Author: farooq Page 43 of 45

Choices

By farooq

On November 30, 2012

In Random Philosophy

A Choice is there in every moment, every situation and every possible location.

You had the choice of ignoring this post by not clicking it, but you didn’t. ( you made a choice)

You have the choice of not continuing to read this.

Yet, you are reading it. (Thank you)

Saying Yes/No, you have a choice.

Bus/Train, you have a choice.

Speak up/ remain quiet, you have a choice.

1 or 2, you have a choice.

Continue reading this/not, you have a choice.

Peace/war, you have a choice.

Good/Bad, you have a choice.

Right/Left, you have a choice.

Black/white, you have a choice.

Congress/BJP, you have a choice.

Israel/Palestine. You have a choice.

Halal/haram, you have a choice.

Shaadi/live-in, you have a choice.

Beauty/brain, you have a choice.

Ladka/ladki, you have a choice.

Books/movies, you have a choice.

Shahrukh/salman, you have a choice.

Desi balan/vilayati Leone, you have a choice.

Original/remake, you have a choice.

Song/item number, you have a choice.

Action/romance, you have a choice.

Batman/Joker, you have a choice.

Fiction/Real, you have a choice.

Borrow/steal, you have a choice.

Bored?? well, you still have a choice to not continue.

Facebook / twitter, you have a choice.

Free speech/jail, you have a choice.

WordPress/blogger, you have a choice.

Doctor/engineer, you have a choice.

Work/play, you have a choice.

Sachin/rest of them, you have a choice.

Cricket/football, you have a choice.

Sania/saina, you have a choice.

iPhone/android, you have a choice.

Pepsi/Coke, you have a choice.

Dominos/pizza hut, you have a choice.

McD ka burger/Thelle ka vada pav, you have a choice.

Eating veg/non-veg, you have a choice.

Coffee/Tea, you have a choice.

Formal/informal, you have a choice.

Handshake/hug, you have a choice.

There is a choice in almost many things added to these. There are dilemmas in selecting the right choice.

Sometimes, we even have to combine many of our choices to arrive at a decision. Sometimes, it’s for the good, sometimes it’s not. Still, every choice leaves us with one very important thing, learning. Learning from our mistakes is what we definitely do, or we are not doing that, we should.

Choices are tough. No doubt about that. But then, we don’t have a choice to avoid not selecting a choice. So, choose wisely.

Jab tak hai Jaan Movie Review

By farooq

On November 19, 2012

In Movies & Entertainment

Low expectations always helps. Watched “Jab tak hai jaan” with the same mindset of low expectations. Although my die-hard-SRK-fan siblings, who had already watched the movie, were not helping at all in keeping those expectations low. Still, managed to keep my brains intact before entering the cinema hall. One of them even said, “You should leave your brain and only go with your heart to watch a Yashraj movie”. Classic, I tell you.

Yeah, Right!

What would you expect from a Shahrukh-YashRaj film?? Romance!! right??

Well, you do get that from the script. Flawed, but still the script is designed to be romantic. Film starts off with Shahrukh, in Indian army uniform defusing a bomb, actually successfully defusing (Indian hero, how can you not expect him to diffuse that).

A stubble-carrying SRK looks uber cool. The poetry recited in his voice is amazing.

Anushka Sharma’s entry is surely a mouth-watering one. She is vivacious and lively in the character of Akira, which she plays. Displaying that “makeup-breakup-generation-girl-attitude” is what she does quite beautifully. Making you smile at the way she goes about her “fitoor” (passion) of filming SRK for her documentary.

In the backdrop runs SRK’s never dying love for Meera (played by Katrina) who tries her best to act apart from looking glamorous. But fails, miserably. Acting is something that you should least expect from her (and I know, you won’t).

The chemistry between Samar (SRK’s character) and Meera is unconvincingly boring. Even with liplocks being planted in between. (Yes, SRK’s first onscreen kiss!!!) But it all looked too unconvincing and the romance that could have actually taken the movie to the level that you do expect from a Yashraj movie falls flat.

Songs are good, if not A.R Rehman-isque but with Shahrukh being the one on whom it was picturised, a Sonu Nigam would have appeared better. Picture a song like heer on an emotionless-katrina!! Many of these things take some of the magic already away from the songs.

