A LION FELL IN LOVE WITH A LAMB ( in a love mural called TWILIGHT)

My fascination for movies has always given me the opportunity of watching diverse movies all the time. Being an isolated movie buff (art movies keep my friends away) has brought in a sense of distinct flavor in me. I have always been egoistic of liking things which are overly popular or peoplistically close as i should say. But "Twilight" was one popular movie i had to watch and this blog suggestively indicates that it had the power to make me write a review for this movie.

As the name suggests "twilight" can be looked at as a shaded, obscure after the sunset before the night vampire love story. Let me tell you that this movie breaks the barriers of an unusually old subject about a vampire's love story. Although there are hardly few scenes of neck biting and blood gushing i must say that it is successful, in bringing out the fantasy of a vampire into a more close, real, subtle side of life. The movie strikes you right at the point where in biting neck and sucking blood even though being the symbolic acts of vampirism necessarily signifies the cinematically wild side of a human being, making you want to be one.

This movie belongs to Edward Collins and Bella the lead characters in the movie. The first frame of the movie immediately tells you the shade, warmth and vampiristic essence of the movie. The movie starts with bella quoting " Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something.". Bella, the arizona girl is in forks a small town to meet her dad, chief of police.

Bella , the Arizona( here the state reflects her dry nature) presents her isolated, boring kinda attached to herself look from the beginning which would definitely not make you like her. Instead you will notice that this character of hers would make you love her at the end of the movie because you will appreciate her, when her solitude and her charming innocent character with a subtle smile decieves you the audience, when she falls in love with a totally ironic wild guy called the Vampire. I feel that this character makes the understatement that love is totally blind in the way that you would love a person who is totally not "you".

Her initial tryst with the collins family happens in the college dining room. The collins family as she would have learnt were like her, isolated and to themselves. " I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful."Love at first sight is when she humanely stares the yet to be known vampire Edward Collins. She instanly connects to him as she says " As I flinched away from him, shrinking against my chair, the phrase if looks could kill suddenly ran through my mind.For an instant, I felt a thrill of genuine fear, raising the hair on my arms. The look only lasted a second, but it chilled me more than the freezing wind.".

Edward collins distinctively has this whitish make up and red lips which suggestively indicates that he is a vampire to the audience. You will appreciate his dark yet pleasant character in the movie. There is something which makes you watch this scene again and again. It ideally defines the objective of Love at first sight in a different way, because its the ironical love between a human and a vampire.

Bella's dad is this usual protective cop who always insists on her carrying a pepper spray just in case. The relationship betwen Bella and her dad is portrayed with the fact that regaining long lost love makes anyone being overprotective which makes the loved ones " revelling in the aloneness instead of being lonely" Her feelings are justified in the book from which the story of the movie is adapted from. " When I came here as a child, he would always remove the bullets as soon as he walked in the door. I guess he considered me old enough now not to shoot myself by accident, and not depressed enough to shoot myself on purpose.".

There are these thrilling scenes of the valor of Edward Collins where in they have actually tried to define Edward as the ideal hero of a teenage girl breaking the shell of a typically define d vampire who just keeps biting people. His characteristics of being a vampire like speed, strength , immortality , changing eye colour , not aging, pale white skin are shot distinctly.

I especially love the scene where in he stops a speeding car with his bare hands from hitting Bella. "Just before I heard the shattering crunch of the van folding around the truck bed, something hit me, hard, but not from the direction I was expecting." describes the reaction of bella to this.

As bella gets attracted to edward the movie continues to define two kinds of vampires the good and the bad ones. The good ones which collins belongs to is the non human eating group and the bad ones are the human eating group. The good vampires group is according to me an unbelievable ethical symbol where the vampires of the collins family have dared to be different, controlled their uncivilised behaviours and lead a life, simple and humble irrespective of the powers they possess.

There are unexplicably beautiful scenes where bella comes to know that he is a vampire and yet trusts edward even after he explains that there is this dominant part of him which makes him hard to control his desire for bella's blood. I can never forget the scene where in he lifts her off her feet literally using his powers to take here on the tallest treetop shot beautifly among the evergreen forest of Portland. This was beautiful to me because he was realising the fantasies of any romantic girl's mind, i mean who would not want to go there be the one amongst nature and imagine soaring high eventhough you could see the reality called ground.

There is this scene where in collins tries to kiss bella and suddenly realises his dominant part and stops himself just not to lose her.

