Ginger & Cardamom

Some professions have since times immortal caught the fantasies of the kid. I am sure there would be many little boys who wanted to be a fighter pilot and little girls who wanted to be teachers at one point in their lives. Another such glorified profession was scientists, you always wanted to be a scientist when they taught you inventions and discoveries back in class 3^rd. I also got the same bug when I was 8 years old studying in class 3^rd. I also wanted to become a scientist and my ultimate purpose of living was to make a time machine. I dropped the Idea when I saw the thickness of the books which an uncle of mine read being scientists. After all I didn’t have any use for the time machine. And till date I regret the decision.

If I would have made a time machine, I could have traveled back in time and talked Sarat Chandra Chatarjee out of writing Devdas. I am sure I could have convinced him to write a futuristic lifestyle novel about 3 looser kind of guys who screw up their life in IIT to sneak out question papers. It would have been a win-win situation. Our beloved writer would have earned better amounts in royalties and a times in history for predicting accurately the lives of Engineering students and I would have saved myself and the human race from the 3 degrees of torture Devdas- Dilip Kumar, Devdas- Sharukh khan, and the last and the most excruciating DevD.

I always thought I am one of the people with quite an appetite and patience for movies. I can enjoy almost any kind of crappy movie, even the ones starring Rakhi Sawant, Fardeen Khan, or Harman Baweja. But the league of Devdas is something so painful that it just beats the brain into a pulp, I am sure if in Ghajini, the villain had forcibly shown Aamir Khan all the 2 Devdas and 1 DevD whatever was left of his 15 minutes of memory also would have faded away. Thank god for Aamir that DevD wan’t released then.

I mean why since so many years people are hell bent upon glorifying the biggest losers. Think of a guy who is a jerk of first order and insults the dignity of the “Pure Love” and dumps his childhood girlfriend (I don’t understand why Ram Sena doesn't bans “DevD-asses” for propagating under age romance which also is dead against our so called culture; at least I will have one cause to support them). Then later he finds he was wrong, the girlfriend marries someone else and our loser turns to drinking. I mean what a lame story and there were people who made movies on this, that too thrice. The only change being Dilip Kumar & Unknown Liquor, Sharukh Khan & Whiskey, and Abhay Deol & Vodka.

Coming to DevD the most hilarious part is when actually Anurag Kashyap comes and tells on TV & radio that DevD is a different movie from Devdas, yeah Mr. Kashyap, it is indeed different it has unique blend of a prehistoric lame story and newspaper headlines of DPS, RK Puram MMS scandal and Sanjeev Nanada BMW scandal. What a thought, who did you hire to write a script a page 3 columnist. I also understand that DevD has a different ending, a positive one where the loser quits drinking and marries the s**t(well, I don’t like using the world but you used it in your movie too). Now let me make this clear, if you wanted to send a message across you could have made an ad film 30 sec long, okay make it 1 min long if you feel so much about the issue where you could have written in bold “DO NOT CONSUME LIQUOR, IT MIGHT RUIN YOUR LIFE” that would have sufficed. Our health minister would have arranged for the government financing of your film through tax payers money if you would have brought the topic to him over a round of drinks. Why the hell you needed to make a 3 hour long nonsense epic to torture us, to tell this. If you were thinking that you actually made a sexually stimulating DevD by your build up by showing the characters so desperate to have sex, trust me the c-grade porn movies have a better build-up than DevD. I mean who shows a bedding spread right across the green fields and a girl desperate to make out and a guy who is feeling cranky (Oh please, I was talking of Anurag Kashyap).

So guys anyone of you who has an access to the time machine for the sake of mankind please fly back to 1917 and beg Mr. Sarat Chandra Chatarjee not to write about failed love and the Drunken Men.

Year 2008 has been a year of a high flying roller coaster ride. A year of stagnation but still a great leap. A year of nihllence but still a year of two greatest milestones I wanted to achieve personally. This is going to be a brand new year, a year of new hopes, a year of new aspirations, a year of new goals and a year of struggle to acheieve them. It a bit to too late to say, but I want it to be another happy new year.

