From recent events, I’d say it’s fair to assume that people WANT to think they are victims of racism, because it’s an easy way to reject criticism of themselves. People WANT to think they are being projected badly to the rest of the world, people WANT to think they are being looked down upon. In fact, I’d say that is close to being an Indian trait. It is an effort to gain a sympathy vote and to give ourselves an excuse to think that we are better than we really are.
I’ve been reading positive as well as negative reactions on this movie, by Indian as well as non-Indian viewers. While some people rightly compare it to Cidade de Deus, others find the comparison horrifying and still others find the movie cheesey and just don’t see what all the fuss is about. One thing is for certain though: very few are ambivalent in their opinion on this film.
Slumdog Millionaire has got itself 10 Academy Award nominations, which I find quite surprising ‘cos I’ve watched it and while it was good, I didn't think it was SO good that people start bestowing superlative praise and golden statuettes upon it.
As an Indian, I would think one is torn between two opinions: you want to say it was a good movie because it was engrossing and well made and thus brought acclaim to the Indians involved in its creation. You also want to say it was horrible, because although it was about India, it was a movie by an Englishman that showed the worst side of the country. Abject poverty, violent and perverse slum life and children who are never children at all; City of God did that too.
Plenty of folks passing judgment on this movie seem to label India a “third world country” in which the events depicted were bound to happen because of the living standard. The fact is, while we sit in our ivory towers, that is exactly what most Indians think of the slums too… a “third world country” within the country. I know because I am one of those most Indians.
I don’t agree with these foreign labelers, but I don’t blame them either because if you watched this movie with no presumptions about India, you’d probably feel the same way too. I found the observation of a celebrity columnist in a local newspaper to be quite apt when she opined that the world would want to see what life was like in this Indian city that was only recently targeted by terror attacks, which would be one of the reasons driving them to watch this movie. Unfortunately, for many, this will be how they discover India. This is what they get for their curiosity. A nice little (all of 120 minutes) film that depicts life in a country they probably know exists somewhere out there, at its worst but interwoven with real drama, undying love and culminating in an expected fairytale ending, complete with a gratuitous song and dance sequence.
It’s just a shame that it took a firang to put it on display for the world, when the story was already written in our own backyard.
If You Seek Amy... lingua magnifica!
“You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds... stand still laddie!”
Prodigy – Breathe
Jimmy Ray – Are You Jimmy Ray?
As Sir Marcus Rigsby is wont to say, Whatever you’re doing, stop it now!
I was browsing my Internet today and reading through a few random but mostly not-so-random blogs to note what the (sometimes questionably) funny folk were up to. As I am wont to do at most times, I noticed a couple of things. I shall now share the immediately-aforementioned observations.
1. Plenty people like to just make up words as they write, like I do. That does slightly take away from the joy of doing it, but it isn’t enough to make me want to stop it now!
2. People like to link. It is a compulsion of sorts that makes the writer want to distract the reader with such a venom that every second effing word of every effing line links to something else somewhere else, often only obscurely referencing the writer’s original intent.
But here’s a clue for all the linkwizards: it’s called TARGET=“_blank”. Learn it. Live it.
3. Some people are sometimes funnier when they don’t try.
4. If there is a photograph of a weird or not-necessarily-weird-or-even-just-out-of-the-ordinary something, there will invariably be an Asian tourist/not-tourist with a camera, OR the shadow of one, somewhere in the photograph.
Right place, right time... or just too many everywhere so the odds of one being in your photo are so high anyway that you needn’t bother calculating?
Sweet cream on an ice-cream sandwich! When will they stop it now?
A while ago, I had thought of starting a new series of posts based on something I called “Daniel Rutgers’ Memoirs”. Don’t ask me where I got the titular character’s name from; it was meant to be ironic... if a name can ever be ironic.
I realized I wouldn’t be able to come up with enough material to actually create something resembling a book, but I thought I could at least churn out enough to cover a few posts as a sort of regular appearance on my pages. Like Floyd... who is, in fact, pretty irregular these days.
To start with, I had the whole thing ready over the course of one night of near insomaniacal (YES!) pondering, with a complete world in which Daniel could live and breathe and be anything but real, absurdly molded characters that might never support a storyline and a storyline that could never possibly have existed before me. (While taking care to not split my infinitives, these days I also take care to follow up random negations with contradictions.)
Each post would consist of excerpts from one or more days from Daniel Rutgers’ utterly unnecessary personal log. I even had the side characters that would pop in every now and then to provide relief from Daniel’s own inane but somewhat amusing musings.
Unfortunately, due to constraints of time and deteriorating imagination, I was unable to develop Daniel into a suitable Harry Potter rebound past a single page taken from the entry of November, 17. Fuelled with disappointment in self and country, I decided it would be appropriate for me to stop it now!
Starting from scratch sucks.
