The Paradoxes of Our Lives - To Grow Inside, Empty Yourself

The more we empty ourselves, the more we grow.

Flower against the blue sky

Be it old baggage, or intellectual arrogance of 'I know', or whatever judgements and opinions, we carry needlessly inside, the best thing is to throw them out and empty yourself. (It's a huge relief first to rid oneself of all this baggage.)

Stop holding onto what is good and bad, just empty it. Because all the good things we have stored have also served their purpose, and will reappear in some other form as we move on, if we need them. Fresher and livelier.

Then, we all grow as we were meant to grow. As the good god intended.

Thought for the Day - What You Want Is Not Outside, It's Inside

I was looking at a self-help book. 'All that you want and more' it promised its readers. I wonder, is it really about acquiring all we want or crave for? Or is finding the peace inside so that we get only what we really want?

To get the peace inside we need to clear out some unwanted stuff. Old baggage if you may. When we have the space, we can get what we really want.

Until we rearrange the interiors a bit, and make space, there is no point in wanting and expecting 'more' because we really cannot handle it.
In that sense, it is about growing the inner 'space'. 'More' is then on the inside.  Once the inside is 'clear', the outside will manifest. (I love the way the words 'space' and 'clear' pun in this context.)

Aashiqui2 - Movie Review

I am now convinced that Aditya Roy Kapoor can take over all Amitabh's roles in the sequels/remakes. Ah, he would fit in brilliantly in a sequel for 'Sholay' - I do have the scene when he dies in mind apart from his intense and quiet love story. In addition to the intensity, Aditya has a strange vulnerability, that Karna like look on his face of someone who knows he is going to die but who will stick to his path despite that. Of someone who has accepted his fate. (Someone script a Karna for this kid soon - he will knock the box office off its feet.) Who better to play the role of RJ, the pained rock star, in Aashiqui 2.

But take away the brooding melancholic and intense Aditya and the soft soft spoken Shraddha Kapoor and there is little else in the movie. Mohit Suri as always appears to be in a hurry to tell his story and does not tie up some ends. But this RJ, this boy with those sad eyes, is someone you want to know about. You care for him and want to know what he will do to himself with his sad eyes, and that alone is enough to sit through the movie, whatever he does. You root for this kid even when he pushes his love away and causes her injury in a drunken rage.

And then there is some fantastic singing by the new voices Arjit Singh and Ankit Tiwari. The music is haunting and stays with you. What's the connection to Aashiqui? Was Rahul Roy a singer who has broken through in that movie? I don't remember now. It's two decades gone. But Aashiqui had great music too and its still fresh in our minds.

Rahul Jaikar, RJ, (Aditya Roy Kapoor) is suicidal to start with, apparently because he has got fame and money too quickly and did not know how to handle it. He is an alcoholic and if the booze does not kill him, he looks all set to die anyway. What does Mr. Walking suicide note do - find an amazing singing talent in a bar in Goa. He makes her the biggest singing sensation - a tough job for anyone surely, has it in him to give her vocal training, loves his sur and sangeet a lot, does not envy her success, loves her passionately and she loves him too - seems to have found a great purpose to live. But then life is not so simple eh. Will she be a good enough purpose or does he need to find his next purpose in life. Will he or won't he, is the question?

Is it a love story? Not really. Does she love him? Yes, I suppose. Does he love her? Yes, but more like a mentor. What is it about really? I don't know. But it's a love story with a wonderful chap with sad eyes. Now Mr. Aditya Roy Kapoor, I'd like to see you not swigging the bottle, in something suave and mean. Should you go and watch it? Go for this kid. And the music.

ABCD - Movie Review

I like Remo D Souza as a director. He tells simple stories and simply. He has one clear hook that guides the movie and his characters are generally credible. Nothing too dramatic, too sad - alls well and that ends well kind of movies. I see a good future ahead for him as a director. He is responsible, thoughtful, gives a lot of youngsters chances and makes movies that are entertaining and meaningful as well.

ABCD (Any Body Can Dance) is a dance based movie and one wonders why anyone did not come up with any good dance based movie yet. Actually I am glad they did not because you can leave it to the safe hands of Remo and his magnificent bunch of choreographers and dancers like Salman, Dharmesh, Punit and others. And playing key roles are Prabhu Deva and Ganesh Acharya who play choreographers. No one can tell their story better than these choreographers and they dance away all their frustration, hope and joy in every frame. The choreography is of the highest standard and is breathtaking.

Prabhu Deva as Vishnu sir and Ganesh Acharya as his funny friend, the rival groups of dancers from the slum, all trying to express themselves and their desire to win a major dance competition becomes the central theme of the story. Vishnu has his adversary, the commercial minded Jehangir played brilliantly by Kay Kay Menon. I thought all the choreographers did a good job of acting with Punit playing the drug addict role especially well.