Dialogues are good, but some scenes, especially when SRK angrily challenges God in the church could have reached that Amitabh-God talk in Deewar.

But, even with all these flaws, be it in terms of script, acting, song picturization, etc. what stands out is the man in the centre of it all. The SRK. Delivering a solid performance as someone who is in love. Love which never dies. Each phase that he lives through in the movie makes you connect with his rage, his anger and the reason of all this, his love for Meera. The stubble-look reminds you of Chak-de, and he lives to that performance, although the script does not make him go beyond that.

There should always be something that you can take back from a movie, and Jab tak hai jaan will make sure you do. Watch it for the love-struck SRK, the bubbly Anushka and glamourous doll Katrina. There was one joke that was going viral on twitter a few days back, “Human beings love jab tak hai jaan, while Being humans didn’t”. 🙂

Getting NASHty

By farooq

On November 16, 2012

In Others

Roaming around in one of the crowded inner markets of Bangalore, I found it too difficult to get through, especially with a vehicle to escort with me, which was more of a problem than actually helping ease it. God bless those poor ones who had to make their cars penetrate the confusing and crowded markets, where getting lost is not a big deal at all.

The dictionary would describe markets as a place where buyer and sellers interact to exchange the possession of goods or services by either transfer of a good (as in a barter system) or the equivalent of the good (currency notes/gold, etc). In marketing terms, a market is nothing but a collection of consumers.

Leaving the definitions aside, a market is one of the most happening places in any city. Shops swarm every nook and corner meeting the eye. One thing that is similar in all sorts of market is, similar shops (as in selling the same product) clustered in one lane. And so it’s not a surprise when you have electronic lane, paranthe wali gali, kasai mohalla etc like places in many parts of the country.

But why they have to be there all in one place?

Won’t it affect their businesses with increased competition??

The consumer will have numerous options to go ahead and randomly go to a shop. Then why follow this pattern??

Let’s just take a little help from what John Nash in answering this question. Who is John Nash? You can read it here.

I’ll just try to keep it simple by imagining you to think of a market with just two shops, selling the same product. For e.g., say cold drink. Now, this market is in the middle of a big city and people can come and go from both ends. If suppose Mr. X starts his business by putting up his stall near one end of the market space, he is sure to gain most of the customers from that end, but the customer staying at the other end would find it tasking to go all the way to the other end. Suppose to capture the customers from the other end, Mr. Y puts up another stall selling cold drinks to the other end, and then people of the other end will visit his stall to thirst their throats with colas. This way Mr. X loses out to Mr. Y many of his customers from the other end. But then, Mr. X decides to shift his shop to the middle of the market so as to get the market share that it lost to Mr. Y. Of course, he would definitely end up increasing the whole share. But seeing this, Mr. Y would also shift his shop from one end to the middle, almost next to Mr. X. This way both end up being adjacent to each other, by finding equilibrium point to maximize their sales.

Now, just use the example above to think of a market place where most of the shops are placed in almost in the same lane. John Nash devised this concept and it is called, “Nash equilibrium”, which is defined as “a pair of strategies (a*, b*) in a two-player game such that a* is an optimal strategy for A against b* and b* is an optimal strategy for B against A*.

So, the next time you visit any electronic lane or a paranthe wali gali, you can remember Nash and his equilibrium concept to know, why it is so.

A Muslim Boy’s Diwali

By farooq

On November 12, 2012

In Politics & Social Issues

“Abbu Abbu.. diwali ke lie pathaake lane hain..paiseee do na”, with child-like innocence, I asked for money to buy firecrackers for diwali. Dada , sitting nearby, before Abbu could reply, remarked “ kaiku re wo paise barbad karna… paise jalaaane ke jaisa ich na wo”. (Why burn money by buying those?) in his Dakkhani.

This scene, year over year, can be seen at home every Diwali.

By the time it was evening, I would definitely have some pathaakas with me from my “sources”, which included my dadi, who would part away some money from her khazaana. I would already make sure I had my emergency money in place from Abbu as well in the name of “stationary”.

