DARK KNIGHT RISES

When Bob Kane created Batman, he would not have imagined that some day a guy named Christopher Nolan with his cortege of actors, writers and technicians would come along and give a new meaning and identity to his super-hero so profound that it would be rated no less than the creation of the character itself! If reaching the top is difficult, staying there is furthermore difficult. Having scaled new peaks with his last two Batman movies I was under the impression that he had reached the top and if he just stays there with the current one, that itself would be a success. But as the quote of a car maker goes “Make the best car in the world. Then improve it!” he betters his own track record with his latest offering “Dark knight rises”. Having praised the movie, it doesn’t mean that it has unseen action sequences or eye popping CG works nor it has an entirely new story. But it has a new take on the Batman and his story, nice effort to link all the loose ends that arose due to the introduction of new characters and their back stories and a reemphasis on why Batman is, the way he is and why he does things that he does. If not for anything I admire the movie and its director for having brought a superhero subject to that of an intense drama where the protagonist is faced with all the dilemmas and confusions. A superhero is made only by the presence of a super villain and here there are two! The director makes us face them who are on the wrong side of moral and ideological turpitudes. As one of the line goes in the movie “any one can be the batman” and for a brief duration I was the batman! Yes, yes I know that your idea of batman doesn’t exactly match with a guy who is 5.6 with a paunch and of Indian origin. But hey! That’s the magic of the movies and I really felt it. Though the hero gets beaten, deceived, robbed, chased at and even mocked at he doesn’t waver from his sole objective, that of saving Gotham city. In one scene when the catwoman tells him that he has given everything to the city and need not bother about it anymore, for which Batman replies “Not everything, not yet”. This line pretty much sums up the movie. The same applies to the director as well. When I thought he had given everything in the first two installments, he comes up with this third movie and he says “not everything, not yet”. The one disappointment for me was, although the performances were top notch, their screen time was less due to infusion of new characters. But I think one can overlook this little blip. But on the positive side, the grave and imposing voice of the villain Bane, curves of Anne hathway, surprises in the form of Marion and Gordon lewitt and the last but certainly not the least; the music by Hans zimmer truly take the movie to a higher plane. It’s better to watch the prequels before you watch this movie as there are lot of references from its earlier stories. VERDICT: The dark knight rises and you better make way for him!

My thoughts on parenthood

The best way to make one understand the intricacies of a task or difficulties of a responsibility is to allot the task or to entrust him or her with that task or responsibility. The same person who had complained earlier will begin to appreciate those who preceded him while at the same time trying to make people understand who are about to follow him. This is what that has happened to me during the past one and half years of my life. Let me give you some rough statistics to give you an idea. 4 marriages of my close friends and cousins +1(Mine) 4 deaths in my relatives' circle. 3 new lives delivered into this world from my friends' & relatives' circle. +1(My own) Lot of movie watching. Numerous outings. Countless arguments and counter-arguments. Lots of moments of disappointments, happiness, sorrow and pure joy. No movie has ever and will ever showcase such multitude of scenes that blend seamlessly, and the best part is that you are the actor and the audience! During the course of the above events I had been the actor, going through the emotions, enacting my part(pretty badly :-)) I felt joy and sorrow to varying degrees. But now when I look back, amazingly I neither feel sorrow for my relatives' death nor, even to the birth of my own son. This doesn't mean that I have assumed the role of audience and enjoying the act. No I haven't reached that stage yet, but it simply means that I am a bit insensitive albeit with some help from the passage of "Time". Having strayed for a while, let me return to the first sentence of this blog. My idea of bringing up a child is, as you have rightly guessed "zero". Let's come to one understanding. Though almost all have or at-least had both parents, our knowledge or idea of how to be a parent falls well short of the finish line when one becomes a parent. Whatever changes or steps I wanted to take to my parenting style by looking at my own parents or others' turns out to be highly unimplementable. Let me give you one example. For once I decided not to show too much emotion; either joy or anxiety towards my kid. But when I tried to stick to it, the feedback was that I am not as happy as a typical father should be, that I don't love my kid as much as other fathers love their kids etc. To top it all, how could I manage to stay in Chennai, away from my kid for so long! Had it been someone else he would come to his kid every weekend (invariably some examples from the neighbourhood follows :-) ) So the situation made me partly understand the intricacies of being a parent. The result is that I consented to buy considerable number of dresses, one cradle for the kid. Added to that before I left for Chennai, I held him for a solid 15 minutes in my hands, played with him, made some funny faces and believe it or not, made him sleep. So I guess, that's how one evolves. Though my point of view is right for me, it doesn't seem to be appropriate for the situation. You can either create friction in the process of convincing others or you can simply assess the situation and adapt accordingly. Is this the solution? Well I don't have any answer for that. But one thing I am sure of is that it depends on the individual and the situation. It doesn't matter if you are a son, a husband or a father (For all those feminists! Please replace them with "a daughter, a wife or a mother) the situations are different and the contexts specific. Respecting the diversities, enduring the unintended or the unwanted, enjoying the pleasures of life like parenthood and last but not the least surrendering to your wife are keys to a happy life :-). If someday I can catch all this action by being an audience then my life's purpose is achieved. Tring, tring, tring... Guys get up! the boring monologue is over.