The collins family also reflects just any other happy family but with a difference because it accepts Bella the human, an outsider.

The rest of the story is predictable. The bad vampires group wants to kill bella when the collins family defend her and defeat the bad group. Edward risks by activating the dominant part of him by sucking out the injected venom in Bella. Bella is saved and they live together happily ever after.

How can i not mention the background score which is titallating to your senses all through out and the amazing camera work which shows you the beautiful evergreen forest of Portland.

The final scene is captivating and moving where in even though Bella decides to be a vampire just to live with collins ever after Collins says no which signifies respecting the individuality of a person in a relationship yet sacrificing enough to make them happy.

Some interesting quotes from the book
That’s the beautiful thing about being human. Things change.
Edward Cullen, Twilight, Chapter 24, p.478

It’s possible to take bravery to the point where it becomes insanity.
Edward Cullen, Twilight, Chapter 24, p.475

I’ll be the first to admit that I have no experience with relationships. But it just seems logical… a man and woman have to be somewhat equal… as in, one of them can’t always be swooping in and saving the other one. They have to save each other equally.
Bella Swan, Twilight, Chapter 24, p.473

Some things are more certain than others… like the weather. People are harder. I only see the course they’re on while they’re on it. Once they change their minds — make a new decision, no matter how small — the whole future shifts.
Alice Cullen, Twilight, Chapter 22, p.435

I sketched inattentively along the margins of my homework. After a few minutes, I suddenly realized I’d drawn five pairs of dark eyes staring out of the page at me. I scrubbed them out with the eraser.
Bella Swan, Twilight, Chapter 7, p.142

The more familiar someone’s… ‘voice’ is, the farther away I can hear them.
Edward Cullen, Twilight, Chapter 9, p.180

ps: Go watch the movie,
I actually like an another vampire girl in the movie called Alice. She is cute....

It is worse to want to die and not be able to. Death is difficult!!

If the title of this blog reflects absolute pessimism in me don’t blame me, blame the circumstantial evidence!! This fateful morning my close friend received a call about her previous employer’s health. She had been diagnosed with brain hemorrhage and her condition was getting worse in the hospital she was admitted to. Even though I don’t know this person personally enough to sympathize, a sudden indifference of life called death questioned the very object of my own existence. She had been a boon to all the Indian students as she had been the first employer on campus to provide an opportunity for the students to earn their own piece of bread at the Child Development Center where she had been instrumental in bringing up young kids. What can be more blessing than  a job where you bring up kids , observe their burgeoning skilled abilities of mastering the mundane acts of life like walking, talking or crawling and what can be more ironical than death of a person who has led her life seeing the very essence of life in kids!!!

   Death had never been a fear factor for me. Now it is when I am seeing the routine world with matured intellect and aging mind. I know, to most of the people death is intimidating and there are a few lively souls out there whose jobs demand staring death in its eyes every minute. I know I can’t fit into the second category but mom I wish I could learn not to fear death. Chuck Palahnuik an American novelist once quoted “If death meant leaving the stage long enough to change costume and comeback as a new character, would you slow down? Or Speed Up? “. I don’t know how my soul would react to this.  Let me tell you guys that I am neither trying to instill the fear of death in you nor marketing pessimism. Its been a long time since the process of introspection has happened. I have sincerely realized that as long as I exist, death is not here. And when it does I no longer exist!! I want that transition from life to death to be amazing and glorified. I know death is ordinary because it happens all the time. Let me stop my repeated pessimism and take you to the hospital where I went to see the immortal soul. To be frank, I have always avoided the places of death ( I don’t know how to term them!!) because I am too incapable to face people on deathbeds. But today I wanted to know how it is for people who die in this country. As I reached the critical care unit I could see a large gathering of people. I don’t care if you consider me a momentary sadist , I measure a person’s popularity or success by the number of people who turn up for the death ceremony. The situation looked gloomy enough but trust me there were no tear wet faces or loud cries. Its not that I hate these symbolic acts of celebrating death, they are too pessimistic and sad. Upholding the eternal truth that Americans have clarity in everything her brother took us to a dark corner of the room( or it seemed so) and explained every minute detail of her last moments of life. I was dumbstruck at the two facts he gave out. Known for her extreme sense of independency she opened the back door of her house to let the doctors in( she had called them)  even when she was experiencing the biggest headache of her life after which she fell face down on the floor. Trust me you can never understand the definition of independency in her terms. All the while he talked to us he never uttered the word death. There is this statement he made which will make me yearn for something more out of life always!!

