it was a remix. It does not feel sourced from one particular song as much as they'd somehow managed to capture the essence of whatever we think of when we think of an old Telugu song(that's composed sometime in the 50s) and then work on it until the song sounds like a remix of that one. Setting aside the fact that I don't like the song, I marvel at how they managed to pull it off. And the poetry of Tharun Bhascker's songs feels really fresh; Not always good but new nevertheless

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I think this sort of music suits the rhythms of Ee Nagaraniki. It is a strange film. I like it when I'm able to view the puppet strings dancing behind when I'm interacting with any art work and #Pellichoopulu didn't give me that chance. It felt too masterfully written, too neatly sealed. I loved it nonetheless but I can see that the maker is in control, working within the realm of his powers. When this overstretch happens, it becomes interesting to try and guess what exactly he's trying to reach.

A similar analogy can be made between Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel and Isle of Dogs. Grand Budapest is, as far as I'm concerned, a perfect film. Madhav garu once told me that as an editor, his primary job was to help the writer reduce the gap between what is in the head and what is being conveyed via the medium. With Grand Budapest, Anderson was in such control that the film seemed to be transcribed from inside his head. On the other hand, with the Isle of Dogs, Anderson's tone and narrative are frequently jarring and as much as it's frustrating when watching the film for the first time, thinking about it later gave me a better appreciation of what he was trying to convey and the ingenious devices he'd conceived to transfer those elusive feelings (in this case honour, duty, pathos, love, loyalty). I'm beginning to think that when a film is uneven, the moments that work make more impact than if it is uniformly brilliant. Like that wonderfully tracking shot of Akira leading the dog convoy while I won't hurt you plays in the background. Or the disarmingly honest way Nutmeg says, "Because he's a twelve year old boy, dogs love those".

It is an ironic twist of fate that reaching the summit diminishes the aura of the film. By falling short, that gap is filled by the admiring viewer and the film in the head is better, any day, than the one in the real world.

So, yeah, Ee Nagaraniki was unwieldy and stretched too thin but I fell for its charms. On the surface, both #Pellichoopulu and Ee Nagaraniki Emaindi have very straightforward, overabused storylines but while Pellichoopulu's genius was in world-building (It felt built and populated from the imagination of an idealistic township planner), Ee nagaraniki, while ostensibly reworking Rock On!! for the film industry, tried also to talk about growing up in the 90s and the famously millennial job dissatisfaction while also incorporating using Hyderabadi lingo. Tharun was trying to convey the pervading sense of unsureness within us, the lure of procrastination, the fear of walking away from the comfort zone, the inability to become a unified whole self. Yes, he fell short, but damn was he shooting for the stars.

I wish it'd come online soon. I want to watch it again.

want to blog more often

I ought to blog more often. Without the edges polished. Even if only to document thoughts and feelings. Even when I don't really have anything useful to say. Even when I worry about how all this inferior stuff will be perceived after I become a serious, successful artist. Even when I know atleast a few people are reading this. Even at the cost of "spending" important material that could later be converted to critically acclaimed pieces. To write without agenda, to write without self-consciousness, to write without the need to create an image or prove a point. To write and post it up here instead of carefully safeguarding thoughts and ideas in notebooks and Evernote.

I've never been a writer. I guess I'm now less enamoured with the title than I was a few years ago but the progression is something like this: earlier, I used to write. Then once I started thinking I was a writer, I almost stopped writing. Now I want to go back to enjoying the experience of just typing what's going in my head. It is so easy to get lost in labels. No wonder the past gets harder to break out of especially since we insist on holding it tighter and tighter. I created all these rules for myself, on how to be and behave based on what I was like at some point in the past, and soon forgot that they were just arbitrary. They need not be set in concrete. Imagination, knowledge, wisdom, intelligence, awareness, enlightenment, grace, culture. What do I really know about these words that I long for. God man did I create a prison.

I know I have backpain and I know doing Yoga regularly will cure it. I've been using that as a springboard to write my last few columns on the nature of discipline, well-being, freewill, karmic residues, societal obligation and other fancy terms. I pick quotes from celebrityland to build a fragile, delicate structure and then try to imbibe it into my being. Then while delicately poised on that, I try to build more elaborate structures that are impossible to maintain because of their weak foundations.

