For the love of Imtiaz (Ali), Harry met Sejal again!

I am utterly easy to please and utterly difficult to impress. You can check with my first born if you question the above statement. But egotism apart, the point of this ponder is to talk about one of the few people that manages to impress me time and again. It is Imtiaz Ali, the brain, heart and soul behind some memorable movies in Bollywood - at least in my arsenal of memorable films. 

So when Harry met Sejal was in the making, I had this anticipation to watch out for how Mr.Ali is to woo me yet again with his charms of film making.I know, the title is uninspiring and sounds so much like "Harry and Sally" from Rodeo drive. But, it is a given that we get 'inspired' and that inspiration doesn't elude even original thinkers like Mr.Ali - and what's in a name anyway? It's just a label of recognition. 

I didn't go catch it on the marquee - luckily for me, I didn't have my friend Ms.Madhavan persuade me to go to the theater for obvious reasons - it didn't have a certain Mr.Kapoor or a certain Miss (now Missus) Padukone. So, I kind of halfheartedly watched SRK and Anushka in action while doing my chores once it streamed on Netflix. For me, Harry and Sejal fell flat. They didn't do much except bore me to a point where I switched the telly off,half way through. I didn't want to consume unconsumable stuff. 

Long after I dismissed Harry and Sejal as boring, a little voice in my head kept egging me to give Mr.Ali a second chance. Now Imtiaz is one of those endangered species in bollywood story telling, who conceives character and emotion driven plots. Seldom do we find an intricate story in his works, but somehow, by the virtue of making his leading characters embark on this journey of self discovery through the people they bump into and get influenced and inspired by, he creates a layered viewing experience that is filled with gasps, 'aha' moments and once in a while fills the peepers as well, in the intensity of those second hand emotions that find their way into the minds of hard hearted, logic driven viewer like me. 

"What you are seeking is seeking you" is the log line. I got the metaphorical engagement ring that is lost and the the allegory of the 'seeking' well bred, 'sister type' Sejal does with the vagabondish Harry. Each carrying their own bags and baggage and each finding what they were seeking in the unusual company of the other. On paper, Harry and Sejal must have been every bit as convincing as the leads of 'Jab we met' or Highway or Tamasha...but when the translation to the screen occurred, some crucial details fell through the cracks. Yes, I get Sejal's side of the discovery but Harry's demons stay vague and obscure failing to create the trademark 'character driven magic' Imtiaz creates time and again. 


I know I sound every bit like those 'reviewers' out there. That isn't the point. At all. The point is, I am smitten by Imtiaz Ali's story telling prowess, his deep, meaningful, welling up human relations that he explores through his protagonists and his ability to take the movie goer beyond entertainment. There are wonderful, insightful and smile inducing moments in Harry and Sejal's journey too...I specially was smiling through the scene where Sejal keeps on repeating "Main uss se laayak hoon" pointing to the super hot female entertainer they meet in the quest of finding what they were seeking. That gyrating she does - Oh God! the sister type and her voids! Oh my! I smiled, laughed and them got all smitten by Mr.Ali's nuanced, subtle character exploration. 

But the meeting sank, not because it went over the heads of the average Joe of a movie goer, but because it didn't recreate the intensity that we have come to trust Mr. Ali with. But then again, our Midas touch goes to the garage once in a while. It is really okay. Such is life!



Pictured -Harry and Sejal, sporting their Tom ford and Ray Ban aviators respectively ;)

Mind it :)

The twist

There's a unicorn with a golden mane

Iridescent coat and a sparkly horn

She glimmers and shines

Smiling through her densely fringed eyes,

She adorns the footwear of a child in guise.

The exotic creature has a magical presence

Cutting through her manmade effervescence.

When she glides along with the child in guise

All and sundry sport a smile, perhaps of surprise!

The smile could even be a mocking laugh

Possibly of a secondhand embarrassment

On the child in guise's behalf. 

Cause the feet that slip into the golden maned unicorn

Are attached to a woman, grown up and a half.

Little does the child in guise care

And embraces unicorn shoes, humming bird bracelets

Rhinoceros pendants

And ladybugs studded to the earlobes.

In her critter company

The quirky little child in disguise

Lives happily ever after -

Go ahead, judge her!

She'll probably respond in laughter. 

Matt and Bessie series.

Undercover

Out of the blue

Emerges green - lush with yellow streaks

Sporting smears of light and dark

Shine and shadow.

Out of the brown

Springs green,

Shooting through the soil

Swiftly up the bark

Slithering into vein thin stalks

Spreading above my head

Like an umbrella

Shielding, soothing, swaying!

Playing hide and seek

In beams of rays

Forming metaphoric arrays

Much like this illusion

Called life?

Out of the green

Sprouts a thought

A flash of smile.

Blessing in the angry noon,

Ala carte of shelter served with inspiration

To breathe in verde

And breathe out a verse.

Matt and Bessie time!