I loved the line 'Don't try to impress, express' to which I dedicated an entire blog. And also that bit about trust issues. Remo tells what he has learned through his art well without resorting to any gimmicks. He knows the dangers of trying to 'impress'. Chal bhai jo sikha uspe dhyan de!

Good show. Honest stuff. I liked it. No reason why anyone won't like it.

Thought for the Day - Don't Look to Impress, Instead Express

In fact this is a brilliant line from the movie ABCD where Prabhu Deva, the hardworking dance guru tells his students that they must not try to impress, but seek to express themselves. At the same time we have his rival guru, Kaykay Menon telling his upscale students that they must look to impress, to dazzle and every move they make must be to impress!

Some place on the Mumbai-Pune expressway

But we all know that when we seek to impress we will not even do justice to what we have trained to. Our minds are totally occupied by what others are thinking, whether they are already judging you, whether you should do something flamboyant to impress them. In such circumstances (ask me, I have done this many times and have fallen flat on my face!) we perform much less than what we have prepared for, what we are capable of.

Aditya asked me this good question today in a small chat we had at Kindle Your Mind, Gachibowli in a 'Meet the Author' session. He asked me how he could keep his focus in a game where he knows everyone is watching and cited an example where he lost 6-0, 6-0 in a tennis match against the Goa campus. Two things could have happened in his case. One is an extreme focus on losing. And two, related to the first one, what others may think. In both cases, the mind is thinking about others, about how to impress them. How not to fall in their eyes.

The thoughts are not about the racquet and the ball.

In such circumstances, clear your thoughts of all external factors and stick to the absolute present. The NOW. Focus on nothing but the ball and the racquet meeting the ball. Empty all other thoughts. Focus on the exact moment of the ball meeting the racquet. That kind of concentration will shut out the outside and all thoughts related to it.

It happens in presentations, in meetings, in interviews too. If we look to impress, we are more likely to make as ass of ourselves. It is better to be focussed on the process. On the purpose of why you are there.

Be in the now. And express yourself. You will make a meaningful contribution. You will bring 'you' to life.

Beware the Scary Anti-Smoking Ads in Theatres

These days, I get a little worried when I go with Anjali to watch movies - children's or otherwise. The Anit-Smoking ads that pop up without any warning are the sole reason. They are scary enough to watch for me (truly off putting stuff) and I am sure anyone who is smoking in the theatre at that moment will surely stop smoking which is perhaps the noble intention behind it. Good for you guys - I mean why can't you sort it out with the smokers and leave the rest of us out of it.

But spare a thought for the trauma that all the others (the non-smokers) suffer from watching the gory visuals. More so, little children. If the ads cause me to flinch every time I see them, I can only imagine what impact they would have on little children.

So I try to distract the five year old or get her to shut her eyes in my mistaken belief that I am protecting her from the evils of this world. But certainly she will be exposed to this ad sometime (and some more of its kind) and wonder if all smokers are going to end up like this. Or if all movies will always begin with such stuff. Pain must come before pleasure.

Personally I do not think it is appropriate to show family audiences, certainly ones where young children are likely to view them. whoever is in charge of having these ads forcibly shown could certainly do a rethink before an entire generation grows up with these traumatic visuals shown to them just before the pleasant experience of watching a movie. It reminds me of Pavlov's dog and I am behaving more and more like that dog, tensing up before the movie until this ad is done. Maybe in later years every time a movie is shown I will tense up involuntarily at precisely the same time that the Anti-smoking ad comes on. Only time will tell. Or the chap sitting at the bottom of the couch.

I asked my friend Ranjan, who smokes, if he would quit smoking because of this ad. He categorically said no. Perhaps it is for all those smokers who might start smoking. We don't know really. Surely there must be some thought to it all. I don't think it's a pleasant memory for the family of the lad who died of mouth cancer who is in the ad. Rather insensitive again.

But if smoking is so harmful, why is the government allowing its sale?

Naive question me lads I know.

But I fail to see the logic that we allow sale of such harmful stuff. And then spend a fortune from the tax payers lot to make these ads which serve no purpose but to traumatise the poor lot of non-smokers. (The smokers probably wander off to smoke a couple to rid themselves of this stress.) The non-smokers will probably have to spend much more to treat the Pavlovian responses later on in our lives perhaps.

The Paradoxes of Our Lives - To Reach High Up, Keep Your Head Down

To reach for the stars, we must keep our head down.

A patch of the summer sky

Head down works both ways - as in a) keeping ourselves rooted and focussed on the job and the process and b) being humble (again rooted to the ground). We cannot climb the mountain if we have our head in the air. We cannot hit the ball for a six if our head is in the air.

The ones who are most in touch with their job, their work, the real purpose of their profession or existence, are most likely to reach the heights. Those who walk around with their heads in the air, may find it difficult to rise above the step on which they are standing. (They may, quite likely, fall.)