A Tamasha called life !

By Nishita | Saturday, 12 December 2015 | , , , 6 Comments

Imitiaz Ali is undoubtedly one of the finest filmmakers of our time. His stories are complex, chaotic and keeps you wondering for a long long time. We are so conditioned to happy endings that Rockstar made me all twitchy and troubled inside. Thankfully, Tamasha had a happy ending and I had a sigh of relief. Tamasha has had pretty polarized views and I understand why. There are many layers to the movies and personally, I loved the movie because I live with those concepts on a daily basis. I watched the movie recently and I am still soaking in the beauty of the movie.

Social Construct - The protagonist in an Imitiaz Ali movie is usually a rebel against the societal norms. Meet Ved Vardhan Sahni, a regular guy with the heart of a storyteller. He intends to be a rebel from the bottom of his heart, but his social conditioning doesn't allow him to deviate from the norm. Ved atleast knew what his true calling was so he could act upon it. The social construct is for people who are clueless as to what is their true calling. We can all critique the formula based life, but if there wasn't a formula to fall back on, what would so many people without a true calling do in life ? All of us cannot just sit and watch the grass grow till we finally get enlightened. In my opinion, social construct is ok for those who voluntarily choose it.


Being in love with the idea of another person - Why is it that the unfulfilled love stories are the most haunting ones ? 'What could have been' is a question that can make a permanent dent in your heart. That's probably because that love story is untouched by monotony. Enter Tara Maheshwari, who falls for the image projection of Ved. Post the Corsica trip, for four consecutive years, her thoughts revolved around him. You cannot know a person in a couple of days, it was her idea of Ved, her perception, her projection that she fell in love with. This is the case with so many of us. We fall in love with the imagery of the person that we create in our minds and suffer major disappointment when the person doesn't live up to our idea of him/her.
"I fall in and out of love everyday".
"With people ?"
"Mostly ideas of them. People only reveal themselves in pieces. Naturally, we fill in the gaps, the unknown, with what we want them to be. That's why love can be deceiving."
- Amanda Torroni


Life is a race - The monotony of Ved puts every salaried guy to shame. We see that this is actually what we do on a day to day life. It's so much of a routine that we seldom try and break the monotony of our fragile existence. Just like Ved, there have been days when I want to climb on top of the office table and break into a song and dance routine ! We have been raised to believe that life is a race. 90%, engineering, onsite, MBA, package, appraisal, spouse hunting, the list is endless. The good part is that Ved finally steps out of it and excels in his bizzare storytelling talent. It was a "taare Zameen par' moment for me !


Saccha Pyaar - Imitiaz ends up giving us our fair share of love dose with Tara and Ved in Corsica. Ved finds someone who shares his passion for weirdness and is equally mental. Back in India, Tara is hit by the monotony of Ved's life. Something that she wasn't expecting. yet she comes to terms with it and is all accepting of him. Her warmth will melt your heart and make you pine for love. The part where she hugs him and tries to hold onto him with the 'agar tum saath ho' song in the background is an epic Imitaz Ali moment. The romance in his movies is surreal. But then, saccha pyaar is an urban legend or the real deal is a different story altogether.


Maths padho, Engineering karo - This maths mayhem has a traumatizing childhood experience for zillions. And if you're ok with science and maths, it's like it's your destiny to pursue engineering. In case you aren't doing well in those subjects, you were born to pursue arts or maybe law. At the age of 18, we aren't equipped enough to make life altering decisions. A lucky few like Ved atleast have the clarity of thought but most of us aren't grown up enough to care. That's how you get a country bustling with engineers, most of which are unemployable.


Role Playing - I have got life lessons from close quarters which revolved around role playing. I was told that in order to succeed, you have to play a character. You cannot be yourself. You fake it till you make it. But you are not the role you're playing. With Ved, the role he's playing in his daily life becomes all consuming and he becomes the role he plays. In our lives, the role of a dutiful child, diligent employee, loving spouse, doting parent, kandha for friends etc. surpasses our individual self whereas the real deal is to discover ourselves in the chaos of role playing and shine on like Ved did in Corsica. 


I am lucky to have witnessed a live interview of Imitiaz Ali. He came to Bombay to become a writer. Someone from the audience asked him why he doesn't write books instead. He replied that books are very literal. Movies give him a landscape where things can be left for interpretation. I am glad he does that in all his movies : leaves room for imagination.


Mere Ramblings, No Apologies.