Things I want to Accomplish this year-

1- Loose weight- I really have to start loosing some weight. Life has been very irregular since I have come to pune where sports and exercises are concerned and very very regular where brownies, cakes and sweets are concerned. The bottomline is that because of this I have put on quiet some weight which I need to shed till march. Increase the overall fitness and immunity level by the end of the year.

2- New books- I have took a hit down in my reading habits lately and I need to bring that back upto my last years level of 60-75 books a year.

3- Finances- Manage my finances, cut on free spending I generally do.

4- Reach The Next phase in my career- I have to achieve the next milestone in my career invariably. I have reached a stage where I feel that another year doing the same thing would actually be hindering my long term career path.

5- Call back all of my friends at least once a month- I have been such a lousy and lazy guy, that I alwasy miss to call back my friends. This year I will be regualar and prompt to call all you guys back.

I have written this post after a long time and is in a state of grief, and shaken trust with what has happened with Satyam. I am not sue if the piece of text is coherent or it makes sense to anyone but the fact is the harder I try to dissociate the closer I find in believing the Joker.

"He is the hero Gotham deserves not the one it needs right now. So we will hunt him, because he can take it. Because he is not our hero, he is the silent guardian, a watchful protector, a Dark Knight.” This quote from the dark knight kept me thinking. Specially, in the light of the statement which Joker made earlier in the movie. “They need you right now, but when they don't they will cash you out like a leopard. Their morals, their code, it is a bad joke, are dropped at the first sight of the trouble they are only as good as world allows them to be. When the ships are down these civilized people will eat each other.”

I feel this statement from the Joker is so true about the real world. The people, their morals and code are just a farce put up to fake a social fabric. When a choice comes between the personal interests and moral codes it’s often the personal interests that survive. The people who actually stick to the moral and codes are the ones who do not have a choice to fulfill their personal interests. But more so they would like someone else to be the protagonist of the morals.

When Gordon says he is the hero Gotham deserves but what it needs right now. So we will hunt him, because he can take it.

And what happens when he cannot? Everyone has a breaking point, what happens when he reaches breaking point? They just disown him and move ahead seeing the other way.

How correct Joker was when he said that the people needed Batman right not, but when they won’t they will cash him out. Let him go down the drain.

When I see the world around me, everyone is pushing each other on the thin lines of morality. Think of what happened at Satyam, they would have been put so many controls and checks over the employee. They forced people to give up their personal life for the greater good of organization, all this because someone sitting at the top was preaching fake morality. I mean who is to be blamed the top honchos, the auditors, or the poor people who never did anything wrong but just got on the wrong side of a hypocrite.

I have a shaken belief on humanity, morality, ethics today. And I think I would believe in another line from Harvey Dent in the same movie-

“The world is cruel and the only morality in the cruel world is chance, unbiased, unprejudiced fair.”

These are four dialogues from the dark knight which made me think in the current age of recession, bankruptcies, frauds and falling moralities that may be morality isn’t the best way to live a life.

“They need you right now, but when they don't they will cash you out like a leopard. Their morals, their code, it is a bad joke, are dropped at the first sight of the trouble they are only as good as world allows them to be. When the ships are down these civilized people will eat each other.”

“He is the hero Gotham deserves not the one it needs right now. So we will hunt him, because he can take it. Because he is not our hero, he is the silent guardian, a watchful protector, a dark knight. “

“Sometimes the truth is not good enough, sometimes people deserve more, and sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded. “

“The world is cruel and the only morality in the cruel world is chance, unbiased, unprejudiced fair.”

I know I have been very very irregular on posting on my blog, I promise that I will be back very soon. I have not been keeping too well lately (not that I am going to die or something, so everyone who owes me any money there is nothing to be too happy about). I also had to go through the process of shifting house again which was stretched over a period of 17 days and 3 places. :-)

I have written a guest post recently on Nids' Blog, You can check the post here. Thanks a lot Nids for tolrating my bakwaas on your blog. :-)

I was having a chat with one of my friends, It was a catching up after a long time chat and the conversation moved in such a direction, which can happen only between two MBA's. The amazing point was there was nothing substantial in the conversation; but still both of us had a hearty laugh and shared an amazing moment of connect. I am reproducing an excerpt of the conversation which happened between us-