“Come join us in celebrating her life (With a smile)!!!” Don’t you think we all need to develop this sense of maturity of facing the death of a person with the lives of the people around him. This day has been quite emotional for me. I realized that death is nothing, to live defeated and inglorious is to die, to die daily. I don’t want to face a situation where in three days after a person’s death his hair and finger nails continue to grow but phone calls taper off!! I want to live deeply having no fear of death. I want every moment to be satisfactory, fun filled and glorious. I want to be as humble as always, as simple as needed, as successful as one can be, as self sufficient as life demands and as indifferent as death lives. I have decided to conquer all my fears starting with fear of heights. So I want to skydive (Don’t worry mom I will call you before I do that). Ok mom I promise you and myself to live life indifferent to death. 

THE CREATIVE EGO

There was this instinct, the deepest sense of desire to portray indifference. The norms always seemed to fade away from my very vision. This young boy called “me” was brought up in an unusual way where my day started and ended with books “Out of syllabus”. This boy was part of a lingual and cultural extravaganza at a very early age. You essentially have to blame his mom for his weird behavior. She was a tough lecturer by job and a beautiful poetess by heart. As a young girl, she came out of her nut shell to realize the broader aspects of life. “Music” and “Literature” proved to be the shallow waters for her to swim through a journey called “The Creative Aspect of Intellect”. My mom has been wholly and solely responsible for the sensitive, creative and emotional part of me. I am proud of it and keep writing about it. This blog tries to get an insight into what made me decide, to be different and how different I am!! Whether at her work or her passion for writing, my mom has always tried to explore the nuances of the “Creative Ego”. If you consider excellent book reviews in newspapers, frequent appearances in television, happy critics at intellectual discussions, various awards for her contribution in literature, heading organizing committees at work, tons of students who never fail to greet her wherever they are, as being successful she is one successful woman. If you don’t , she is more successful than ever!! “Creativity” is a drug I cannot live without. I essentially realized this when I was schooling and I think it was my high school days. I had this weakness of making myself known through what I call the lingual indifference. I was keen on getting the highest score in languages like kannada, English and Sanskrit while my intellectual counterparts concentrated on subjects like science and mathematics. I always ensured to put in the most meaningful essay with lots of quotes and references only to secure scores like 4.5 out of 5. My aim was to hit the target with full score. I used to participate in competitions which involved language as a lethal weapon to kill the intellectual minds. I had instantly recognized that if you exhibited something different people would stop and look at you before they proceeded. I ended up writing poems, playing Oscar winning roles (Hmm I wish!!) in school dramas, writing essays etc. I used to hate the outdoor physical training sessions when my friends loved to sweat by playing cricket and volleyball. Thereby I consider myself creatively fit not physically. (It’s quite obvious though!!). I still remember an English lecture in my school where we were supposed to frame sentences for the words the lecturer dictated. She would in fact choose a random person for a random word who would read out the sentence loudly to the entire class. This was my sentence for the word “Aboard”. (Please note that the movie “Titanic” had stirred up the box office then). “When I went aboard the “Titanic” I saw Kate Winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio sipping a cup of coffee”. My teacher loved (laughed at) it and however stupid it was I had accomplished my mission of being different and creative. There was a time when I went blank on my kannada test when I dint know the opposite of VEERA( BRAVE). I remembered ANNAVRA( whistles and Annamana Dance. Nanna necchina nata(my favorite actor)) dialogue in one of the movies where he addresses his Enemies who cheat him by actually attacking him when he is unarmed as “ Lo Hedigala”(Hey cowards). And I put in the word “Hedi” which turned out to be right luckily. For my final project presentation in my engineering course (Our project was something to deal with improving the sound quality of guitar through digital signal processing). I insisted on ending the presentation with an image of a lighter in the shape of a guitar which actually implied that our project would ignite various opportunities in this domain. I am not sure if I could convey it to my professor but I was being creative. I am this kind of person who belongs to the category who wishes to sing and would always find a song. I believe I have been overshadowed by creativity. Believe me creativity is a lonely art. It is a place where no one else has ever been. What you will discover will be wonderful. What you will discover is yourself. But creativity creates a sense of ego, a sense of indifference towards the society. It isolates you. You will begin experiencing shades of cynicism. You will tend to hate popular things. You will begin enjoying extremely vague ideas of life. You will paint emotional murals. An ego which de- recognizes the essential, simple and basic aspects of life will be your guiding light. Trust me, you will love it. Indifference would give you a feeling of accomplished well being in your own world. Ok, what would happen when possibly equal, sensitive, emotional, creative minds create the same art on two different canvasses? Nothing! You see being my mom’s son has exposed me to this beautiful world of creativity. Being the kind of ambitious dreamer I am it is natural for me to define my own identity. I want to be a tree with my mom’s roots. See I am not demanding a separate house for myself. I am just willing to move into a new room with my own colors painted on the wall and my own signature at the end of each page in my own book. I know mom you want me to evolve into something more than you. I don’t know if I can grow more than you but I promise to grow. To grow, the key thing for me right now is to learn, imbibe and embed you!! When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 'Only stand out of my light.' Perhaps someday we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light. Hmm, shall we!!!