The cost price of success

By Nishita | Wednesday, 18 February 2015 6 Comments

Success is something you think you should have so that the world approves of you. In today’s world, the route to success is divided into three parts:
1.       You work your way to success
2.       You lick your way to success
3.       You sleep your way to success

I had the notion that MBA would propel my career to greater heights. It’d definitely do that but the trade off in return is something huge. And it’s not the regular you don’t get to sleep, you have nine subjects per semester, you have assignments kind of banter. It is way beyond all that. You suddenly find yourself in a bevy of strange, unknown people you know nothing about. The first few months would be all about adaptability and fitting in. If you’re lucky, you find a group to eat, hangout and watch movies with. If you’re luckier, you make your own group and induct people into it. Else, you’re just a minority, someone who doesn’t fit in or doesn’t want to fit in.
The next few months would be all about getting to know each other. ‘Networking’ as per the B school norm.  You network because you never know who might come in handy in near future. You form opinions, make friends, have conflicts, appear for exams and get the hang of a B school. Once the storm sets in, you figure out who your real friends, who your fake friends are, who is out and out plastic and who is truly genuine.

Personally, my journey has been a learning experience like no other. I had to leave my comfort zone, my people  and Hyderabadi biryani all in the name of success. If I wouldn't have been here, I wouldn't have known how it feels to be let down by an alleged friend, how there’s always more than what meets the eye, how it feels to be under constant scrutiny, how first impressions are lasting impressions, how people behave under tremendous pressure, what it feels to be in the middle of a rat race and how a dog eats a dog.
MBA is not only a shortcut to success, it is also a transformative journey of personal growth. A journey that helps you rediscover your own self. But the real question is, is it really worth the trade off?

Illusion

By Nishita | Saturday, 31 January 2015 6 Comments



"People don’t like love, they like that flittery flirty feeling. They don’t love love - love is sacrificial, love is ferocious, it’s not emotive. Our culture doesn’t love love, it loves the idea of love. It wants the emotion without paying anything for it. It’s ridiculous." —Matt Chandler
Shah Rukh Khan made all the 90s kids believe in the magic of love and damaged their brains for eternity. But now, as an adult, I know better. I know that Raj was an optical illusion. I know that love is this undefined, bizarre, complex emotion that no one can put into words.


We have all been conditioned to believe in the comfortable concept of love. But with each passing day, I see its significance fade away piece by piece. I used to be a firm believer of love and other drugs. This very belief of mine is now just a fictional entity.
Hoping for a soulmate in our world is like a mirage of the oasis. Virtues like loyalty, integrity, honesty have lost its meaning and all we are left with is treachery, dishonesty and greed.
With more options comes more difficulties. Everyone around is viable and available, so why would anyone go and do the right thing.  
In the past, things were simpler. Get a twig and brush your teeth. Now, there’s a host of complexities involved. Go to a supermarket. Choose between a colgate, a pepsodent, a sensodyne, a close up or a cibaca. Each, a viable option. Each would solve your purpose. So, would you ever stick to a particular brand for years at a stretch ?
We don’t. We yearn for a change. We need variety. We desire more options. We feel inquisitive. We want to ‘explore’.


When we cannot stick to a particular toothpaste for the rest of our lives, is it even possible to pin down a soulmate and stick to them for eternity inspite of the viable options out there ? Is it possible for a person to be content with a single person for the rest of their lives ?


Human needs are satiable but human greed is insatiable. I always thought that every person deep down yearns for stability and when you have that one person, it’s good enough. But the stories I witness, the people I meet have different tales to tell. Everyone’s interested in having their share of ‘fun’ while they are at it and get back to their routine lives. Human wants vary. You want someone for companionship. You want someone as a friend. You want someone to be intimate with. You want someone to be a shoulder to cry on. You want someone for the conversations. And all these someones might be different people altogether.

True love happens only in the Nicholas Sparks novels while we mortals need to deal with the real thing. Love, even as a concept, has lost its meaning. And in these dark times, if you do find someone to love and be loved back, preserve them. It’s not the happy ending that counts, what happens after that is the more pertinent question.

Mere ramblings. No apologies :)

And we're back !!

By Nishita | Thursday, 13 February 2014 2 Comments

Every nauseating Valentine season, I am forced to retrospect the very concept of love and the authenticity of it.
Whatever 'love' I have experienced has always ended up in practically nothing. Even the journey was not worthwhile to say the least. I emotionally invest a lot and in the end all I feel is 'emotionally wasted'. It just enlightens me and makes me believe that men are that species of dogs that can never be trained :P
For example, when I say 'Don't call me', it implies that 'Call me till your fingers bleed', but the guy never gets it. Not every person can be pleased with roses, chocolates and money. Value addition is also a pre requisite. But a very few guys get it.
We know how expectation can be a bitch. What we don’t know is that expectation is not always a result of our own vivid imagination. Sometimes people create room for expectation in your life by overdoing things. Initially it is always a fairy-tale simply because you are delusional, blinded by this phenomenon called love. Eventually the expectation feeds on you and becomes a monstrous entity that gets the better of you. All you can think of is how things are not the way they are supposed to be. Heartache, misery, frustration and the whole fraternity befriend you.
Maybe good people make bad romances. Maybe fairy-tales don’t exist. Maybe ‘happily ever after’ is an illusion after all. At this point, it dawns on you that the minute you create dependency on a person, everything else goes for a toss.
Guys show you gestures only when you’re a conquest they are pursuing. Once the purpose is solved, it’s just a static pond of nothingness that you deal with on a daily basis. Sometimes, you don’t even deserve a phone call in the whole day. Such callousness is combated by self doubt and self pity and self loathing and you still know that you love your ‘Bloody Valentine’.
Nothing lasts forever and love is no exception to that. Two people meet and like each other. Sometimes priorities change, sometimes people. The key lies in moving beyond all of this and finding happiness with yourself and within yourself. Lingering in the past just adds more crap to your plate. Maybe in the past you were happy but now you’re not and there’s a very good reason for that which you fail to see. It is important to get out of things that pull you down and do not add value to your way of living.
That is what I take back from my experiences with the hope of finding a better tomorrow. As they say, if it's not good, it's not the end.
And for what it's worth, Happy Valentine's Day :)