I just want to be free from this thick-walled, awkward fort I've built around myself and standing atop which I view the world. I want to be free from this unremitting need to identify the meta-narrative of my life, from feeling as though I'm the protagonist of this story. I talk about the ego, the thinking mind, postmodernism, alienation, spirituality, economics as if I know anything about anything. I don't really. I just seem to be making this up based on where I live in spacetime. There is nothing sacred about any of my opinions and god do I have many of them. Living is such a fluidic enterprise and I'm hellbent on building a cathedral on the surface of a mighty river.

Maybe I should swim around, read poetry, take a hike, savour the fruit, reduce someone's suffering if I can. Words and reason seem like a very small part of what it means to be alive. To function in other dimensions, I must be willing to unchain myself from one. I genuinely don't know what the previous sentence means.

I can only be honest and open; Luckily, now, I know what that means.

Transcending mental gluttony

My submission for the July edition of AZIndiaTimes.

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Transcending mental gluttony

I read a lot- The good, the bad and the ugly. I have tens of ebooks on my phone, multiple apps like Medium, Pocket and Feedly overflowing with bookmarked articles. I always carry a couple of books in my backpack and I’ve subscribed to so many of these recommendation/ aggregation services that my inbox is flowing with mails every morning. My two Terabyte hard disk is filled with cinema and music from across the world, collections spread across decades, that I haven’t seen even 5% of and I go on hoarding more content as soon as I come across something vaguely interesting. This got so bad that I stopped watching films, convincing myself that I can read about more films in the time it takes me to watch and experience one, and instead collect titbits of information and opinion from the cyberspace to appear erudite. I have abandoned more MOOCs than I can remember for topics ranging from Blockchain to Learning Mandarin, and Introduction to Gene Mapping to Writing Music like Mozart. Expectedly, instead of alleviating that sense of dumbness, this behaviour gives me immense stress and anxiety that there’s always more for me to read, watch, listen, learn. Not just is this stupid, wrong and insane, it’s also a disease.

We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests. -Henry Miller via Charlie Kaufman (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRfXcWT_oFs)

I suffer from mental gluttony, a condition where I can’t stop amassing as much mental food as I can because I’m worried I’ll live my life wrongly. This is the ideal of self-help stripped of its spirit, taken to its logical, nihilistic extreme. It is no wonder that until very recently, thanks to this extreme behaviour, I started to look down upon all forms of knowledge and mocked the idea of a free will. The noise in my head is too deafening for me to even acknowledge the presence of my own self. I feel like an addict, so intoxicated to one dimension of experience that consequently I am failing at every other aspect of being. Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with being culturally informed and seeking aesthetic stimulus. But to keep obsessively searching for it all the time, either in the hope that it will transform my life into being the best version of myself or in fear lest I live an ignorant and a half-life, is in itself a stunted life.

Read nothing from the past one hundred years; eat no fruits from the past one thousand years; drink nothing from the past four thousand years (just wine and water); but talk to no ordinary man over forty. -Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Self-improvement is probably a good ideal. We live in an age and society that celebrates it. Yet, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who understands what the words self or improvement really mean. Unless you have a very good explanation to believe otherwise, what you are chasing in your life are somebody else’s dreams. And that is the reality of all our lives. We live in the Century of the Self, a spacetime where it is imperative for a man to project the best, but also socially acceptable, image of the self and keep working at it lest someone in our social circle is working harder at it. Black Mirror is not dystopia, it is reality and unless we unplug and get our moorings right, we are going to end up being so lost in this abyss.

For my part, I went cold turkey last month. Deleted, unsubscribed, removed notifications. I don’t feel particularly stupid or lost though a pleasant side effect has been that frequently I find myself on a weekday afternoon with nothing to do for a few minutes. I just sit, empty-headed, craving stimulus but also aware of the junk-food nature of most content online. It’s a strange feeling: Freedom, is it, as opposed to compulsively consuming everything the zeitgeist hurls. Even now I can’t stop reading FIFA match reports or film reviews but the volume’s gone down so much.

