Courage, the Cowardly Dog.
Forks in the road, beaten path.
Courage and war, revenge and wrath.
Honesty and redemption, coming of age,
Justice and love, power and rage.
Read and rejoice, your guide to live by,
Until someone will walk in, ask you why
Life will follow the script in your head.
When people can transpire their own reality instead?
When easy is better than just.
What good is your script then?
Live and Let Sigh
The ability to cling to something abstract is a great leveller. Like we cling to promises and hope, the vestiges of bourgeois existence.
Our heroes cling to morality, every fight a discovery along their path.
They find strength, they journey on.
Our leaders shroud themselves in a lack of any discernible movement, battling a coup that is yet to begin, while our revolutionaries are clinging to their understanding of our good nature.
We read words, as if they’re not cryptic and ephemeral.
We liked songs, they turned out to be about massacres.
The shadows are getting longer, the light is just a taunting cascade of orange haze.
And then it is gone, leaving you in the afterglow of whatever you wish to see, whatever you want to reflect.
The weary shoulders on which this nation is built succumbs to find sustenance in promised salvation, and treasures its Gods.
The royalty is trying its commanders for treason, for they have dared to cross the moats.
The villains, their ends are our ends.
And no one knows what lies between then and now.
Someone must stop, change that abstract to tangible.
Look around us, this is not the world we were hoping to build.
The farmers are peasants. And people, jaded.
The stories are fables. And children, lost.
The music is autotune. And machines, happy.
The love is an agreement. And romance, prepubescent.
The protestors are dissidents. And polices, framed by water-cannon.
The neighbours are thieves. And fences, taller.
The light is ubiquitous. And darkness, pandemic.
Poverty is a sin. And power, wealth.
Shock is awe. And emotion, choreographed.
And here we are, waiting for change.
Lighting candles for justice, and turning off our lights.
You can cling to hope too. Because in the darkness, you can cling to anything. You can believe in legend and lore, in ghost and God, in dignified and demonic, and no one will know. You can hide from choosing, feeling, saying, living.
No one can see you, and the darkness is your friend.
A Place to Play
Scribbled in a school yearbook, I once read how in twenty years, we’ll regret the things we didn’t do more than the things we did. It’s probably true. You can drive about your whole life with the seatbelt on, clutching onto safety, statistics and your apparent faith in kevlar and interwoven nylon, but that journey won’t allow you to stick your head out of the sunroof, feeling a benevolent wind gushing past you, ratifying how alive you can be.
Regret, then, is the most powerful thing in the world. More powerful than hate and herpes.
I don’t think there’s any recovery from finding yourself on a balcony one evening, realising that the only dawns you see are in rear-view mirrors, that your days are a replaceable series of paper bags and paper clips, that you stand in corridors talking about percentages, that the sunsets you see are usually backdrops behind newscasters, that your whiskey soaked evenings all end in the warm embrace of the same keyboard or the same woman, or at the same corner table in the same restaurant with the same three people, talking about the next long weekend.
It would be an unmitigated tragedy if you found that you could relive your whole life in six weeks of important days, as if the moments you cherished weren’t neurological but physical, kept neatly sorted on a shelf, waiting for your perusal. You can’t live denouncing even the slightly out of the ordinary, seeking shelter under the law of averages until you find out that the vignettes of your life were just postcards from holidays you postponed and events you attended.
I guess this is just a verbose way of propagating daring, propagating courage, and most of all, propagating stupidity. Sanity and safety is for ordinary people, people who like all things normal, and those people are usually fucking bores.
The Ra.One Review
- Spoiler Alert – Duh.
I know I’m not really this movie’s demographic.
It’s made for eight year old kids from Bhagalpur as an upgrade from Shaktimaan, so that they can buy action figures to rub against their sister’s Barbie dolls.
And this could be an awesome movie if it was a spoof – some sort of parody of the crapfest that Bollywood has become.
