Popcorn, orange juice and the cushions

Now, though totally inconsequential like everything else here, if i dont write about the movies i have watched all this while, it would be erasing one part of my life. For otherwise, i would never remember, after say, another year, when and how i was so moved by mere celluloid. Otherwise i feel, if one doesnt count documentary and propagation dramas, movies can change a man only that much, and no more. So, i have always felt being able to satisfactorily sit through those couple of hours of watching without caring about the world would be the definitive good movie watching experience.

Okay, now i have been awfully jobless for the last few months, and have watched almost all that came out of the Bombay assembly line, and a few classics and contemporaries i felt i can watch. On recollection, now, ones that i liked watching dont feel so great now, and some, which i found sagging in the middle have jigsawed themselves into blisses of solitude. Of course, there have been unforgettable notable others, which have been relished and pondered over and rewatched.

The first of the list would be Star Wars. Mostly, for its nostalgic value. I remember watching the original trilogy way back in the early nineties on a VCR. So, given time and leisure aplenty, i thought i could revisit the old enigma. I realised light sabers havent lost their charm at all, neither have the hyperspeed space travel. My favourite charcter then, Han Solo, remains my favourite character today. However, inasmuch i like Natalie Portman, i must say the later version disappoints me. Not so much in Aniken Skywalker, and Yoda fighting the Dark Lord, but the entire idea of miticlorions which reduced the grandeur of the original trilogy apart from the obvious desecration of the latter. And also maybe, i expected a bit too much, since looking from the binoculars of memory, one is always biased.

Next would be “The Diving Bell and The Butterfly”. I have frankly, in my limited exposure to movies, never seen a more poetic expression in recent times. Also the basic theme of the enduring spirit of life, has, not suprisingly, appealed to me. Though the subtitles i got were bit shoddy at times, the visuals were powerful enough to break through the barriers of language.

“The Lives of Others”. The best closing dialogue of a movie in recent times. In the same vein would come “Casablanca” which after watching, i realised, i felt i should have watched much much before. In the sense, i would have then been in a state to like other movies better. And the quintessential Humphrey Bogart!

Character wise i felt, William Munny from “The Unforgiven” was quite a remarkable one. Especially when one looks compares it other from the same genre, which are plastic to the extent of being cardboard caricatures or even stick figures. Admittedly, i liked Clint Eastwood best in this movie, more than even in “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” or “The Million Dollar Baby”.

I could relate to John Travolta a lot when he played Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever. AS much i like Mithun from Disco Dancer and Dance Dance, i found this one having a much more progressive ending. An ending i could relate to.

Rewatches have been of The Motorcycle Diaries, lots from Khairastomi, Majidi, and Forrest Gump.

Now i feel, i am forgetting a lot others that i have watched. I am sure they must have moved me a lot when i watched them, yet they have totally deserted my memory in a matter of months.

Forgotten Art of Writing Letters

Apologies for the pompous title, but really why can’t I write letters these days. Not emails, beginning with a ‘hi’, and ending with a ‘cheers’ or ‘adios’, with a smattering of unneccesary ellipsis, but the good old fashioned personal letter we learnt to write in school. You might think why do I need to get so sentimental about the old letter, as long as we communicate.

Firstly, and most obviously, i havent been getting a lot of letters these days, in envelopes brought by the postman in the afternoon, or sometimes dropped surreptitously dropped by the doorstep. Yet i am getting more than my share of emails, and reading them, though gives me a lot of happiness (and sometimes misery!), but still is no match for the hand written stuff.  Then again, i cant blame anyone, for i havent written anything with a pen, for the last one year, except just the odd signature here or there. Which is extremely tragic, i feel.

Secondly, i feel the space between sending of a letter and the receiving it is very poignant. It might seem absurd, but thats what i feel. It is the same space where poetry thrives, where lovers pine, where misunderstandings galore, which saves or takes lives. That is so dead, the benefit of doubt.

It is not about time, if you have that in mind. Even when i have lots of time in hand, i have never been able to muster the enthusiasm to pen a letter on a crisp white sheet of paper. It seems anachronistic to such an extent, that one feels that it would be impossible to get a reply, and without a reply it is surely a wastage of effort.

Contrast them to memos, forwards, and sms-es, i mean, all around us, eating us away, almost. And yet, i cant bring myself to believe, it is emails, sms-es or cheap phone calls, that has substituted the letter. Show me the magic of a hand-written letter, with a few penthroughs and a signature at the bottom, postage stampted on three places along the the way, and i will relent. Not otherwise.

An Eliot quote comes to mind, “Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.”

Yet, it is these impressions that we live for, false or not, momentary, notwithstanding.

Should a line be erased, stop me from drawing it, never!

However, truth be told, i am not a good letter writer, and have never written one outside an exam hall. But like all of us like to read them. So much for selfishness, i want it back.

P.S. : A thought for my dad, who sent me 52 letters during the four years of my college, without a single reply from me!

Echoes

Quoting from Advice to Undergraduates and Other Lost Souls, written by John Perry, professor in Stanford’s philosophy department. :

Perry has been known, even counted on, to add welcome twists of levity to dour debates at meetings of the Faculty Senate, and he didn’t disappoint in the quiet setting of the side chapel. Explaining that he had lived his life and organized his talk around four issues, Perry ticked them off to accompanying laughter:

• Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.
• What you care about determines who you are.
• Happiness is the product of the pursuit of your goals and not a reasonable goal in and of itself.
• Size matters.