What distinguishes human beings and animals, or, in other words, the essence of being human is the possibility to move from compulsiveness to consciousness. -Sadhguru

All of us want to live well. The first step in that is staying healthy- physically, mentally, emotionally. No matter how much you exercise, you cannot become healthy as long as you are compulsively consuming unhealthy food. Food that was made without love and grace, without mastery and devotion. The same holds true for everything we read, listen and watch. It's far easier said than done. Thirty days is time enough to see how well this experiment fares and I hope to bring a positive update in next month's column. Until then, good luck if you wish to join this club.

Chasing Enlightenment: Mission Aborted

My submission for the June edition of AZIndiaTimes.

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Chasing Enlightenment: Mission Aborted

“I’m not the body, I’m not the mind.” -Sadhguru

I was a big believer in Descartes’ concept of Mind-Body Dualism till recently. I thought, therefore I was seemed like the truth considering how much time I spent inside my head. My body never listened to me. I wasn’t smart, sexy, fit and that was because neither was I my body nor could I tell it what to do. But my mind, my mind was a different matter. It listened to me, it guided me, it gave me an external identity, it was me. Yet, more often than not, I acted on my mind’s beckoning; It was rarely the other way round. If my mind and I were the same, how would it matter anyway? But are we?

Since over a month now, I’ve been practicing Kriya Yoga. Diligently would be untrue but quite sincerely. I have also been reading/ listening to Yogis, mystics and monks hailing from the Indian traditions and I can see my worldview, and self-view, changing. That’s not very unusual. I’m quite malleable to philosophies, both deep and shallow, but what is different this time is that these words, unlike most others, are empowering me.

Who am I? Why am I alive? Is there a purpose to my life? What is the right thing to do? How do I find fulfillment? What is the nature of the world? Like so many others, I’ve always been surrounded by these questions. For all I know, others placed these questions in my head. Not getting easy answers frustrated me, made me cynical, an escapist and led me to explore alternative platforms of thought. Realising I’m not just my mind, though I tend to identify with it so closely, has removed the burden to find the right answer. I’m not so guilty of living, without intellectually understanding the underlying mechanisms of life and action, anymore.

Most of what happens in my head stays in there. Om Swami talks about four aspects of the mind: Mind, consciousness, intellect and ego. I’m still exploring these ideas, both intellectually through words and for the first time experientially via meditation and Yoga. I’m still a newbie, just getting my feet wet and I don’t want to make any inaccurate impression as to my exposure or knowledge of these things, but my everyday living has changed in a month. I still get unnecessarily irritated, afraid, lazy, confused. There hasn’t been much change in that. There has been, though, a change in the way I consciously perceive these things.

“There is no such thing as enlightenment” -UG Krishnamurti

God is not coming down to explain everything to me just because I get drunk and yell curses at the sky. He might not come even if I spend a life with monkish discipline and abstinence. When I choose the latter, though, I’m in control. I’ve had these thought experiments before: If you’re feeling free, is it because someone who’s controlling you from up there is driving that impression? I’ve travelled long enough in that land and I see only barrenness and suffering. So is running away from suffering the right way to live my life? Why does suffering exist then? Is god malevolent? Is seeing that there is no enlightenment real enlightenment? See, these arguments are endless. I thought I’d reach the bottom of the pile. Turns out I’m not been able to.

I’m beginning to realize I’m creating these monstrously contorted complications in my head and feeling miserable when I’m not able to untangle them. Life created me. I exist here and now. That’s the truth. Even if I’m a figment of someone’s imagination and I’m condemned to think the way I am, that does not take away from the fact that I’m here and now. The grace of life is always guiding me. To where, I don’t know. I’m not even sure if I’m right now capable of recognising and appreciating it. The core of my being is seeking expansive joy. For all my intellectual web spinning, I cannot deny that. Then why live in my head and die bitterly than live expansively and see where life takes me, whoever this me is.

Does it mean I turn into a hedonist? If it makes me happy, sure. The truth is that as much as I’d argue otherwise externally, in the heart of my hearts, I know what I ought to be doing. By denying myself that advice, I’m standing in my own way. I’ve always wanted to be right. That’s an intellectual pursuit. Doing the right thing for the sake of the ego. Seems like there’s no such way. I’m not even doing as much as being done by a chain of casualty.