BEING PUTTU

BEING PUTTU

Brian Tracy, a popular American host once said” “Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.” I have been feeling awkward and uncomfortable since 8 months now. In fact I have exploded into a new world playing the role of an independent, pragmatic character. The play is called the NEW WORLD and is written, directed and produced by a REAL WORLD GUY. Don’t you think it was very insecure for me to come out of your secure, affectionate, inspiring, lingual and cultural strong hold zone mom? But you know insecurity is the basic tool of the actor’s trade. And I know that you were a part of this act much before I did. My trade is to step out to be much better than what I am today and you taught this!! To exaggerate little things, to worry about them, plan every step carefully, encourage people who dare to think differently and to water the dry harsh realities of life with humor have been hereditary to me. Plato the greatest philosopher has always inspired me. I remember reading this ““Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge”. I don’t know why you made me so emotional about people. The emotional quotient in me helps connect to people in the simplest way. I need not tell you that its hard being emotional and it does allow a pain wave into your calm life most of the time. But I love surfing it. That’s what makes me tall and different from the rest of the people on the beach of life. Talking about waves however great you think you are its ironical that when you look at the mighty ocean out there roaring beautifully with its magnificent waves you feel little/engineerish( I personally want somebody to add this word to the dictionary because an engineering degree nowadays is so small and common). You know how I hate doing mundane things. That’s quite contrary to a person who is in the electrical engineering field right! I am portraying a young bird which has to adapt, mature and spread its wings to finally fly to where it wants. There are two important realizations of life. The things which you do for the society and the things you do for yourself. It’s very important for me to do something for the society, as in society itself and in terms of establishing my identity in the society, and also be able to do something for myself in order to be the real me. Just like an average Indian soul oozes the desire, I wanted to be here in this fantasized world called AMERICA. No wonder that this land ended up negating my ideal job in TCS in terms of the society. I have always packaged success measure boxes. As you can see, o oh! I am sorry this box is supposed to be imaginary. So, as you can imagine there are 2 sides to this success box of mine. If I am creative enough I would paint this box from the palette of society using two bold yet pleasant colors. The society side of it would be dipped in red because it has to be bright, ostentatious and different. The other side would be blue which depicts the calm, creative, never ending taste for success side of me. (And these are my favorite colors too). So the big journey into this technological maze was red! You know what I mean right. I call this part of my life “THE OBVIOUS CHANGE”. This is my journey so far. I just don’t want to give out the usual stops of this journey like the food here is not good, earning your own piece of bread makes you do all sorts of things like being a hotel server, a salesman, washing dishes at a dining place or doing a night shift at a gas station. For any student who comes here there are two lines in his notebook. The first line has to be filled with money and the second one with grades. Each day he fills out a new page with two lines in it. I am sure any student who comes in cannot afford a notebook with more than two lines in each page. I definitely need you to subconsciously realize that you have not injected the vitamin m(money) factor beyond a certain limit in me which made me fill up the first line partially in my first semester. I have never been money oriented and that’s probably why I have never ended up doing mundane jobs. If you have the drive to do things you will keep yourself occupied for the rest of your life. Unfortunately i am not driven by money. Please don’t come to the conclusion that I never worked in my first semester. I wasn’t lucky enough to get an on campus job which in itself has an identity to it and I would describe that in the later part of this journey. I couldn’t put in more number of hours of work like my money oriented friends did but let me tell you that they were being greedy enough to earn more to spend more. I am not justifying what I am doing nor am I saying that being money oriented was bad. Unless you are money oriented you cannot realize the materialistic essence of life which in turn governs your happiness quotient.