Mere ramblings, no apologies.



Pre-mid life crisis

By Nishita | Friday, 18 October 2013 20 Comments

“A Twin Flame (also Twin Soul) is a spiritual (New Age) concept describing a special soul connection between two halves of the same soul. According to the mythology of Twin Flames, in the beginning of time we were created as a perfect soul, that was split into two soul halves, one male, one female, that would then be cast upon Earth to be forever looking for one-another. They would reincarnate over lifetimes with this longing for each other, and once they finally meet, they would reunite and be blissfully in love and then leave this physical plane as one whole individual.” - Wikipedia

I believe in the concept of twin soul and for me marriage would mean marrying that one person who gets me, gets my jokes, gets my cynicism, intimidates me, completes my sentences and most importantly accepts my flab !!
So when the aunties and uncles search for a candidate within the same community and caste, the concept of twin soul goes for a toss and the end result is a business arrangement with maximum risk mitigation benefiting both the parties involved .  A typical girl family perspective would be :
1. NRI is a delectable entity but Indians with a 6 figure salary would also suffice.
2. The guy should have a house in a gated community and a sedan.
3. Good family. (The ‘good’ here is subject to discretion)

A typical guy family perspective would be :
1. Fair-skinned beauty, the skinnier the better. (But we Odias prefer the non skinny versions)
2. Should have a job to share the guy’s expenses. But in some cases, females are required to quit.
3. Good character.  No alcohol. No weed. (If your profile is in any matrimonial site, please remove your pub pictures ASAP, this is India, you cannot be the pub going loose woman !!)

So what we do is narrow down our options to a limited strata of the society when actually the world should be our oyster.
When you are in that tricky age of 24-25 and you are a female, marriage suddenly becomes more of a compliance than a choice. You should ideally have a candidate to get married to for your sake or else the family intervention will hit you just below the belt :P  If for some reason or the other, you fail to find your ‘soulmate’, people around you will think it’s their moral duty to hunt down that special someone for you. Nobody’s interested to know if you’re interested for such a commitment or not. People around you start getting married and having kids, so even you should bite the bait. And so, owing to the circumstances around us, one fine day, we all settle. And most of us settle with any feasible option that comes our way. We settle because we’re scared. Scared of being alone, which is why that quest for mad, passionate, extraordinary love dies a martyr’s death.

The very sound of arranged marriage is thus creepy. Unless your arranged marriage guy gifts you a destination wedding with a Sabyasachi outfit and The Wedding Planners and Tarun Chawla,  I am going to keep thinking it’s weird and illogical. Arranging a marriage typically means seeing what you get, interacting with a few hand picked and maybe hen pecked candidates, narrowing down to a lucky few, talking for a few months or worse days and finally giving in with prospects of hope, excitement and expectations.

Nobody will ever divulge what happens after the happily married part cuz in the Facebook era, we all feel obligated to act happy in our profiles (‘Best day ever’, ‘Best husband ever’ etc. )  and market ourselves in a certain way. What actually happens to you is your destiny. Thou shalt get screwed if that is your destiny.

I don’t have the statistics to claim what is better, love marriage or arranged marriage but all the candyfloss movies that I have seen makes me believe that liking > dating > loving > marrying sounds more natural to me.

But then sometimes we have to bend backwards for the greater good.