I chased enlightenment because I thought it was the right thing to do, the cool thing to do, the easy thing to do. I sought the silver bullet (http://omswami.com/2018/04/enlightenment.html) because I believed it’d make living easier. It is not out there, it is not sometime in the future. To achieve success, it is said a person needs 3 things: Aim, Diligent Effort and the ability to Keep Going even when results are not encouraging. Am I willing to do that for enlightenment? Not really. If I had those qualities, I’d be using them to get better materially not seek an otherworldly truth. Enlightenment, so far for me atleast, has been an escapist notion.

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” -Rumi

My life is here and now. I want to be joyous. These are inescapable truths. Every other fanciful thought is because of a need to escape from reality because I’m not capable, physically, mentally, emotionally, energy-wise etc. for turning this moment into a wonderful experience. I must work towards who I want to be, what I want the world to be, what I want to feel. Karma is true in the simple sense that we live in a Cause-and-Effect based physical universe and to achieve something, I must do all that is required. Nothing can replace action- conscious or compulsive.

I sought enlightenment because I thought it might let me live my life by drifting above it. I’m now thinking what a waste of life that would be. I want to walk through the beautiful forest of life, fully conscious, using my body, mind, emotion and energies to savour every moment and keep walking, keep getting surprised, keep having interesting conversations, keep touching others deeply. Life created me, I trust it to guide me to where I ought to go. That sounds like a good way to live, doesn’t it.

Only Karma is real

My submission for the May edition of AZIndiaTimes. I've been doing a bit of meditation and reading, and those thoughts manifested into this post.

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Only Karma is real

Living so closely with machines, that are phenomenally good at one or two things but completely useless at other things, we’ve come to believe that a human being is also something like that. We choose specializations because they make us more certain of our opinions and biases. But we cannot confine ourselves to just that because we are more complex than that, way more ignorant of our real motivations, way more marvelously designed and built. Sadhguru says deep inside all of us have a longing for the infinite. Love, money, fame, power, happiness are some of the many manifestations of that feeling. We choose to work towards the thing that we are most deprived of with the belief that it would lead us to our salvation. Yet, even when we clearly see no matter how much we accumulate it isn’t enough, we don’t stop chasing. If only we could sit still (both mentally and physically), for even a moment, won’t all this confusion clear up and we will see ourselves and, as an extension, the world clearly.

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion” -Rumi

All this, of course, makes sense intellectually. We understand these things and at some level, deeper than where language and logic can reach, we know it to be true. Why does this not then turn into experiential reality? Yogis say it’s because of our Karmic residue. We are driven compulsively by effects of the stuff we did in the past (lives). That would raise two questions: 1. Why did we do “bad” things in the first place then? Were we built that way by a malevolent God? 2. If I’m forever tied to the effects of my previous actions, it’d get easier and easier for me to keep doing the wrong things and go deeper and deeper into the abyss. If there is no free will, because my current actions are decided by my previous ones, how can I change my life?

I’ve been grappling with these questions for years and I seem to have stumbled across some form of an answer. The first state of acceptance was to see that logic, and thereby language, are just one mode of thought. They’re wonderful tools and we’ve built so much in the world because of them but they are not powerful enough to help us understand our inner reality. Secondly, though I don’t know why we are here and if there is a God, I see that there are no “bad” things per se. I call an action bad if its effect leaves me with an unpleasant feeling now. By definition, that is time-constrained. A lot of my judgement depends on what mood I’m in right now; It tells less about the world than about me. The question of free will is just a parlour game because I can choose either option and still win an argument. It is not a contributor in making my life more joyous. A major, major reason for a lot of my problems with life is my romance with my mind, my weakness for intellectual tricks. The more complex theories I formulate to arrive at the conclusion that this is life, the more burdened I become. And it’s not even like the formulae are useful. Life never ceases to surprise me.

Where does all this gyaan come from now? How do I know this isn’t transient? These are questions that would have bugged me till about a month ago. Now, I don’t really worry about the expiry date of an idea nor am I enamoured by complex theories. The truth is here and now for me to see. All I need to ask is if I’m physically and mentally ready to see it?

If all this is so important and seemingly true, why doesn’t my mind know this instinctively, naturally? (Come to think of it, what is the guarantee that my mind isn’t playing another trick with this faux-epiphany? Can you see it- There’s no way I’m winning any argument with my mind. I should treat it like a very smart friend, not an all-knowing god.) All things that we consider natural now, brushing our teeth, driving a car, giving powerpoint presentations, are, when you think of it, the bizarrest things in the world. The mind treats all new ideas warily, as foreign intruders. Only if we give it enough time and explain it experientially, will it learn and adapt.