Need for a Guru

Information, knowledge & wisdom.
Our ancestors insisted on wisdom. Our previous generation insisted on knowledge but the current generation is neck deep in information if not already drowned in it.

As far as my understanding goes, information is just a means to a reach a particular point. I guess it can be named as knowledge, which in turn is another means to reach the destination called wisdom. The trick is to shift from the pursuit of information to the pursuit of knowledge and eventually to become wise as quickly as possible.
If information is writing on the waters, then knowledge is like writing on the papers. But wisdom is like writings on a stone tablet, I guess.

We are in an age where information is voluminous but at the same time access to it is instantaneous. Given this reality, there is a danger of getting lost in it if we don't know what we need exactly. We allow ourselves to be overawed by it, thus by losing sight of our actual goal.

Luckily if one gets past the stage of information gathering and steps into the realm of acquiring knowledge, there is another type of danger here. Once a person starts to acquire knowledge the result as most of the people think isn't confidence, but overconfidence and inflated ego. I guess the true purpose of knowledge is to realise how little you know and until then one has to engage in the pursuit of knowledge.

Miraculously if someone crosses even this hurdle too, then he or she can be considered to be on the threshold of wisdom. It is at this time a guru is needed. Recently I had the opportunity to hear a lecture by a swami emphasising the importance of a Guru. Following are some of the points that made some sense to me.

A Guru is neither a guide nor a teacher, though we usually use them one for the other. It's literal meaning is the destroyer of darkness or in other words the vanquisher of ignorance. There isn't any need for him to teach you because you already know everything, you are that very thing that you want to know. (Tatvam asi). Then why is he given so much importance even to the extent of being hailed as Brahma, Vishnu & Maheshwara? The answer is also equally convincing. The thing is that what we consider as real is just series of thoughts playing in our minds. For example when we think of a beautiful flower it's an act of creation(srishti). When we imagine its colour, fragrance etc, it's an act of existence(sthithi) and when that thought vanishes it's an act of destruction(laya). Thus the entire process of birth, existence & death are happening within our minds and a guru makes us realise just this. That's why he is being equated to the three Gods. Actually they are not Gods but three important manifestations of divinity.This he does in different ways depending on the maturity or readiness of the student. Moses from being a prince had to become a slave, roam around the desert for years before finally facing his Guru in the form of a burning bush. Swami Vivekananda though incredibly knowledgeable had to come to a normal priest called Ramakrishna. Shankara the proponent of Advaita had to kneel down before a hunter. A saint had to listen to a butcher's words which later became "Vyadhageetha". Sadguru in his memoirs says his guru met him only once and touched him not by hand but by a stick and still he considers him as his Guru. In all the above instances the Guru actually didn't teach anything, but they made the disciples realise that they know everything, that they are everything.

