People!
I’ve just updated my page with a reviews section. It’s just below the archives to your right.
The latest addition to my reviews is the movie Naach, which I hear has been strongly recommended for school children by the All India Anatomy Teachers Association. [lol]
Check it out. Hope to add links to some of my old columns and interviews soon.
🙂
Well, it was just one of those phases in life when just too many things happened at the same time.
First a quiet Diwali at home (woke up at 3 p.m.) and then Boom! A party at a friend’s place, then a coupla weddings and allied ceremonies, two friends visiting from out of town, another coming back after a long break, a coupla movies – Naach and Aitraaz – that had to be reviewed, then a whole bunch of meetings – social and official, interviews — namely, one where I met Abhishek Bachchan and another, where I was interviewed by Ananda Vikatan.
Add to this, drama in a police station. I created quite a scene last evening after I caught a cop taking a 100 buck-bribe when I approached him to complain about him towing my bike away from a Parking Zone!
Well, either nothing happens or everything happens at the same time that suddenly you don’t have time for the smallest of things — like blogging or filling air in the tyres of the bike or giving it for service or paying the telephone bill or just replying to emails or a haircut!
Is the world getting busier by the day?
Like, today I tried going for a haircut… I figured I had an hour free this afternoon, I had the money and I was in a mood to experiment.
Mission: Hair-cut.
What’s the hype about?
To get a hair-cut at Bounce…
Bounce, where a haircut costs Rs.250 plus tax, colouring costs Rs.400 plus tax. So after a lot of thinking, I decided I was going to do it finally.
Find out what all the hype about a luxury salon is all about. Can a hairstylist really transform you into one of those characters that walked straight out of Dil Chahta Hai? For someone who looks like a slimmer, thinner version of Manish Malhotra, I decided it was time to be get a dose of the ‘cool’ and finally get done with the thalaikku melai velai (the job over my head!)
So, I tell my boss, set off during lunch. I go to the ATM, withdraw money, ride into Ispahani Centre, feel like a stud…
Finally, I was gonna get a cool, funky haircut at the high profile Bounce place!
I could feel it.
Positive energy.
The excitement of a schoolboy.
A great song playing in the head (Tom Petty, Free Fallin’) .
I was feeling good. In fact, great.
As the song in the head continues, I stroll into what looked like a salon straight out of the movie ‘Everybody Says I’m Fine.’
Awrite, I see a doll of a receptionist with coloured hair and all, looking at me as I walk over to say in the most polished tone I can come up with:
“I would like to have a haircut.”
“Do you have an appointment, Sir?” she asks. The song in the head stops.
Ah! Appointment? “No.”
“One moment, Sir,” she says as she pretends to browse through an already full time-table.
“I’m afraid, we don’t have an appointment now, sir.”
“Oh, okay. When can I have an appointment?”
“3.30”
3.30 was when I had something else to do, like, join my friends and face the journo who was coming from Ananda Vikatan to interview us on “Whether a boy and a girl could be just friends.”
So, I try to sound important and tell her, “Well, I got something else lined up at 3.30. What other time can you give me?”
Once again, she pretends to go over her already-filled columns and says: “Well, this is the only slot we have today, Sir”
Oh! But you know, you just can’t walk out of a place you walked so confidently into, that soon right? So, I thought I’ll just check out their rates. I could see that bright yellow printed folder on her desk.
So I say: “Can I have a look at the menu?” (sic!)
“You mean the tariff, sir,” she said, as I wished I was dead right there, right then.
“Well, yeah, tariff sorry,” I said, quite embarassed at the faux paus, and stared at the rates mentioned against complete jargon I could not understand.
“Well, I want to get my hair cut and coloured. So which section do I look into.”
And she explains it to me. It all sounded cool. For a bit I think of postponing by meeting with friends by 15 minutes, so I say: “So, well, I think I’ll take the 3.30 appointment.”
“But that’s only for the hair-cut Sir. We don’t have a slot for hair colouring.” I just take their business card and ask: “Can I call in the morning to fix an appointment for tomorrow?”
She finally seemed to be happy that I was getting the hang of things there.
Three hours at the interview later, I walk into office, freshen up in the loo, put a little water on my hair and just let it fall all over my forehead with the wet look. I meet a friend in the corridor and say: “Hi”
“Well, you’re looking different,” she says.
“So, is it good?”
“Yeah, it’s nice… He’s gelled it too. Bounce is a good place. Dil Chahta Hai was all about the hair-gel!”