But unfortunately, they were serious. Now I never do movie reviews, I only do whiny poems and stuff. I don’t have the patience to watch most movies or to write about them. But I’m going to tell you the whole story today, because I’m pissed off that they ruined Ben E. King’s ‘Stand by Me’; and because I have nothing better to do right now.
Here goes:
Ra.One is the manifestation of the artificial intelligence of a Playstation videogame, who is ultimately brought to justice by G.One, who looks like a sexier version of game’s designer.
It opens in the pervy dream sequence of a ten year old kid, where man in crotch-hugging latex suit tries to make it with and simultaneously rescue Priyanka Chopra from the clutches of one Mr. Khalnayak – Sanjay Dutt, replete with Khalnayak soundtrack and cheesy punchlines.
But first he kills three Chinese warriors (Uski Lee, Iski Lee, and Sabki Lee – really, I can’t make this up) whose uniforms are stolen from Ling Xiaoyu from the Tekken Video Game, which is about to be famous in India as the thing from which 50% of Ra.One has been stolen. Seriously, the least they could have done is give the game a costume designer credit.
Oh, and the man in dream sequence doing the rescuing is the little kid’s dad. Who he thinks is a lame coward. This is either a really deep Oedipus complex narrative, or a very disturbing sex dream about his father: you can pick. But since the kid’s mom is Kareena Kapoor, I’m inclined to go with the former.
Also, his dad has pubes on his head. Really.
How that man convinced Kareena Kapoor to marry him is one of the great mysteries in a movie littered with gravity defying stunts and superhero and villain who experiment with telekinesis and touch-based mind altering.
Anyway, the narrative moves on, and so must I.
The superhero and super-villain have hearts, not the blood-pumping kind, but the ones the producers stole from Iron Man. And the video game comes with some expensive accessories: a jacket that ensures that movements while wearing it are duplicated by the game characters, like the kind of thing used for live action movies.
The kid plays the video game on the night of it’s grand launch party, a gently lifted ‘Stark Expo’ moment - Dilip Tahil dances amongst half-naked girls to promote his new product.
And the kid, Shahrukh’s son – Prateek, I think, they named him – beats supervillian, who swears revenge, promptly comes to life, kills one of the other game designers, and then Shahrukh’s character.
This prompts people to sullenly look out of windows and then do what every Indian in London does upon bereavement – pack up their shit and move to India. Oh, but not after Shahrukh’s character, a Tamilian called Shekhar Subramanium has an open casket funeral. The montage of this funeral ends with his son putting most of his ashes into a pond-type thing, and some in his pocket. Funeral, and Cremation. Multiculturalism for the win.
Fortunately, this is not the most unbelievable part of this movie. You can even believe it when the movie tells you that everyone in London speaks Hindi, like journalists at press conferences and muggers and airport security. What you can’t believe is what happens next.
As super-villain Ra.One begins chasing little kid who beat him in a video game by using all sorts of hacking, and traveling in radio frequency magic, the good guy in the video game is brought to life, since he’s the only one who can fight super villain.
There’s a complicated horcrux type caveat about how they can be the only ones to kill one another etc, but I’m not going to bother explaining that. I just want you to know it’s there.
Anyway, Ra.One chases Kareena and her son across London while they’re on their way to the airport, and Kareena does some fancy ass driving by managing to do donuts for thirty seconds in a Volkswagen Toureg while she checks out G.One, who is a sexier version of her dead husband, and of course she wants a piece of that.
G.One destroys Ra.One into little cubes and then a conveniently passing by road-roller buries him into the tarmac, and then he shape shifts into a heavily pierced punk to get through airport security and they land at Mumbai.
Rajnikant makes a special appearance to show off his sunglasses twirling skills, while G.One has a fight with around 20 hoodlums at the airport. Where there’s no police. And he uses a football as a weapon. Which knocks out 4 grown men, but when it mistakenly hits Kareena it merely causes her to swear in Hindi.