Evenings were not limited to lightening firecrackers alone. Although they were a part of it.

“Diwali houses” made from mud and wood (with help from Ammi), batasha and mudi, would also be present as part of the celebrations. The diwali house preparation begins in the afternoon itself when the sun is out, so as to let the mud dry up. Colorful papers, all the toys, including those small kitchen cutleries, will adorn our new Diwali house for the course of the 3-day celebrations.

Once, it starts getting a little dark, you could see and hear firecrackers buzzing all around the dark skies, and we as kids, would excitedly merry around before starting our own spree of Fuljhaddis, Chakris, Anaar, Snakes, Mirchi Pathake, etc, while our neighbours would try to outdo us. All of the pathakaas would be in moderate amount, so we would make sure that we don’t finish the entire quota in one day. No one wants to be the kid who finishes off the first.

Then we also had “guests “coming in large numbers to pay our diwali homes a visit. This included, our basti wale friends, coming in one-by-one, bringing with them sweets and firecrackers. We would give them something to eat (after all, atithi devo bhava 🙂 ), fire a few firecrackers and then would follow the ritual of diwali home hopping post that.

And surprise, surprise! When the evening was about to end and we’d be up there on the terrace watching the lit up sky, dada would bring home some more firecrackers!! Yes, the same dada who was preaching us about “wasting money” and blah blah. All of us would again revel in the joy of those bonus firecrackers. We had our unique way of celebrating this festival of lights, which was so much fun back then.

Of course, I miss dada , who is no more in person with us. That diwali celebration at home gradually stopped as we grew up. It wasn’t about religion, it was all about having fun and enjoying ourselves. And mind you, we lived in a Muslim locality, so there wasn’t even any compulsion to celebrate under peer pressure. Diwali used to be an Indian festival as opposed to a Hindu festival, back then.

Festivals in India are about the celebration of culture and upholding the idea of India. Over the years, we have strengthened this bond, and let us hope that it continues. Even with forces trying to make it otherwise.

Religion and culture are two different things. I may not pray or participate in a Puja, but I would celebrate the joy of festivities. Usually one sees images of Muslims (in skull caps) praying to Hindu deities. Sorry, I won’t do that. A muslim is not supposed to indulge in idol worship and I sincerely hope others understood this and take this as disrespect. As I, nor the others, mean any disrespect!

It is of course an individual’s choice, but this photo alone doesn’t define secularism. Secularism means respecting others’ religion and having the freedom to celebrate and practice our faiths the way we want. Each of our religions has earmarked a few boundaries, the principles and the code we have to abide by. And that should be respected by each of us.

Celebrating joy is beautiful and who doesn’t want to do that? Methods might be different but the intentions are always right.

Celebration and cultural bonhomie is something we should all strive for. The idea of India needs to be preserved. It cannot happen by forcing a ban on eating something or calling people anti-national or pakistanis. It can only happen when we consider all of us as equals and strive to progress further.

A Reply….

By farooq

On November 7, 2012

In Politics & Social Issues

It’s all Very calm and quiet.(so, unlike my mind for the last 2-3 days). Most of them in the floor are already asleep. From room no.24, I am writing another blog. (Don’t be scared, no controversies this time.) this is not just a blog, but an Apology. Yes, I need to apologize to the people who got hurt by my previous post

Specifically speaking, my intention was not to hurt people but to get a message across to all and start a healthy discussion on this issue, which many feel but don’t talk openly. After that blog got posted, many came to me and said:”Dude, good job”, some openly supported me when people were criticizing me. Others chose to be on the safe side, by saying that without getting into anyone’s attention. Nevertheless, I didn’t felt great when they did that, but yeah each criticism (even the harshest ones) and each support equally meant something to me. Thanks for both.

In the process of writing, my idiotic mind generated some kind of language that appeared to be offensive. Also, it ended up targeting people from just one particular community or to say a particular part of a country which is linguistically and culturally different from where I come from.

The reasons why I ended up writing that blog were—-

Start a discussion on a very important issue of how language barriers are actually hampering many of the communication processes.
Get things out for everyone to see as to what I think about an issue, instead of keeping it close to my chest.
That left out feeling you get when people start talking in a particular language, which you don’t understand, culminating into weird mood sequences.
Getting the feeling that people don’t want you to be part of their conversation because of some differences.
Trying to make people understand, how a little empathy can go a long way in solving it out very easily.

