Movie Review: Dhobi Ghat

Dhobi Ghat- the name sounds like a rusty, metallic, sepia view of part of Mumbai’s history that runs its present.

The promos of the movie lured one of a web of various stories of life in Mumbai in Mumbai’s life.

Even the beginning and the first half an hour of the movie left no stone unturned to raise the expectations level of  the movie.

Finding old CDs in box, silver ring that entails a past, the non-ghajini psycho painter Aamir etc hinted towards an unfolding mysterious story.

The movie doesn’t give the story of someone’s life, but knits one life in others’ stories.

Aamir Khan (who believes in impersonating the perfectionist. 3 idiots, tare zameen pe protagonisism being instances)

Failed relationships, liberty to choose, and the saliva dripping taste of money. This is what Mumbai comprises of. The movie, but fails to polish the facts with its pen and paper and the color box.

The stories are set up from the lens of a camera-man, painted with the brush of a painter and shot with the spirit of Mumbai.

One finds it unusual for a girl to invite, offer chai, eat out and watch movies with your laundrywala, no matter how handsome he is.

But, as they say that nothing is errant from point view of an artist, so some opine to give that exemption to it.

The story is unfit for the Indian mentality and one step above the IQ of a Mumbaikar, if we talk of artistic sense.

Those who got tempted with the trailers ended up piddling around, after the story(s) started.

Those, with higher level of patience levels, held their sleeves for 90 minutes, without break and added a medal to their shoulder for tolerating the intolerable.

There were some (like me) who waited for the movie to end, after it had already ended, trying to fathom if the Director failed in befooling us or forgot to befool us.

Recommendations: Go with a low expectation level, if you are an Aamir Khan fan, erase the promos seen on TV from your mind, sit back and enjoy the photography.

The Sun

The Showman

Highly condemnable acts! Godammedly censorable words! Extremely weird reactions!

Hello. This is me.

I have become the showman and the audience myself!!!

Christ! I have no idea what the next scene is and how will I perform.

And the growing manliness inside me makes my acts riskier and nonsensical.

It is like I am performing live before myself, in a suspense thriller, with double (read, several multiple) roles and where I ate away the script in my pizza in fury and now, have to somehow manage to keep the show going.

And I surprise myself each time.

Am a multi-talented person J

The difference being the mismatch of the circumstances….

I shout when I am expected to sing sweet.

I grin when a sincere reply is expected out of me.

I shy away when the focus light is flooded on me.

I need an interval badly, Sir.

May I avail a small break, or I might end up breaking myself..

The Soul

I went to church after so long yesterday.
I saw hand painted dove, thermocol flowers and plastic smileys hung in between the windows and ceilings.
I realized- oh, for these people it was a new year. People had celebrated Christmas. For them, the year had changed, and Christ was born. They looked for reasons to celebrate, feel happy.
For me, the new year brought what the last year ended with-solitude.
The Christ didn’t take birth in my heart again, on Christmas.
Keep aside Christ’s birthday, I know how well i am celebrating my own birthdays for the last two years...

I have reached the stage where i feel like even i am leaving my body. I mean earlier, at least i used to talk to myself, used to remember good old moments spent with family, or the painful part of 2009.. I used to smile, laugh, cry and talk with myself.
But now, i feel, as if, I have finished up all the topics, shared all my feelings, remembered all good and bad times, hence, I have nothing left to talk with myself.

So, now wen i walk, or am sitting in my room, thinking, i am absolutely alone.

My soul has left me.
It is out of my body, I mean.
And, I see it sometimes.

I see it sitting on second last bench, in my class, when the lecture is on.

I see it sometimes in morning, in mirror, looking at my white hair.
I see it sometimes at night, on my bed, near the window, gazing at the tall buildings trying to locate the invisible moon.


I see it in office, looking at my PC, when i am writing a blog.

It doesn’t talk to me, but.
We sit in silence.

Last time i saw it wiping its tears when it saw me bunking my boring Friday class, and going back home. It cries, to see me alone. It has a heart too, perhaps, that pains. It feels pity on me.

It doesn’t come when i intend it to.
It comes whenever it wills.
Probably it too, finds me boring, like others.
But, i have seen it standing by my side, each night i hide my face in my pillow and cry.
I don’t turn back, to see it, but see its fingers running through my hair and temple...

The Man inside

Finally, the demons of Loneliness and Depression have almost changed my gender!!!

Earlier, only my thinking and planning parts had become manly.

Now, my likes and dislikes are turning masculine too. (With the exception that I still don’t fantasize sleeping with women or assume the whole world to be my urinal)

I see the idiot-emotional-fool-female inside me pregnant with the thoughts of intellectually awakened focus of reality and delivering bitter facts of life everyday (every evening, to be particular, when I walk back home, alone).

With every penny I spend, with every person I talk to, with every topic that I discuss with my room mate, I feel myself superior that I am out of these vicious circles of relations and relationships.

I feel proud about myself to have standing on that breakeven where I am getting all the benefits of being lonely and lack all the negative points of being into a relationship.

My relation with myself has improved  much.

I think like a man. I don’t curse myself anymore. I take care of myself. I plan finances. I think of less shopping and more eating. I talk less stupid and talk more sense.

I even get the feeling of wearing socks inside my shoes now- a thought that I never got in almost last three decades of my life.

Anyways, even after so much bragging, I feel I haven’t overstated. Believe me.

Well, the point I wanted to share is that I am a man now!!

The problem (or the blessing) is that I continue to feel so. Probably I have none who treats me as a female (except the lady in the lingerie shop).