The big picture

Rain, perhaps has the most effective ambiance of all the natural occurrences. Just yesterday, as I was reading a Monk's memoir, I come across a tidbit of knowledge that says consciousness is light. That is probably why the figurative "clouded" is so cliched when it comes to denoting haze of the human mind, conception and perspective. But when I caught a glimpse of the cloudy night as I drove past the interstate, I was froze for a moment. It comes to me from all quarters, this instruction to be aware but not pondering to stay connected to the source. I know this gets clouded, this piece of information, but let me not delve too deep into my ongoing spiritual quest and the knowledge and insights acquired therein and stay where I am supposed to stay which is blogging about the ambient clouds that graced my way and staying in touch with the cathartic process of writing. 

The better part of my vista point was focused on the vastness of the sky smudged with the nimbus, reducing the 'Waning Gibbous' stage heavenly satellite (aka Moon) to a glorified city light on the horizon. I had to do a second take to spot the moon by the raised facade of the local movie theater. The sky looked like a canvas being prepared for a masterpiece, sporting depths and lights of blue and indigo smudged with the effervescence of white, the king of colors. Well, this opinion is open for debate, but if light is consciousness and the bliss of connecting to the eternal is described as 'white' - it has to be the emperor, whole soul and the ultimate of colors anyway - what perspective change, I gather! - but all smears of pastels and primaries, secondaries and tertiary are only enhanced against a white background. Right?

So I freeze there, in the cosmic intelligence, in the vast, unfathomable cryptic code that goes into bringing the universe into existence and symbolically, my eye span only notices the space above reducing the perfectly paved grey roads, the bright trailing automobile lights, the traffic, the concrete edifices and the florescent road signs to a meager after thought of the sprawling space above - kind of like a denotation of the speck this earth becomes in the big picture.
"It's a stage" someone smart opined "and we are acting our parts" - may be that awareness in the background puts things in perspective and lifts the clouds of ignorance. May be that awareness is the one that our race needs.

Pictured - My smart phone's capture of the infinite.

The Tree Hugger

Down in the valley
She skips around
In childlike bliss
'The tree hugger'
They call her!
She loves like she's never been hurt
She says 'forever' is a hoax
Uttered by weak bodies
And pretentious minds
While their flesh tingles
And thoughts feign holiness.
"Love like the tree"
She suggests.
"Or love the tree, it's even better"
She whispers..
Like she is revealing a road map to some treasure.
There's no tab on giving or taking
Nor a profit and loss balance sheet
Keeping accounts 
In a commerce dubbed as love.
"Forever is a trick" She opines
To open doors to your certitude.
"Don't fall prey to those words"
She pleads.
"They are a dime a dozen"
"come join me and hug a tree"
The tree hugger whispers
Like she is giving away some fortune.
May be because the tree doesn't talk.
May be because she feels safe 
When there aren't webs of deciet
Spread to catch prey
Woven with empty vows
Darned together with the threads of 'forever'
"Transient, those vows, those oaths" 
She murmurs.
"Hug a tree, he won't stab you in the back"
As the tree hugger skips by
Unscathed in the path of love.
Or may be she pretends to be unscathed
As she hugs a tree that won't stab her in the back.

pictured - A still from the movie Dear Zindagi

Bystander Diaries - What we do is what they learn.

It was a typical spring day in the valley, warm dry and raining pollen. Yes, it was more like a slight dusting of snow, but you get the drift. It was intense, visible and sinus wracking. The first born called me upon the end of her school day. It was the typical bargain. We should go out and get her an Ike's sandwich. I was in a mood to fulfill her wishes despite the raging allergies. Upon pulling into the humongous parking lot that was half empty a whiff of the allergens hit me like a rubber club on the back of my head. I pleaded to be left back in the parked car so I could shield myself from nature's onslaught. The first born hesitantly stepped out and peeked in again saying 

"It's not fun without you" 

Now, it isn't every day that a teen says fun and you in the same sentence to the parent. I am sure you are nodding your head in agreement if you had experienced it first hand. Unable to say no to that nicety, I stepped out throwing caution to air, quiet literally (if I had to use that buzz word 'literally' that every one and their brother's neighbors use these days)  

As we approached the sandwich place, I saw a hefty old man nuzzled into a wrought iron chair, his chin tucked into his chest, looking every bit peaceful as the Buddha. Even in his sitting posture, I could get a sense of how tall he was, as his long legs lay entwined at their feet, his knees pointing outward, making the chair diminish in its dimension. But what really caught my attention wasn't his austere face, or the matted hair and shoes, or even the soiled clothes. He had bruises on his face, protruding bruises that looked fresh and quiet painful. Raised pebble like blood red spots between his eyes, on the forehead and cheekbones looked like distracting adornments on his sanguine face. He was oblivious to the world. Sleeping in a nonchalance that looked impossible to me, from the way his bruises appeared. Right next to him I spotted a noisy sibling duo, two toddler brothers raging in an argument about something. They didn't register into my mind as much as the old man did as a part of me was wondering about the source, symmetry and the rawness of those wounds on the man's face and how he could look so at peace, without as much as a wrinkle of pain on his face. 