Lesson learnt it’s not just about the message; it’s how well you convey the same.

What the blog actually ended up doing was

1. It got directed to particular communities because of direct use of names. Instead, I could have generalized as this, as it isn’t limited to one. Like one community may be at the receiving end of this barrier, but may also be the one doing that as well. Sometimes, even Hindi speaking people may do that with the non-Hindi ones.

2. It created a feeling that there is a certain sense of hatred in me regarding a certain community. Well, I can sense that many might have started feeling like this.(instead of smiles, I get that “WTF-were-you- thinking-when-you-wrote-that-look). I never intended to justify, but to keep things in clear perspective, I should say.

Some of the very good friends, including my two roomies, which I have made after coming here, are the ones who are from down south. All my grief, homesickness, sad stories(which are way too sad :P, sadder than this)are only subjected to their ears only. Since I’m on a convincing spree to show-off my south-connect, I would also like to “brag” that my grandfather was actually a south Indian, quite fluent in at least two Dravidian languages. For some strange reasons, people who have some connection with south India and live in the Hindi-heartland tend to be known as “madraasis” (a little crazy, I understand) mainly because of the food preferences and ingredients that they use (like tamarind). (I am bragging too much. Right? 🙂 )

3. Someone mentioned stereotyping. Was I?? Don’t many do that while talking here in groups?? But yes, I only took into account the people from the college whom I saw and included the whole south Indian community all into it.

4. Posting a sensitive content on the web. With a place like India, with diverse cultures and rich heritage, people have their sentiments attached with everything from language to religion and region. Maybe, the way it was all written appeared to be accusing that attachment they had and also raising the sensitivity of the people. The web is becoming a place where one should be careful enough as to what they speak. I wasn’t Maybe something that would hurt me might get the same amount of criticism that I received or even more than that.

I don’t know whether you people will even read this blog, going by the fact that blogging and my name would be negatively subconscious-ed into your mind based on my last post. But, if you are reading then I would like to just say, when I talked about south Indians starting to being more empathetic, I forgot the fact that I wasn’t actually being one.

As someone mentioned to me that maybe because I didn’t tried enough to be someone important, for whom anyone can “switch” to any language that I understand. May be some introvert-ness, some “opening-up” that is still necessary. Or instead, I should try actually learning any of the languages 🙂 I should be the one making the change, if I want to make something happen and not complain to others about not doing that. So, cheers. Let’s kick this controversy out, podaaa :). (Oops, i Did it Again 🙂 )

Poda…

By farooq

On November 3, 2012

In Others

Have you ever been in a room where people are speaking some language, which you just don’t understand ??? Then, Read on. Else, you have been really lucky!!

They come, they talk, they laugh and of course they just don’t give a damn to your existence. You are like that unwanted stuff that is hampering their “very important conversation ” that is so important that it can only be spoken in their regional language.

This is not something which is faced not just by me but many of the people who are not from down-south face it. Some face it, some ignore it and some move ahead to some other group. They all just start hanging out with other non-southies, but some like me perish for not forcefully joining a “group”. A south-indian working up in the north might also be feeling the same, condition being, he should be alone. if, he finds even one like him. he can make a group with that too.

Going to a place where people speak a different language than what you do, is not at all new for me. From a person who has been brought up in Jamshedpur and then going to the odia speaking-Odisha was very much new for me. But, what i loved was that, people over there actually helped me to learn it, as well as make me be a part of their own group. By the time, i boarded the train to come to bangalore, i can proudly speak Odia.

Miss that.

I am sure, all of that is never going to happen over here. I have tried. Tried out many things.

From telling them directly, “Dude, English please” (i’ve lost count of how many times I might have used this line), to even trying out some words or the others just so to start the learning process.Nothing works. Ironically, one of the first words i learnt was “poda” which means “Go away!!” .

Empathy is that one thing i had been trying to inculcate in me. But sometimes, you just can’t clap from one hand. Right ??