“People have fallen in love with words and lost the world. It’s time to regain it.” -Sadhguru

I know this sounds a lot like the New Age, quasi-spiritual conversations that we are surrounded by but I’m learning that the answers really are inside. We don’t need thousands of books or hundreds of hours learning a skill or watching innumerable Ted talks to learn how to live. All we need is the ability to sit quietly and listen.

yet another abandoned undertaking

Wrote this post sometime in the first week of March. I don't know what I was going to say and I think I abandoned it midway because it wasn't gelling into a unified whole; I'm posting this now because the part about celebrating the normal life has been with me for a few years and I think it finally semi-concretised into an explicable feeling.

As usual, Grant Snider does a much better, more beautiful job of conveying my feelings

For your consideration.

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We watched Lady Bird in a theatre today. It's been such a long while since I watched a film without worrying too much about the pros and cons of having to go to a theatre to watch it. Sravani really liked the trailer but I went because I have a soft corner for films like Frances Ha and The Squid and the Whale. The film reminded me of Juno and Boyhood. I enjoyed watching it for its warm fuzziness and essential good-naturedness. On thinking of it, I think it is also similar to Little Miss Sunshine though that film had exquisite dialogue.

Lady Bird is the coming-of-age dramedy of a high school girl in the US around 2002. The details are slightly new but all this has been done before. If anything, films like these make me nostalgic for films like these. And what exactly do I mean by "these" films? They're about normal people, doing normal shit, feeling normal desires and frustrations, wanting stuff you and I'd want in their place, their worlds small and complete. All they want are the things that they see others having, all purpose in their life is defined by the rituals their society has put into place. They have big-hearts but small minds. Even their imaginations are not free enough for them to seek the transcendental. These are petty people. These are people like you and I.

Not long ago, nobody wanted to see these stories. We wanted our heroes to be grand and greater than life. We wanted their journeys to be special that it warranted a narrative about them. Then something strange happened. With the rise of modernism, everyone could write their own stories and put them out. The individual with all his mundane, everyday experiences and micro-epiphanies was the star of his own life and it gave others the license to feel important living the normal lives they did. I also think that with the rise of handycams and their excessive usage to record individual milestones, especially in the US, for the first time celebrating a birthday, or going to the prom, or graduating high school became dramatic events in their own right. Their children then wanted to do all these things, and record them, because as far as they could see, it was the rite of passage to adulthood. So we started deifying the normal individual doing normal things and calling him the hero of the modern world.

A hero once had to do impossible feats to earn a mention in a bard's epics. Now all he/she had to do was toe the line a little out of conformity and he could earn a film of his own. I don't have concrete proof of this idea, and I'm not sure I have the motivation and perseverance to go seek it, but if it's important to me, I'll be forced to learn it sooner or later.

Pop culture has a huge impact on how a generation grows up and learns to measure itself upto. Because of films that have protagonists who are narcissistic, self-obsessed, and filmmakers who make their spiritual quest the only primary motivational arc, we probably live in a society that's so individual-centric. Again, art reflects all changes happening in the society too and so industrial age and enlightenment thinking are more deeper factors for us being in a position like this today. Ofcourse, its not all bad and there are upsides, primarily the fact that we are the most accepting and understanding of generations, but when a human becomes the most atomic and intelligent entity in societal structures, then the burden of existence eventually stops at his doorstep.

I watched Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri yesterday. It was good but no match to In Bruges or even to Seven Psychopaths. I know all films are different beasts and should be judged according to their own merits and flaws, but I want to embrace my inner Dionysis for a while after spending too much time with Apollo. Tim Parks' take on Three Billboards raised an interesting thought. We claim to want our films to be realistic, to deal with real people but we don't really. Not just because reality is a way too complex to be portrayed conclusively in any art but also because the reality we see is the image we project on the real reality. No filmmaker or writer, worth his salt anyway, can betray the way he sees the world. So when a filmmaker presents a film, watch it with the understanding that this is the way he wishes the world is. If you like it, good for you. If you don't, well you have a reason now to create art and impose your view of the world onto someone else.