I held the door open to the younger one of the brothers and let him walk into the shop, where I spotted the mother of these two young men. After my own kid was let in to place her order, I settled in a chair opposite to the older kid, lost in reading a book.

When I heard the door screech, I looked up to see if my kid came out with her order. It was the woman. She walked out, settled in the chair with the boys and started eating her sandwich. By this time, I hadn't noticed, the old man was up. 
"DO you want to share my sandwich?" the woman asked him while simultaneously pulling out one half of her meal. The old man came forward with eager hands and quickly got to munching it - with the same nonchalance intact. Now my gaze darted to the older of the kids. He looked at what was unfolding with great absorption. A part of me was half guessing that he would open his mouth and say something - Be curious about the wounds perhaps?, Express disgust about the appearance? We can trust the kids to do such things - unfiltered blurting out of what ever crosses their mind. Just then the mother pulled out a banana from her bag and handed it to the old man. The kid's open mouth closed firmly, still intent in observing the man chewing his food noisily. 

In the meanwhile, my kid came out and I got up to leave. I waited for the mother to make an eye contact with me. I wanted to flash a smile of approval. Our eyes didn't meet and I left the place, not knowing I was smiling to myself.

"That kid learned a very important lesson today" I told my daughter and narrated the whole incident to her. "The man looked scary amma" She added. "But should we withdraw the empathy we have just because they look scary?" I asked her. "The system kind of makes you cynical" she added. "They preach about caution, stranger danger, not trusting others etcetera. isn't it daunting to heed to that and to your own heart at the same time?" 

I fell silent. It was my turn to figure out. "May be we shouldn't let our caution cloud our humanity" I said to her. "May be we'll intuitively know when something is dangerous" I continued. But there's as much trust as there is suspicion. There's as much empathy as there is indifference.

"I was kind of surprised she left those kids alone beside that man" She added. I smiled again. There is a new layer to the observation that skipped my mind. That is a mother that didn't let the world get to her. "Bless" I thought, now knowing that this stepping out braving the allergies was beneficial to me. We both walked back smiling and sniffling and probably a tad bit more evolved just by being bystanders to someone's kindness.

Parenting is such slippery slope. One can only wonder how one can teach pole opposite sentiments at the same time.

I Read...

I read
The unsaid, the unheard
The silence between words
The space between breaths.
I read the slight sway 
Of black berry leaves by my window.
The perched humming bird 
Resting on those twigs, upon
Devouring those white blooms.
I read the miracle of those snow white petals
Morphing into ink black fruit.

I read the lazy lumber of snails
The filters of clouds that foretell
The sky's temperament for the day!
I read my teen's hormonal tantrums
The toddler's unruly demands!
I read the frustration 
Of a stranger trying to cut me off
In a line.
The boredom of the kid dragged to a shopping spree.
I read without a personal narrative
Without filters of premonitions
Judgement.
I read with wonder
With awe, with love.
I then, read more - 
The many symbols, the literal ones
Whisking me away to another world
That I might never see.
I read with tears welling in my eyes
With the bliss of finding words to my feelings
In a stranger's articulation.
I read the random abstract
With scary precision.

I pause and process
And realize
That I write 
By the virtue of reading!
That's reading at a whole new level
When I read myself like never before.
I am glad
I read!

I write....

By the virtue
Of stringing words 
With the flowers of feelings
I live
A Thousand lives.
Countless secondhand emotions
Find refuge
In my fingertips
Flowing straight
From the arteries of my heart!

I sense the flutters of love
The jitters of hopelessness
The pungency of betrayal - 
Only ones that are closest to you
Can subject you to!
Who else can shatter the heart?
Except those that you let hold it
In their reluctant hands,
Wishing that love 
Can be conjured out of
Someone who doesn't have it?

I crawl like a critter
Caring not, if I'd be trampled under a tire
Or a preoccupied foot step 
Or even a conscious one for that matter!
I fly like a bird
Searching for twine to weave a nest.
I slither like the stream
Washing away grime
Of polished stones
With something as fluid 
As water drops gushing in a flow.

I feel the smile of a child
Upon seeing the mom
His heart break 
When she leaves him in daycare -
Glassy eyed
Helpless acceptance.
I sense a teen's frustration
Of being lonely
In a group -
Trying to belong
Pleas of wanting to be left alone
While pining for attention.

I watch still things
Till I sense a movement in them
I see the untold
The mundane, the useless
That escapes the gaze 
Of a determined eye
With focus on the prize.
Then I write
Till all that heaviness
The intensity
Washes out in words
Purging out the torment
Of feeling a million sensations
That aren't mine
But mine - 
As I live a thousand lives.
I am glad!
I write...