A week of Movie madness

I'd attended the Asian Film Festival for the first time last year. Its the first and only real film fest I've attended so far, so I was super excited about attending this year as well. The movies shown last year were not exactly good (I'm sure there are better films being made in Asia), but the whole experience was fun - running between two theaters (2 venues), laughing at the really dumb films, being taken aback by some unexpectedly good ones(rare, this) and so on. This year was no different, if anything, the quality of the selected films deteriorated further, with some gems here and there. Here's an account of the Day 1 :

The fest opened at Plaza with Aha!(Dir:Enamul Karim Nirjhar), a Bangladeshi film that went on and on for what seemed to be over 3 hours.

Plot (What, Where?!): A man is preparing to sell his ancestral home. Enter his physically abused daughter and grandson (both having rhyming names- Ruba and Buba?!) from the States, Ruba's subsequent friendship with her neighbour - 'kissi kissi' Kislu (no comments) - a friendship which started out with her staring out of her window at the underpants he put out to dry, his 'all (and very bright) colours of the rainbow' underpants, and I mean rainbow quite literally - one colour for each day of the week. Throw in a very irritating, cricket obsessed servant with flies perpetually buzzing around him, and who, btw, is also an ex-convict; some highly uninteresting relatives and a party for the grandson's circumcision, and voila! - you have a not so very encouraging start to the festival. Aha! is also Bangladesh's official entry to the Oscars (There's hysterical laughter in my head) and that does not bode well for that nation's Oscar hopes this year or the next 10 - that is how long the jury will be mad at them for having the gall to send in this one

The next one was Ma (Dir:Manju Borah), from Assam, a musical, with the leads bursting into song every other minute - the Assamese apparently have songs for all occasions: love and other similar emotions; sowing, harvesting, rains, summer, fishing, motherhood, walking ... you get the hint. The film also vaguely flitted over the border dispute between Nagaland and Assam. Most others found this one bad as well, but my friends and I found this one quite bearable, after the traumatic experience of Aha!

After such a wonderful start to the festival, we decided that we didn't have the courage for anymore movies that day and ran away to college as fast as we could!

Success, Success, Success

It really bugs me when people make faces or speak in weird tones when i tell them I'm majoring in history. "History? Why history?" WHY THE BLOODY HELL NOT????
Next question is "What do you plan to do after majoring in history?" Well, don't you know? I'll be dressing up and parading around as Queen Victoria at Prince of Wales museum, bestowing Knighthood upon people like you!!
I often want to tell these people to get off my back. They irritate and anger me endlessly. And that's because I can imagine exactly what they are thinking - What will she do with a history major/ I thought she was intelligent/She has potential to do better than this. Their definition of success involves a degree in medicine, engineering, finance, business, literature etc (in that order) and then a house, car, office, money - lots of it.

Well, guess what? My definition of success does NOT include a huge house, a car that i most probably won't even be able to drive, sitting in a swanky office having many disinterested people working under me blah blah. NO SIR.

If you are happy doing what you are doing, believe me, you are successful. Getting up each morning looking forward to your day means you have made it - you are doing something you like- something you most probably are good at; and that itself is usually the formula for success.
By the way, the formula for success also includes an indomitable will, determination to succeed, a very optimistic outlook and so on, and these you can gather only if you want to succeed in a particular thing... confused? EG: If i had majored in economics (I was unfortunately good at it, I also happen to hate it) I'd have had to look for a related job and then work to be successful doing something i didn't even like in the first place!

OK, enough with success, I've used the word a million times already..this post is just a hug to all those people out there who are majoring in HISTORY, philosophy (poor dogs), geography, Latin, Greek, library science, Zulu ideology etc - Hang in there guys!

'In vacant or in pensive mood'

There is something very therapeutic about hot chocolate at midnight…the bitter sweet taste never fails to comfort me, but very often, makes me pensive…

I sit and wonder what will happen tomorrow, where will I be? Will I be somebody? Will I be happy being that somebody? Will I fall into a routine that most people we see around us fall into? Get up, food, travel, work. Travel back. Will my whims, which arise with amazing regularity (and thus contradict the word, but whatever) - to be alone, to just laze around reading, surfing, watching TV, go book shopping, to just be quiet…take a backseat?
Not that life isn’t very time table-ish right now. Wake up at a god forsaken hour, bathe, dress- all the time moving sluggishly, run behind the bus which forever eludes me (Melodramatic? Try paying 20 bucks each day to get to the station) Travel (VT seems closer than Matunga, don’t ask) attend lectures which, thankfully, are enjoyable.
But college life is not meant to be lived through by rote - and again, thankfully, I don‘t. The structure remains the same, the insides change everyday - you know? I may have extra work to do, some meeting to attend, friends to tease and ‘hang out’ with, gossip and argue with. Discuss everything under and beyond the sun with them. Go for a movie, go to VT- yay!- get lost there, wander around in Asiatic. Drink hundreds of cups of coffee, eat out. Complain about canteen food and crib about the rain or the heat. Forget an umbrella behind, drop the cell phone at least once. Swear, sing off-key, laugh. Announce, in a fit of guilt and motivation, the commencement of studying from “this day onwards” and sheepishly smile the next day, when that obviously didn’t happen. Say goodbye- 7 times- then finally leave for home. Some days, rush to class, hit the kit a few thousand times and argue good naturedly with Mona on the way back. Read into the night, till the sun peeks out and wonders why I am up earlier than the birds. Go back to college.
The point of this post? I have absolutely NO idea! :)

I’m done being pensive now. ’night, folks.