None gives me flowers or picks up my hot water bucket or helps me bringing down the box kept at the uppermost shelf of my cupboard. None carries my non-buoyant luggage when I change platforms at New Delhi station, on way back home. I solve my own tax problems.

None sends surprise birthday cakes on my birthday.

None even offers me seat while in train (as it is a ladies coach…huff!!!!) or bus  (the oldies ‘claim’ the seats if I get any)

None tells me that I am a beautiful woman (except the peeping Toms on road) and that it rains flowers when I smile.

I buy the shoes that are strong (and not fancy) and I buy them because I need to wear them (and not just that they match with my skirt).

The words like ‘flat 50% sale’ have become French for me. I find it important to read the news in the newspaper now. I surf for news channels, like Dad, when i get T.V. remote in my hands. I am not aware of the new movies releasing or the new baggy pants in vogue.

I always see the watch before I start anything (and then when I end).

I don’t care what I am I wearing or how am I looking when I enter the class-room.

I don’t panic if I realize that  forgot to spray a cologne today. None bothers to smell me.
I have forgotten the way to beauty saloon from  home. I think it was summers when I last visited the lady coiling a hair dryer around her neck, applying red color on somebody’s hair and dabbing white cream on someone’s face.

Huh!!

I take short walks, after lunch, alone. Just like Dad used to, in winters.

I sit mute for ten minutes and ponder some manlike thoughts before going to bath, just like Grand Pa (he used to do so after shaving).

I budget how much to put inside the envelope when invited on a wedding.

I don’t feel jealous to see a stunning babe. Rather, I appreciate her beauty.  Unbelievable, but true!!

And, last, but final proof- I wish I too had a dumb Indian wife, to cook and dry, like other men.

Oh F….k. ( I silently said, O Freak!!!!)

The Summer Surprise

While waiting for a bus, I sniffed something unusual, something new, something pleasant..

Bingo !!! I was standing under a mango tree and it smelt fresh blossoms, indicating the legible knocks of the approaching summer.

 

Summers of my childhood- ‘1 June to 15 July summer vacation time’, when the kids made sure that the English cursive writing home work was completed by 31^st May night, so that we enjoy the uninterrupted 45 holidays, where parents lost  the right to ask us to come home early to finish up home work.

The times of longer glistering days and shorter glittery nights.

The afternoons were silent, while parents instructed that the kids don’t play in the summer loo.

After all elders had slept at home, the children would peep out from the windows, and call each other to play in the verandas.

Skipping, marbles, doll marriages, hide and seek and bicycle race were the most favorite events. They were not just games, then!! Winning and losing them mattered much. When we used to think that all those with whom we are playing, will remain with us forever.

One of the afternoons when Dad would ask me to help him bring the shutters of air cooler to the Sector 22 Market, where the man sitting in the children park street used original khas for the shutters, which will fragrant the room for days when the electric pump would shower water on the shutters. And while the man was busy installing khas sheets on the shutters, Dad would slip some coins on my fist to buy ice cream from the vender standing near by. 25 paise for Cola flavor, 50 paise for mango and orange flavor. Chocolate ice cream could be bought only for a whole one rupee. Getting five rupees was a bounty.

In the hot evenings, everybody will gather around the fountain park and enjoy the moist breeze in the dry weather, while children will try to enter the fountain, full of water and play there driving the watchman on duty crazy. It was fun to see the watchman with a stick running after you with a stick. We had not learnt the words like ‘self esteem’ and ‘ego’, then.

At nights, during dinner, when Dad used to declare a curfew when Geetanjali Ayyar used to read the News Bulletin from hand written pages on Doordarshan, Mom would slice ripened up mangoes- Dusshehri, Langda and Safeda (my favourite).

I would pick the biggest and run out in the fountain park. After Mom and other ladies were done with the dinner, they would come out for ‘after dinner walks’. Saunf, meethi supari and jaggery were shared amongst everybody. There were no problems between saas’ and bahus’ and hence no week-days’ serials too.

Mommies would discuss how costly the mangoes were that season (that was a statement for every season) and the best bulk buy deals in fruit market Chandigarh.

The mangoes tasted new every season and yet filled same sweetness in life always.

Ah! the good old days!

Prayer

Born brought up in a Brahmin family, I was taught to pray everyday.

Praying is a compulsive behavior now.

I pray everyday.

The basic Indian style of praying is- praising god.

That’s what I do too.

While this Christmas, on my way to the Church, I asked myself, what actually is a prayer?

Is prayer, a begging before the God? Is prayer, a selfish mode of soliciting the memorandum of your wants?

At that time I realized…

There are three possibilities:

1.       Perfect possibility (something that is sure to happen, without efforts involved. Falling night, rising Sun, changing seasons et al, hence we never pray for it, just thank the lord as a whole)

2.       An absolute impossibility that Is utterly non questionable (An absolute impossibility is what we never pray for. Have you ever prayed to become a girl, if you are a boy, or the vice versa. We never pray, to live forever.)

3.        Something that we want to become a possibility- an imperfect impossibility.

We pray for a longer life for our beloved ones, we pray for beauty (as girls) and wealth (as boys), which is a part of the imperfect possibility.

Hence, we never encroach into absolute impossibility part, and the perfect possibility. The praying area prevails between these two only- something that lies above possibilities and below impossibilities.

Probably it was designed by the Almighty this way itself, so as to leave an area of life uncertain in between- just like it is designed between the earth and the sky.

What is on ground and what is beyond the skies is certain.

Rest is a horizon and a myth and a prayer…