A guru breaks the endless cycle of maya and that cycle is
karma begets misery.
Desire begets karma.
Discontentment begets desire.
Ignorance begets discontentment.

PS: When Alexander was asked as to why he respects his teacher Aristotle more than his parents he says that he is greatful for this parents for giving him life but it's temporary and perishable whereas he is indebted to Aristotle as he had given him life eternal. In a sense we all have embarked on our own spiritual journeys. Hopefully a Guru comes our way and GU-RUs our ignorance.

Marital landmines!

Have you ever walked in a mine-field fully aware that it is a mine-field, but totally oblivious to the placement of the mines?

Well those who are married would have had the opportunity of being in a situation like that though not literally. If I am allowed to compare marriage to a mine-field (just a metaphor) then following are some of the mines that one might risk stepping upon.

Is this dress ok?
When can we go to my mother's home?
Will you buy me that ... (err,,whatever...)
Who is that girl in the photo standing beside you?
Did you drink? Did you smoke?
Do you drink now? Do you smoke now?
I think I have added more salt in the curry, haven't I?

Just like in our school days when we were informed about one sure shot question that would come in our exams, the following in my opinion is a sure shot question all the husbands would have been asked by their better halves.

"I have become fat, haven't I?"

Kindly observe the pattern of the question. It's not "Have I become fat?"
but "I have become fat, haven't I?"

You can simply give a no as an answer for the first question, but for the second one you can't simply give a "no" because you are contradicting her statement that she has become fat. That itself draws an angry look from her and the mine under your two legs will go off.
But on the other hand if you answer her with an "YES" then the highly destructive C4 explosive that's tied to your chest will just go off. Don't bother to ask me why I haven't informed you about the bomb. You have more important issues at hand :-)

Recently I had to counter one such situation and by God's grace (I started to believe in God after this incident), I managed to come out of it with flying colours.

The question was "The circles under my eyes are too dark, aren't they?" It was a catch22 and amazingly I managed to say this.
"I don't know if the circles are just dark or too dark, but they certainly seem tired with all the hard work you put in since early morning. Wash your face and take a nap"

This time I managed not to step on the mine. Let's see how it goes in this endless mine-field. :-)

Beat this configuration!!!!!

Recently I read a piece about the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) which I thought of sharing with you all. This is related to a previous post about particle physics which I posted on April-2010.

The LHC is a super machine in every sense. It is large, with tunnels of 27 km in circumference, but it is built with the precision of the finest of Swiss watches. A 100 megapixel camera at the junctures of two tunnels captures images of the collisions, taking 40 million pictures a second, each of them one megabyte in size. A processor farm of 50,000 cores processes these images and selects 200-300 each second. The pictures create 10 million gigabyte of data a year (enough to fill three million DVDs), and this data is processed by 1,00,000 computers in 34 countries. Then 10,000 scientists pore through this data. The four experiments at LHC together form the biggest collaboration in the history of science.

Now tell me if anything beats this configuration!

180

The movie 180 will be etched in my memory forever not because of its excellent cinematography or beautiful picturisation and not even for two beautiful damsels one can die for, but simply because this is my first movie with my wife and because she said so :-).

180 is a nice romantic drama. Sidharth who looks unbelievably charming throughout the movie gets proposed by two "out of the world beauties". But because of his medical condition, he runs away from Priya anand who is his wife; and avoids Nithya menon who is his friend. The film title makes sense in two ways to me. One as per the movie and the second is as per me; what happens when the course of one's life changes by an angle of 180 degrees? Though the performances and the feel of the movie are good, it falls short of making a deeper impact.How does Sidharth react to his medical condition is what the movie is all about. But to my surprise I don't understand why a character like Sidharth who is a doctor could react the way he reacts in the movie. Had it been any common person it's understandable, but a doctor?