Mere Ramblings, No Apologies :)

Team Ranbir

By Nishita | Sunday, 9 June 2013 Leave a comment

Before watching, Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani, thanks to the spoiler alerts on FB, I concluded the movie is another Student Of The Year kinda crap. But when I actually saw the movie, I completely loved it. Ranbir Kapoor can be partly blamed for it though.
People who were expecting an Iron Man experience from a Dharma production will obviously be disappointed. But the fact is there cannot be much substance in a Rom Com. It's supposed to be all dreamy and unrealistic. That's the beauty of fiction.
'If only I could date Bunny'
'If only I could have an exotic destination wedding'
'If only I could have the yellow fuchsia coral wardrobe'
'If only my husband could drive a BMW'
'If only all my travel bags were LV'
'If only I could quit my job and become a Fox traveller tv person instead'
'If only I could take random trekking trips and meet a Ranbir doppelganger'
The list is endless. Isn't it ?
 The only drawback with the movie was the length. Hindi movies have a bad reputation of loose scripts anyway.
What I loved about the movie was the many moments that the director created throughout the movie which made the experience beautiful.
The part where the father asks him to follow his dreams inspite of being sad about it shows the selfless love our folks have for us. 
The part where Aditya is let down by his friend cuz he never calls. It explores how friends drift and how priorities change with time and all you are left with are the insatiable expectations.
The part where Deepika tells him 'we can't have it all. Something will miss out. Instead we should enjoy what we have right now'
The way he suddenly blurts out 'I love you'
When she asks why he wants to marry her, he says cuz there's a right time for everything in life.  He makes her a part of his dreams and wants to see the world with her.
The proposal happens only with 2 balloons and a cake. Minimal, simple and sugary sweet.

It's not about being pompous when the best things in life are supposed to be simple. 

The movie experience for an IT person with crazy work was epic. I got involved in a story and got my share of happiness from it. Ranbir just eats all the screen space and even manages to overshadow Madam Madhuri !! He takes Badtameez Dil to a whole different level with his quirky expressions. He is the best visual treat in B-Town and I am completely charmed.

Team Ranbir <3

The tall tale of our beloved men

By Nishita | Saturday, 21 July 2012 1 Comment


“The tragedy of machismo is that a man is never quite man enough"  
 ~Germaine Geer


We have heard and seen enough cases of the oppressive man in the progressive society. The latest story  The Guwahati incident. Enough has been said and shown about it already. The videos are viral. So whatever opinion I would state won't be anything new. Whenever there's an issue, there'll be a heated discussion about it and a lot of people will have a lot to say and your Facebook newsfeed would be flooded.
Educate men. Respect women. Women's rights. Stringent laws. And more blah.

Oddly enough those ideas can never be incorporated. Ever heard of anti-rape each one teach one ?
Enumerating some pretty basic facts ::
1. As long as there's white and black, yin and yang, men will objectify women and there's absolutely nothing one can do about it. 
2. People package and brand this very concept and sell it in the movies. So people emulate it all the more. Changing the word 'rape' to 'sexual assault' won't change a thing.
News channels are the only entities that get benefitted in the form of ‘breaking news’. 
All of the women have been subjected to a certain degree of harassment at some or the other point of their lives be it in a bus, a train, on the road or even in a temple !!  You always have to be alert and suspicious at all times, you have to avoid deserted roads, you have to dress according to a certain sensibility unless you want the Rowdy Rapists to pounce on you, you need to do a double check at every step to check if someone’s following you, every car that slows down beside you, you need to be careful to retract.
In spite of being super careful, things will happen. A man will scan you from  the tip of your head to the tip of your toe, a man will give you his set of lewd looks, a man will come up to you and ask you what's a dildo, a man will turn into Pee Wee Herman if there’s an opportunity on a lonely road, a man will grope you in the darkness of the bus, a man will grope you in the brightness of a crowded temple for that matter, a man will pass obscene comments, a man will corner you and go around you with his motorcycle and I can go on and on. 
A friend suggests pepper spray. Trust me friend, there’s never the time to rummage through your big bag, find that bottle and spray, spray, spray. All you can possibly think of at the time is to run, run, run and never look back.
Depending on your degree of luck, you either come out of the situation physically unscathed or you don’t. Either ways the damage is more on the psychological front.  Every time a certain incident happens you start questioning the integrity of your creation. Gradually you become this epitome of stoicism and learn to be comfortably numb with these encounters accepting it as a way of life. You cannot fight the thought process, you cannot fight the man with all his physical strength, you can only succumb. Such is the sorry state of females. There's no such thing as equality of men and women and can never be. The male species have their vested interests in every aspect of the equality banter so please don't take it seriously. Workplace diversity is a farce to keep the men engaged. Office would be such a bummer with no femme fatales in it !!
At the end of the day, women are physically weak, emotionally creeper-like and subject to objectification.
Now the feminists might think I am crazy but I am in fact a hardcore feminist myself. It’s just that I am not delusional. I am just being practical here. Rape or sexual assault or anything in between will keep happening. All that the fairer sex can possibly do is stay vigilant and careful at all times.
As they say, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.

Disclaimer: Certain keywords hurt the Oriya sensibility and I know the quintessential Oriya girl is not supposed to say them out loud, more so publish it online :P

Mere ramblings, no apologies ;)

Location: Madhapur, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India