Kareena’s dead husband has a house in Mumbai, so obviously she tells the neighbours that her husband isn’t dead but is just sexier now as the video-game-AI-robot-holographic-image guy G.One. And then she goes to a party a month or so after her husband died, in that red saree. And dances with the robot lookalike. Midway through the song half her saree disappears so you can fully appreciate her gentle flab. She has to keep up appearances, you see.
Anyway, this is becoming long, so here are rest of the highlights.
Evil faceless villain assumes the shape and name of a perfume advertisement, Pi/2, and thus Arjun Rampal finally shows us his face and tattoos (Agent 47 from Hitman) He then mind-controls Kareena to pilot a runaway train via old Bollywood staple/Spiderman reference of ‘Break Fail’, and makes G.One choose between saving the kid or saving the hot mom – which the Illegitimate Indian Lovechild of the conundrums from Sophie’s Choice and Dark Knight.
Of course, G.One saves both, and then kills Ra.One (again), this time with Horcrux/Heart/H.A.R.T/Game Apparatus, and then kills himself, because of course as a logical robot he has decided that the world has no use for shape-shifting technology, or reverse-engineering superhuman strength, or flying or wiping someone’s tears and finding out their chemical content (Yup, that happens too).
But you want to know where this ultimate fight sequence takes place?
At an Expo, where’ they’re launching the video game. (But the expo was empty, so I’m guessing the game isn’t that good, or someone hacked it and then uploaded a torrent)
A few weeks after the game’s designers were murdered.
By the video game’s villain.
Who happened to come to life.
And advance technology by twenty years overnight to avenge getting his ass kicked.
He didn’t want world domination or anything.
Just wanted to kill one little ten year old.
I’m sure if I re-read this I could make it funny, or add more commas, or do a little spell-check, but I can’t.
I really, really, can’t.
So I’ll do some bullet points instead. Everyone loves bullet points.
- The only person to come out of this movie with any credit is the guy who did Rajni’s make up.
- Injuries to Shahrukh work exactly how injuries to Will Smith work in I,Robot.
- Ra.One and G.One make the jump from virtual world to real, shoot balls of plasma and fire at each other but die because of a video-game gun and a video game bullet.
- G.One can eat batteries and recharge himself using an naked power cable but can’t tie a lungi.
- The train crashes at VT Station, and the entire station collapses. The whole fucking building. And the train comes out onto the street, where G.One finally stops it. The train is still unscratched up to this point.
- G.One says, “Battles are not won by bullets, but by the heart.’ (Or. H.A.R.T, the horcrux type thing)
- In true internet meme style, hero and villain put on sunglasses at appropriate moments. Repeatedly.
I’m too tired to incorporate the words ‘Chamak Challo’ into this rant, and I’d promised myself I would.
The Greatest Trick
Do you have a voice in your head?
Not the one that propagates hope but the forthright, abrasive, downright blatant one that you sometimes unknowingly suppress?
Well, don’t suppress it.
That’s the smartest person you know.
Even if you know Chomsky, James May and the guys who invented noise-cancelling headphones.
Hope is still a good thing, people are still essentially not-evil, your hair looks good, etc. But that voice, it’ll save your life.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that its wisdom is cynical.
Anyway, the voice that propagates hope is rehearsed, it’s lost its charm, its novelty, its rhetoric. It’s like hearing the lady on the telephone say that the number you’re trying to reach is currently unavailable, or listening to your computer teacher scream, ‘I swear if you try to hack into the school’s network again you’re going to get expelled’ – you hear it, sure, but you don’t really process it. Mostly, it’s just white noise, the same as traffic, or being told your pants are too low.
This powerful, sometimes angry and seemingly mean voice is constantly looking out for you. It’s the disbelieving laughter in your head when you tell yourself you’re definitely going to cut down on whatever you’re addicted to, that you’re going to start jogging every morning. It’s the one that knows when you’re lying to yourself.