The culture that we like to portray is of “unity in diversity” (at least, that’s how ideally we all “think”), but do we care enough to let others understand our varied cultures?? Cultural diversity doesn’t just come into play while celebrating festivals, it is more than that. It is what you portray of a culture that people Look up to.

If your message is to let people know that the acceptance is only for people who know your language, then Congratulations your message has been registered!!!!!!

Wake me up, when September ends

By farooq

On October 7, 2012

In Random Philosophy

“Wake me up when september ends” blurts out from my phone in the form of my alarm, irrespective of whether i was dreaming of playing with the Green Day or just some random stuff.

Mornings are all about making a fresh start, but the world that we are part of rarely give us a chance to do that. Before going to sleep, we end up calculating the number of hour’s we may get to sleep. Sleep is considered so unproductive by us that if given a choice e may resort to some other activity other than that. Although, when we wake up, the story is so different. The snoozing of the alarm clock makes us think, “if only I would have slept earlier” but all wishes don’t come true. And this alarm won’t even make your dreams get completed, forget about getting them fulfilled.

Wishes, dreams and expectations. One just can’t get rid of all these. They seem to follow us wherever we go, even more than the hutch pug. But the hutch pug actually followed for good reasons, but these three are two-edged swords. Just in order to fulfill them, people go the wrong way. They even start expecting a lot more from all quarters. More often than not, these fail to match the expectations. And it hurts, pretty badly.

This October, I’ll try to get rid of some of them. expectations are something that are going to get stuck each time you try to get rid of it, yet that is something I’m going to ‘not give any importance’ from now on. All those laziness for doing what I wanted to, take decisions that I might be neglecting for a long time, take initiatives, convert opportunities, do things that I am supposed to do and not be my on obstacle in stopping myself from doing that.

I may have waited for September to end, but won’t let October get the better of you. Even though this month is credited for being the month when i was born, yet i won’t have any mercy on it.

October, here I come.

This post is a part of WOW Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda

Hypocritical environmentalists!! Who me??? No way!!

By farooq

On September 26, 2012

In Random Philosophy

Hypocritical environmentalists!! Who me??? No way!!

I went out to buy some stuff from the nearby market with my friend, after it was all over, he requested for a poly-bag to the shopkeeper, “Bhaiya!! Ek polythene dena …”, which the shopkeeper didn’t entertain (of course, the reason for that for him was to not incur that cost of extra poly-bag). I obediently kept all the things in the other bag we had and moved on. On my way back I just thought, even after knowing what all effects a poly-bag may have on the environment, we still don’t think twice before asking for one. Don’t we know that polythene is non-biodegradable and hence when we throw it out into the open (which we do quite regularly) will remains there for a long time. Long time implies a really long time (Seriously, this thing just doesn’t refuse to let itself die as if poking fun at mortals like us.)

Polythene pollution( if at all I can term it like that) affects not just human life and society by clogging down drains and being an irritant littering agent but also for animals ( terrestrial as well as aquatic) who swallow it and let me tell you it does not get digested. There was this story I heard that some kilos of poly-bags were recovered from a cow’s body!!!

Even with so much of ill-effects, it is still used widely because of no close substitutes. One can of course afford to carry their own bags instead of poly-bags (but who bothers??).

Government had even banned those small guthka/pan masala sachets as these are the naughty little ones who are omnipresent to litter around the town. Similar things had been done with poly-bags (but then again, who bothers??). Who cares about government banning anything?? Even music downloads from illegal websites is banned. The thing is, we are happy with disobeying the government orders but cry foul when the government does it. We protests in the form of calling a “bharat bandh”, where we make it happen by forcefully closing down shops and stopping public transport and even resorting to violence in the name of bandhs. As our finance minister P.Chidambaram remarked during a recent bandh (there are so many, I can’t even tell which one exactly), “they have called a bandh to protest against the government concerning economy and it is ironic that the form of protest has caused greater economic losses”. So, apt.

What I intended to say was, we are a hypocritical society of uncivilized people who only try to portray themselves as something which they are not.

Hypocritical environmentalists. Who me?? No way!!!!