( At least to most of the people). I was pretty sure of earning my living expenses and not a penny more. Don’t you remember mom I have cried over the phone while talking to you that I don’t have a good on campus job. Did I tell you that if you want to get hired in this country you need to ask someone to refer you? See it’s not a bad concept at all. People here want to hire somebody whom they can trust and that can happen if somebody who has put in a lot of years to that company to bring someone of his own. And for the kind of son I am I would never stoop down to low levels and pester people to get me referred. I have seen my friend hating my senior for a period of time and praise him and beg him the next moment to get him a job. I am not being an angry rebel out there. He was just being “Shrewdly Intelligent” and that’s what is needed in this fair/unfair society. I finally found an on campus job which demanded washing vessels and I am glad I chose this path. For me an on campus job was more dignifying and safer than serving out shrewd Indians, pakistanis and Bangladeshi’s out in the off campus business. You know may be an off campus job is not my cup of tea. Its more of selling your identity than selling commodity. Talking about identities there is an interesting aspect of losing your identity here. You know how the relationship between india, Bangladesh and Pakistan is. When you decide to lose your identity and start living like a beggar here. Wait a moment I am not being offensive but unfortunately every one of us works very hard to earn a penny doing all sorts of jobs which you consider Low society in India. That’s why I term this living the BEGGAR part of it. So in this process people never do have the actual time to discuss about nationalities and fight for their nation. Here we are realizing cultural harmony when every other person wants to identify himself being an Indian rather than a Pakistani or Bangladeshi for the obvious reason. Then there is this dictionary called the AMERICAN DICTIONARY which involves a lot of dash words. Ya that’s what I term them. Its obvious that anybody living here especially my lot considers it ethical and decent to utter those infatuating words and be stupid enough to identify themselves as the citizens of this country. You definitely want to come here and experience the thrilling aspects of an AMERICANISED LIFE. But traffic management and brand management are the two great aspects of this country and I would definitely write a new letter to you about these as they are really worth talking. You know I have never helped you at home except for the times when you made me do things. But I am rather surprised at the fact that I have become more responsible and organized than I have allowed myself to be. There are a few of my friends who think shopping, partying and earning money is essentially the meaning of a FAIRY TALE like LIFE. Unfortunately its not that I don’t like these but its essential to understand that I have matured into being something different and rather more intellectual and sensitive than this. You know right. I used to read books like “ THE GOAL”, “ POEMS OF AMRITA PRITAM”, “ SHORT STORIES OF ANTON CHEKHOV” when people of my age would read “ THE DA VINCI CODE”, “ FIVE POINT SOMEONE”, “ ONE NIGHT AT THE CALL CENTER” . In fact I consider something being overly popular as stupid. Ya that’s my intellectual ego. You have always told me that we can become what we dream only if we start living it. I started living the TCS dream much before I got into it. I have spent, in fact we have spent all our lives dreaming big mom. That’s probably why what we are even if its little enough. To dream big is to live big. I want to live big intellectual thoughts, great emotional moments, love passionately, think differently, measure success by what you give back to the society and die famous. Don’t blame me for that. You were the one who exposed to intellectual discussions on TV while my friends were watching a HRITHIK ROSHAN performance, you were the one who made me read books which nobody of my age read, you exposed me to classical music, bharatnatyam, tabla when people played cricket. Coming back to the land of America the instinct for success made me to madly apply for technical jobs all throughout the USA , market my resume well and finally land an internship in a company which supplies and manages electricity to the whole of southern California. Ya I know you are happy. I am glad my dad is happy because I have never seen him being proud of me till today. Its essentially because he is a part of the society and would dare not conceptualize something beyond that. This job would essentially realize my materialistic aspects and the commitment of repaying my bank loan. But let me tell you that I will get a PHD degree for myself and become a professor because the job is essentially not mundane. I know this has its own financial constraints. But there is more to this interesting story of mine. I would want to get an MBA degree and probably manage a company of my own later. Now neglecting the society side of it I probably want to make it big in literature and die famous. A ha I know you are so proud of yourself that you have cloned the essential you. But let me tell you AMMA being PUTTU is really difficult. But I would always strive to do that!!!!