“How much did you pay for it?”
“450 bucks.”
“Wow. Cool. It’s nice.”
Hmmm! Well, time to quit my job now and start something like Bounce.
Or maybe just buy hair-gel!
Let there be light.
And no sound.
However, for those going to watch my favourite Captain’s ‘Neranja Manasu,’ let there be sound!
*Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaptaaaaaaaaaaaaain, Vaaaaaaaaaaaazhga*
*whistle whistle*
To quote my friend Cary, “Have a blast, don’t be a part of it!”
The movies we like to watch often reflect our morals.
At least, I think so.
Considering how violent I’ve felt after watching movies like Natural Born Killers, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, I’m glad I wasn’t brought up on a staple diet of movies like that.
Like many other Indians, I was brought up on a diet of Hindi films, for a major part of my life and upbringing. Yeah, it’s a chicken and egg story if you consider that films only reflect the morals of the society and the society follows morals from the films.
Not just films, even TV actually.
Thankfully, I was born in an era which has witnessed both the worlds — the holy world of Doordarshan and the globalised world post the cable and satellite revolution. Thanks to that, I know what we WERE, before we started believing that the guys in Friends lived no differently than us.
To test this theory, I considered a sample of people who grew up watching just cable TV alone… that would be people who are now 14-18. I’m seriously concerned about these guys. For they have grown up on American morals — Friends, Britney Spears, American Pie and hajaar other films and serials where sex is only the natural progression from dessert during a night out with a person of the opposite sex… at 16, do they know what they are doing?
Before you miss my point, let me clarify that I have no issues with consenting adults sleeping together, knowing exactly what they are doing and yes, as long as they are keeping it safe if you get what I mean. Yeah, like using a condom.
Keeping it safe is the last thing in the mind of someone who is 14 or 16 or 18 or even 20 in some cases. Check out the crowd at Bike and Barrel on Saturday nights and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Of course, thanks to the police crackdown, now they insist on ID cards before letting people in. But I think the damage had already been done. The young had already been introduced to alcohol, and now if one door’s closed, they are capable of finding another space (probably more private) to get together.
There are a few changes in the American society and the Indian which is why the morals from America cannot be applied here. The American society is a product of dysfunctional families, wrecked homes and peer pressure. The Indian society is still family-based protective and protected unit. If premarital sex is common in America, so is sex education and the quintessential free spirit. In India, sex means more than just an exchange of body fluids for pleasure. It’s a stronger bond that has to do with commitment and emotional dependency. Yes, there’s plenty of sex education happening in India, you may argue. True, there is. But how many people in the age group of 14-20 actually keep a pack of condoms in their pants? How many of these people actually have the courage to go to the corner store and ask for rubber?
But I’m digressing.
American films are the way they are, because of the lifestyle and the aspirational lifestyle the Americans have. Hollywood is steeped in American morals just like how Bollywood is soaked in Indian morals.
For example: Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge is reflective of the morals of the nineties when Shah Rukh Khan changes a drunk Kajol’s dress and only jokes about sleeping with her and explains to her saying: Ek Hindustani ladka hoke main ek hindustani ladki ka dil kaisey tod sakta hoon! (How can I being an Indian boy break an Indian girl’s heart?)
And the popularity of a movie like Hum Tum suggests that it is reflective of the existing morals when again, a drunk Saif Ali Khan sleeps with Rani Mukherjee who does not regret it the next morning because she knows it was not just sex. It was about two mature adults making love. Our society sure seems to be changing, so are the morals and so are the movies.
Morals are a little complicated to understand when you’re still the rebellious adolescent, which is why I have a problem with the young who have grown up watching just American programming and blindly follow the lifestyle. I’m not really worried about the erosion of culture or protective of it for culture is indeed a changing set of rites and rituals. But yes, I think age has a big role to play when it comes to comprehension of what morals are really all about.
Which is why I think parenting in the 2000s is going to be one hell of a challenge. The movies and TV programming that your child is brought up on are going to define what morals he/she inculcates. Because today, media and movies influence children more than parents do.
Coming up next. My take on parenting for the 2000s. He He!
Two absolutely wonderful people have started blogging of late.
One is a seventeen year old architect/journalist in the making.
She recently made a wonderful post about good old DD. Makes for very interesting reading considering the era we live in — scores of TV channels, conditional access system, DTH, pay per view and other things waiting to hit on your idiot box… Lets encourage this young blogger who has been pretty regular despite her daily college routine which as engineering students would understand is like going to a faraway picnic spot where you have long boring classes.