We shout out to others, to help save the environment yet leave out water taps or lights switched on, throw away used stuff into places, thinking the whole world is our dust-bin. I can surely brag about the fact that one night (during some sleepless night before the exam), I went to each of the rooms in our hostel floor and switched off some 10-12 lights!!!! This is just the case of one floor of 10 rooms, now go figure what all things happen in each house in each city. We say we care, but do we??? We don’t think twice before asking for another poly-bag from the shopkeeper. We “forget” switching off lights and fans as we are in a hurry; we just can’t help ourselves from ablution the dirt of this whole dirty world by using as much water as we can and at the end of it all, we still say, we care!! But seriously, lemme ask again, Do we????

I don’t want an answer. No one wants one. But just for a thought, that the next time we say “we care”, we mean it.

Likes, Comments, Retweets, Follow, block, tags- the things that matter.

By farooq

On September 22, 2012

In Others

Wake up in the morning –> search for your phone (under the pillow or to the table beside you) –> unlock it with the speed of lightening –> check for messages, mentions, notifications, likes, facebook, twitter –> and now the day starts, Good morning world :).

This is the age of social network!!!! Where, the morning starts with twittering (ironically not by the chirping of birds :)).

There was a green revolution, then sometime later a white revolution, internet revolution and wagaira wagaira. Each of the generation gets itself associated with some sort of tag along with it. The one thing, (if I may not call it a revolution as such) is the phenomenon of Social networking, which is what our generation is associated with. The era, where one has more “friends” in the virtual world then in the real. Wherever one sees, can find people FBing or tweeting. From making friends and connecting with the old ones, this has also become a platform for people to raise their voice regarding every other issue concerning the economy, world and themselves.

Every pic that has been captured where you look even a little decent (the definition of “little” of course changes for women 😛 ) is there on facebook. Every place that has been visited has to be checked in via foursquare. Every little thing you do gets tweeted. Some YouTube it, some tweet it, some pin it and no matter what. Everyone is On it.

The story of social networking does not end there, it actually starts.

Once a pic/post/video is updated, every comment or like, every retweet or mention, makes the story go forward. Our social-network-happiness-quotient is directly proportional with the increase in each of these activities. There is also a give and take relationship prevalent too, you like, I like.

Remember those Orkut days?? When the number of “scraps” used to define your status and half of your time used to get spent on adding friends from your friend’s friend-lists. Every cute picture or names used to make the arrow of the mouse go towards the “add as a friend” button. Everyone knew as to who visited your profile and so one had to extra careful. Not much is different in facebook too, the only fact was that the “stalking-frequency” is on the higher side as no one knows as to who visited the profile.

When one writes a blog, the exciting part, after completing it, is to see how many people actually read the stuff. Even when people give their feedback, whether they like it or not, gives the writer the encouragement to continue writing (now you know what to do after reading this 😛 ).

Most of the things that we do are done with the purpose of getting noticed and appreciated. People sometimes go overboard in doing this, yet each of us in some form or the other love to display our achievements. Social networking has also become somewhat like this, i.e. sharing your achievements for getting appreciation. It’s good to do things to get appreciated, but as they say, “too much of anything is bad” and hence overdoing this in both the worlds (real and virtual) calls for a slowdown. What is to be appreciated will get its due, if it’s worth it. One just has to wait. Some “intellectual users” even tag others in their pics so as to make sure that one just cannot ignore to “like” their posts/pics. They even make it a point to invite you to use the very “interesting” games/apps. Where in the real world will you find such lovely friends like these? (Seriously? 🙂 )

Too much philosophy, eh??

Well, that’s what some elitist-social-networking-gurus will tell you (yes, there are elites everywhere). The over-doers are termed Wannabes or despos or attention seekers (the twitterati has another term for all this, Orkutiyas). The thing is that each of these elites have also went through all this, but what’s gone is gone, now it’s all a different ball game for them.

So, what’s the way forward???

There is only one thing that should always be followed, “Never fake yourself”. If you really feel like sharing whatever you like, you do. If you like using one social network over the other, you do. Don’t get buoyed by other’s thoughts and actions and never blindly follow “trend”. Whether it’s the social network or the real, be just YOU!!!!