“The eyes are the groin of the head”
Black Sabbath – Iron Man
Peter Frampton – Baby, I Love Your Way
I hate sitting around at airports, mostly because my international layovers are almost always reeeeallly long. But sometimes the wait is not all that bad because once you get used to the seats and find all the restrooms you don’t want to use, an airport is an airport is an airport. No matter how much I hate Starbucks, I’d probably still stop for a bagel or bear claw to pass the time. It’s nice to eat and watch people. I mean watch people while you eat what you’re eating; not people.
At Heathrow, although my wait was as long as it always is anywhere else, it was nice to be among the English for once. Good looking, fashionable folk all around, with their many accent derivatives. And all the time two things were constantly passing through my mind: I should have shaved before I left home and I am WAY underdressed! Also there was this pleasant Polish dude, Maciej (I only just figured out that his name was not spelled the way it was pronounced), who just happened to be everywhere I was, from on the way to Bombay, to on the way to the bathroom in the plane, to the security check queue, to wandering around the airport.
As I sat near the elevator bank to Gates B and C, fingers tapping at a frequency that was a varying multiple of that of my toes, sometimes integer-al(?) and sometimes fractional, I realized that it was a neat personal feat of uncoordinated motor movements. A shapely brunette with the highest heeled boots and shortest skirt I’ve ever seen introduced herself into my frame of view and turned to face me before beginning the journey downward. Her grey eyes locked with mine for what seemed like a clichéd eternity of seconds till the lift doors closed.
There was no joy in her stare. It was no fun sitting there after that.
SFO is now getting too familiar for comfort. And this time around it was as though the senior citizens of France had descended as one upon the city of San Francisco. As I waited at my boarding gate surrounded by France’s eldest, I was overcome by the urgent need to soothe an itch in the crotch. Being of modest character, obviously I did not act to deter this agent of evil in such company. But, for those 20 minutes during which I had to allow an invisible irritant gnawing at my gonads, I shall forever despise the elderly from south of Belgium.
Plus, longest pre-boarding, ever!
Damn that Katy Perry... getting me all hot with her silly song. Plus she reminds me sometimes of Zooey Deschanel.
In other news, Debra Messing reminds me of Lucille Ball.
“I would stand in line for this”
Shelley Duvall – He Needs Me
M.I.A. – Paper Planes
Everyone has to fit in. A few are good at most things they try, but most aren’t. So we get by by finding the thing we think we can do, and then trying to do that as best we can so that we burrow out our own little niche where, no matter what anyone else does, we will always fit in, ‘cos that’s what we do.
The world looks like it is fading fast; I might seem like I have made decent progress over the last few years, but the more it seems that way, the less it seems that way. I wish I had my niche, but it isn’t anywhere on the horizon.
There should be a book of rules on life, that dedicated an entire chapter to finding one’s niche. But if there was, I’d probably have rejected it anyway. Aloha irony.
I guess it’s all relative and a matter of varying perspective. Some days, everything is totally worth it and some times you have to wonder whether that is true at all.
Speaking of which, no one can know The Truth, because no one actually sees it. Now I get why people make such a big deal of this whole ‘enlightenment’ thing.
The way things are going, tomorrow could be the start of a new war. You could evaporate without ever finding your niche. You could cease to exist without ever finding the love of your life. You could go, without ever saying what you mean or meaning what you say; or both. You could end without ever starting.
“... they say Jump, you say How High?”
Corrine Bailey Rae – Like A Star
Texas – Inner Smile
01. X is extreme; obviously
02. X is algebraic; the universally intuitive variable
03. X is androgynous; until it forms a chromosome pair
04. X is je ne sais quoi
05. X is vulgar; red neon does nicely
06. X is retro
07. X is now; I wish they’d make up their minds whether it’s called Gen X or Gen Y, though…
08. X is ambiguous; we’re calling it the X-Ray?
09. X is abbreviational; Xmission, X86, etc.
10. X is puzzling
11. X is powerful
12. X is prohibitive
13. X is provocative
14. X is prefixual; as in “my ex-BFF, Jill”
15. X is girly
16. X is manly
17. X is musical; Los Angeles
18. X is religious; see: Xmas
19. X is dangerous; see: Jolly Roger
20. X is sexual; three is company
21. X is heroic; just ask Jean Grey
22. X is new and improved; but we’re still calling it the X-Ray??
23. X is mysterious; ever played Scotland Yard?
24. X marks the spot; good for Piratey Swag
“Better watch your soul; it’ll leave you like a hundred bucks”
Scissor Sisters – Filthy/Gorgeous
Belinda Carlisle – Leave A Light On For Me
Electric Light Orchestra – Mr. Blue Sky
From recent events, I’d say it’s fair to assume that people WANT to think they are victims of racism, because it’s an easy way to reject criticism of themselves. People WANT to think they are being projected badly to the rest of the world, people WANT to think they are being looked down upon. In fact, I’d say that is close to being an Indian trait. It is an effort to gain a sympathy vote and to give ourselves an excuse to think that we are better than we really are.