And the other is my paaji, the dashing dynamic dynamite of a pornstar in the making.
He’s a copywriter by profession, a babe magnet by confession … At times corny, always horny … with this hot gaai around, you search for cool dude ends here!
Btw, if any of you out there want me to add links to your site on my blog, all you have to do is ask. I no longer add people without their consent, cuz I understand some people would want their privacy. So just drop in a line and I’ll put you on Suderman’s web!
Cheers!
I finally watched 7/G Rainbow Colony.
It’s a very good movie that surely strikes a chord. It’s very realistic. It connects instantly with the heart. One small problem. It has the wrong morals. Which is why it is a wrong film. Which is why it should have never been made! Before you head for my throat, read on…
There is nothing heroic about the hero… an ordinary middle-class boy next door who does not have any super talent he can boast off. When he likes a girl or thinks he’s in love with the girl, he follows her, he pursues her, tortures her, stalks her, and even sneaks into her window when she’s about to take her T-shirt off… He has no self-esteem even after she slaps him, asks him why he’s begging for her love… He chases her like the Hutch dog…
And finally, the girl gives in!!!???
Come on, Selvaraghavan… do you know what you just did?? You’ve just given all those millions of people in the state HOPE. You’ve given them reason to tease, chase, torture, stalk and pursue a girl, who has no interest, no end, out of the sheer hope that one day she will see your love. Watch the movie and think if you’d like anyone do that to your sister, if you had one. I would kill the bastard! And not sympathise with him.
If you love someone, don’t force yourself on them. Give them their space.
Have some self-respect and have the girl love you for what you are. Think of the consequences of a relationship born out of begging and pleading. Are you ready to continue living with that equation… a master-slave equation? What was Selvaraghavan thinking?
If 7/G was a bad movie, I wouldn’t be complaining cuz people would be able to see through the indulgence of the director while making his autobiography. But here, the guy has made it sooo damn realistically, incorporating every possible thing an average Joe would do to woo the girl and in a way made the people in the audience believe that there is hope for them. If he’s trying to say that ugly losers like Ravi Krishna could bed a girl like Sonia Agarwal by the end, by just chasing the woman no end, it is a very scary proposition considering the impact a powerful film has on society. 7/G is a more than powerful, brilliant film that has raw appeal.
And our society is rich with these middle class lovestruck road romeos who follow women without realising that today’s laws consider this as sexual harassment. One movie like 7/G would make these road romeos believe that they are heroes. One movie like 7/G could give them the courage to chase any pretty woman on the road and continue even after the drubbing they might receive in the process. One movie like 7/G could change a road romeo into a psycho obsessed stalker.
Which is why it is a dangerous film. A wrong film.
Our country isn’t ready to handle realistic cinema yet. Simply, cuz people absorb morals from every film, and sometimes the wrong ones cuz they think they are real.
True, our cinema reflects our morals. But the morals from 7/G aren’t the ones we want our society to have.
I woke up yesterday with this theory on dreams. And I thought I must blog it before I forget. Cuz dreams have very very short term memory spans. So short, that most of us don’t remember what we really dreamt. We don’t remember faces or locations…
I have always been curious and fascinated about how and why dreams happen. Explanations like Extra-sensory perception and the magic of the supernatural have always failed to convinced me. But last morning, I think I came up with a theory which at least I’m convinced about.
At least, it’s a little scientific.
Brief Background: About four years ago, I attended this workshop on Creativity and Brand building when this gentleman from South Africa explained to the audience on how brand recall works and how the brain functions.
The brain, he said, is like a supercomputer with millions, or probably billions and billions of neurons, which are like files which hold information. Each thought and each idea is stored in one neuron. So our supercomputer is soooo smart that it sorts, analyzes and groups similar information and bunches the neurons together… So everytime I hear Coke, the brain sends signals to those bunch of neurons which already have information on Coke… So, it’s like this big folder called Coke and this folder has different folders depending on nature of information received… There could be this folder with a label Coke is Good, under which all information, thoughts, experiences that you may have had or heard is stored… You probably remember that bottle sipped in scorching heat and felt refreshed as a significant memory… big file size… maybe high resolution picture if you remember clearly… And there could be this folder with a label Coke is Bad.. where you have all negative experiences, information, thoughts pertaining to Coke… pesticides, Pepsi’s new cool commercials which make Coke’s commercials look substandard, Coke as an abbreviation for Cocaine and similar thoughts…
There’s a similar folder for Pepsi too with good and bad information stored depending on your experiences, information which you have heard or read… So when you are at the point of ordering a softdrink, you’re brain at a subconscious level makes that choice for you, whether you say Coke or whether you say Pepsi, purely depending on which is a dominant file size in your memory and which has given you more pleasant experiences or which you think will give you a pleasant experience. Sometimes, a chilled bottle of Coke kept right in front of you or a picture of it, might make you utter Coke even if you had a dominant Pepsi folder cuz this present memory of seeing the chilled bottle and your impending thirst immediately form a high resolution pic that makes Coke the more dominant file.