Filmy Barometer

By farooq

On September 20, 2012

In Movies & Entertainment

When the credits for a movie are rolled, there are names of all those people who have contributed in it. Right from the directors, to producers, actors to even the spot boys, each of them gets some “screen-space”. Each of them acts like an ingredient used into the making of a special dish to be served to the audience in theatres and subsequently in their living rooms from their screens. The storyline, being one of the most important one, used in making it all ingredients come together to enhance the enjoyment quotient of the audience. The entertainment value that they are able to generate is directly proportional to the mixture of ingredients and the proportion in which they are mixed up in accordance with a particular recipe. The manner, in which a particular dish is served, also forms an important role in the whole process of making that dish. The aroma that comes out from the dish makes others desire to have it and maybe because of that, publicity has become such an important part too. But is it the only one that can explain how the dish is???

Some movies (or in the Indian bollywood context, most of the movies), the ingredients (as mentioned above, if you remember J) are only concerned as to how to let the aroma of the whole dish (read movies J ) reach out to others, so that everyone gets a “bite” (read tickets J ). The Great Adam smith’s said, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self- interest.” So, each of the ingredients, work up their asses for their own interest to make something which will earn money for them. In the process of doing so, this all tends to become what we now term as “commercial cinema” and each and everything, over the time is becoming commercialized and with it the enthusiasm of ingredients to combine and bring out the best dish is going down. Now, no one is concerned about how the dish might be, but how much money it will generate. Will it be correct to be concerned only about the record it will break or in how many days will it cross the 100-crore mark??? (there is also a 100-cr club of movies too)

The success barometer these days depends on how much moolah you generated and not how many stars you got from the critics. Why bother when you have the “people’s verdict” with you? And what is this people’s verdict? Blind fan following, excessive media hype or just good PR strategy??

Nevertheless, there is always a ray of hope building when one sees filmmakers putting their effort into living the life of the story on screen. One can actually see parallel lives running in the screens. They are not just bothered about how much money they are generating but also the correct treatment that a story should be given. They just don’t want people coming in, taking that one “bite” (which may just be because of the hype surrounding it) and go back. They also want them to take something back from the theatre too.

There are recent Indian movies like Udaan, Luck by chance, Wednesday, aamir, Gangs of wasseypur, Barfi on one side and then there is bodyguard, ready, houseful, Singh is king, and the list goes on. Such contrasts between the two sets of movies. While the second set boasts of movies that grossed over 100-crores, it’s hardly the case with the first one. But what differentiates them, or in my opinion makes them stand apart from the rest is in the sheer craftsmanship that is on display by the filmmakers who make them. It was not about the item numbers, big stars or cheap publicity that drew the audience towards them, it was their content which mattered. The prime reason being that these movies was made from heart to touch the audience’s hearts and not just their pockets. They might earn or they might not, still what mattered to the filmmakers to portray their thoughts and ideas and stories to the audience.

To take a recent example, the two movies that I saw recently made me again believe in this idea of content scoring over masala, one is the Gangs of wasseypur and the other is barfi. Both are different in their own rights. The former displays the dynastic enmity and mafia rule in bihar, while the latter is a mute protagonist’s life story where he always has a smile on his face, even in difficult circumstances. Wassepur displays characters which selfish, neither good nor bad, just selfish people who have an both the characteristics. To say it simply, this is just the actual description of the people that we are, only with the backdrop of violent dynastic politics and vengeance. While barfi is that kind of sweet that even a doctor would prescribe a diabetic patient. It’s not just about melodramatic love, but the choices one has to make in reality and how that influences our life. The one we love may not love us back, but we still are there for that person, smiling and helping them. Don’t think before falling in love, and don’t think after falling in it too.

Both the movies had one thing in common (apart from the first name of the directors in both of them), that they were made with a big heart. These movies might not even come close to being in the top grossing Bodyguards, tigers, singhs, etc yet they show us the kind of cinema which makes us think. It’s about the zeal with which these movies are made th at differentiate them, they may earn or they might not. Blockbuster hits have come and went, but after years, what remains with you is not the figures that each of these movies earned but what content it had. It may be possible that some might like all those commercial movies, and they are right in doing so. But question is should the barometer of success be judged only in terms of money alone, or does the content even matters????