The movie in the second part simply takes the oft treaded path of trying to invoke pity and there it becomes a bit dull. Anyone who has watched Maniratnam's "Geetanjali" in telugu or "Idhayathai thirudadae" in Tamil could find similarities with this movie. It seems that Jayendra the director couldn't come out of his mentor's shadow completely.

I heard that there's one movie called "Ikiru" by Akira kurosawa. In that the protagonist comes face to face with his mortality and in his remaining days he struggles with bureaucracy & society to get a playground so that the children could play there. I want to watch it someday mainly because it's simple and hits the nail on the head without any paraphernalia. "180" inspite of good performances and visual appeal lacks this simplicity. Otherwise it makes a good viewing with your loved ones :-)

Why marry?

It's not often that you find yourself married to a woman whom you are supposed to love and take care for the rest of your life. It normally happens once in our lifetimes and for some, more than once :-). For the later someone famously quipped that remarriage is the victory of hope over experience :-).

Coming back to my first line, I always questioned the logic behind it. If love is such a great thing, why should it be limited with one person or for that matter why should it be tied with anything at all?

Jokes apart, all married guys must have had the experience of facing an unavoidable question and an inescapable situation called marriage. I am no exception and was given lot of reasons as to why I should marry. I like to list some of them.

You have someone who cooks and takes care of you and the home.
You have someone to talk to.
You have someone to share your responsibilities.
You have someone to satisfy your physical and emotional needs.
You have respect in society. (We all know what look a house owner would give you if you are single trying to rent a house or how police would behave with you when there is just you instead a woman at the rear of your vehicle.) But still I couldn't buy these arguments.

It is undeniable that a woman brings respect and good status to a man in society. In other words she completes him. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpWAlvWNZj0)and the man cares for her and provides security to her. But still the reasons I was given didn't satisfy me and was about to give up when suddenly out of nowhere something struck and I formulated a theory of my own as to why one should marry. This certainly is not the ultimate reason, but for me it made some sense. Give it a read and find out if it makes any sense at all.

Remember the last time when you felt good about possessing something. It could be any household item, an electronic gadget, a car or even a home of your own. When I think why the act of owning something made me feel good I think it's because it satisfies my ego.It makes me feel like I am the master and in-charge of it, something which I can claim to be my own. If that's in great demand, then it pampers my ego because of the knowledge that not many possess that thing. But in time that feeling fades and before you know it one is in search of something else or at-least trying to upgrade the existing one.

Now think of owning a robot which listens to all your commands (only programmed commands) and executes them. It doesn't complain or even ask you to take it out during the evenings either. One may feel ok with this help in his daily chores, but the underlying fact is it's still a robot.

Now think of your family and friends. This is an interesting part because in here, one feels like being owned rather than owning them. You listen to your parents (ideally :-) ), you learn to give because of your siblings, you share almost everything with your friends and these are the things that define you as a person and prepares you for the world. But only in marriage does one feel like he/she owns and at the same time being owned by his/her spouse. You do things for your spouse and you get some things in return from your spouse. It's a two way and that too a dynamic relationship that's constantly evolving. Unlike in fantasies there are no "Happily everafters" in marriage, but only constant and also consistent effort to work on one's marriage. Your imperfections may not be the critical factor in your relationship with your family & friends as they tend to overlook them. But in marriage they are the key. You have to find your way through these imperfections and this makes it challenging and hence interesting. What's life without challenges and marriage is a perfect tool to make it interesting.

In the movie "Bicentennial man" the robot character played by Robin williams proposes to his beloved and she turns him down for the obvious reasons. She says though he does everything for her, she can not marry him because he is too perfect and predictable. Perfection is not a human trait but imperfection is. Predictability results in boredom, whereas unpredictability spices up things in our lives. The situation and the context through which the scene unfolds before us is fantastic. Watch it to understand it better.

NOTE: Watch the below scene in "Shall we dance" where Susan sarandon wonderfully says why one needs marriage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbsBV9v3TRo&feature=player_detailpage