Everyone has blind hope, and convenient decisions, the ability to avoid awkwardness. Everyone has reasons to justify it, but that’s usually coming from wrong side of you.
Sometimes, the devil’s just the better bet.
This is making me fain
How’s that for a tattoo.
I’m heartbroken I didn’t think of this. I’m going to write on those lines, and then get it.
Forgive me. I know it’s an unspeakable sin to internalize, but this ink speaks to me in a way few things have.
I used to love these notebooks, with their ruled lines. I would cycle for twenty minutes (on a cycle that was too big for me, I’d be forced to use falling down as a method of breaking) to go to a shop where an old man sold stamps, ledgers and these notebooks, just so I could have the lines.
The paper smelled wonderful too.
Also, considering I spend nearly six hours a day reading things online, I was at some point bound to realize the innate genius of sharing them in ways other email. I’m not posting this to the whole world’s newsfeed on facebook (though the irony of Facebook syncing with WordPress is quite phenomenal)
I’m going to blog often and more indiscriminately. You may want to unsubscribe.
Snoitavresbo.
Revolution, cynicism, courage.
Hunger, hostage, conspiracy, betrayal.
Let it go.
A phoenix is coming.
Amidst well laid plans. Withdrawal.
An inevitable status update.
Friends, memories. Bad friends, lessons.
Change yourself. The world will wait.
At least I’m haunted by humans.
____________
I’m sorry, but today is just a blank verse sort of day.
Also, can I just say: Tell them stories.
Observations 2.0
An amalgam of happy, rude, unshared Drafts.
If you can’t take a day off from work on a whim,
you should kill yourself now.
If you’re sad, and your music has no words,
You can’t get better, so get comfortable.
If you’re happy, and your music has no words,
Please be sad.
If you think random voice modulation and a tabla is Sufi Music,
I don’t know, maybe you’re right.
If you don’t understand ‘Some of my best friends are straight’ on a Tshirt,
please don’t watch How I Met Your Mother.
A facebook event is not an acceptable way to plan a night out with your friends,
especially since you often call them while urinating.
If you do not know what any of the 3 words below mean, please accept that your life is mediocre.
Grooveshark, Pandora, Spotify.
If you’re already registered on Pottermore,
Don’t talk to me.
If you bought a DSLR and immediately began copyrighting your photos,
please donate your body to science, and begin running into walls.
Especially if you don’t know what Creative Commons licenses are.
If you think talking to yourself is weird,
you don’t know anything.
I mean, literally, anything.
I’m surprised you don’t fall down more often.
You have to, at some point in your life, wish to be an entrepreneur.
You don’t have to follow it through, you don’t have to make a business plan.
But you have to want it.
If you can’t name two of Shakespeare’s plays, you must reconsider your life choices.
If you’re yelling at people for driving poorly and your side view mirrors are folded shut,
I have this cliff you should drive off of.
Urbandictionary is a legit source of knowledge.
Photoblogs are boss.
FTW is an acceptable acronym. So is FML. WRU is not.
Apparently, it means Where Are You?
I know, SMH too.
‘I’ve seen the movie’ is not an appropriate response to any book-related conversation.
If you tweet more than thrice a day, and if you ask celebrities for retweets on your birthday or when your cat turns 2, you’re a twat.
‘OK’ is not an appropriate end to any conversation.
If you have an iPhone and don’t have at least one reason to dislike it while continuing to love it,
you’re a sheep.
If you have a Blackberry and don’t have at least two reasons to dislike it while continuing to love it,
you’re either a socialite, an asshole, incredibly lonely or very, very stupid.
It is okay to like bad songs.
It is okay to dance to them at weddings.
It is not okay to create their facebook page.
If you own a t-shirt with any crystal or rhinestone embellishments,
I would like to know how you found my blog.
Clearly I have failed as a human being.