Which is why a point of sale wall hanging and posters are such a significant tool for marketers…
So what does this theory on brand recall have to do with dreams?
Well, the file logic… We all have separate folders for everything we’ve heard and every person we’ve met and every experience we’ve had. We have folders of neurons for our worst fears, darkest deeds, wildest fantasies… things we want to do, things we don’t want to do, things we want, things we don’t want, people we want to meet, people we don’t want to meet and so on.
Now, some of these are small files cuz you have not had similar neurons grouping up to form a big chunk… so that’s the subconscious. Every night when we go to sleep, the body goes a shutdown process when it relaxes you, it rebuilds tissue and does maintenance work, basically.
So in this process of cleaning up stray neurons which aren’t grouped, the brain flushes out random information and most of the time the brain before throwing away stray information, sees if it can group it with any of our immediate concerns or fears or wants or people we care about. Sometimes these stray neurons are about perfect strangers, which is why we don’t have adequate information on wat they look like, or what location the dream took place… its a low resolution image, small file size neuron… Which is why we see the things we see.
And when the neurons get flushed out of the system, we forget it totally. Sometimes, the brain sorts it out and decides the information is important, depending on how you react to it when shown to you in your dream… it’s the brain’s way of asking… should I keep this file or dispose it. If it isn’t important to you, you don’t react even when you sleep. If it is, you react… if it’s horrible, you move in your sleep… if it’s really bad, you wake up… if it is good, you smile… if it appeals to your sexual urges, you… you know what! he he!
Well, it’s convincing to me. So I thought I’ll share it with you people out here.
Okay, more on this later!
Cheers!
This one goes out to all those dumbf***s (male, obviously) who think it’s damn cute to call you after a long long time and say: Guess who? I mean I just got the call and since I couldn’t fake the excitement or have the patience to play the guessing game, I hung up and didn’t take the call!
Haven’t you all heard this before?
I really don’t mind playing dumb if it’s a woman on the other end cuz at the end of the day, for she might be some hot babe from the past I could now have some luck with. You know I could pretend that a telephone is actually a television and start guessing names with no luck and later try and sound surprised and say: Hey, what a pleasant surprise… how aaaaaare you? Looooong time! It’s soooooo wonderful to hear you again!
But Men? Huh? Guys, come on, if you really know me, you’d know I’m not the kind who gets excited about mysterious young male callers. If we haven’t been in touch, it’s cuz I don’t really want to, dude, or you maybe you really don’t. Then, what’s all this sudden new found sense of friendship about?
With guys, what I really want to say when I hear that trying-to-be-cute and mysterious voice saying “Guezzzz Whoooo?” is:
“My ass. Cuz that is what makes noise like what I’m hearing right now. So if you want to stop sounding like my ass, identify yourself now.”
Oh, I just got the call again.
It was my ol’ Prof! Ooops!
Post Script:
The last line, of course, was fiction cuz this story needed a punchline! He he!
This is relevant to a post I made on my movie site recently.
Most of our movies revolve around this.
It happens to most of us. And different people call it by different names. But each word stands for something and is perceived differently by different people.
So here’s my take.
When boy meets girl, there’s different things that happen…
It is kinda tough to label and sorta bracket them with strict definitions, but here’s an attempt…
Lust: When your BODY says go for it, just do it and nothing else matters.
In some parts of the world, this phenomenon is also called Love at first sight… he he!
Infatuation: When your HEART says go for it but MIND says otherwise.
Platonic: When your SOUL falls for it, but BODY plays spoilsport.
(I remember a definition of platonic that goes: the interval between the first meeting and the first kiss)
Arranged relationship (the arranged marriage phenomenon): When your MIND says you can make it work, it’s just perfect and this is the person!
Love: When your HEART, MIND, BODY and SOUL realises and agrees that you are happy just being with this person!
Crush: When something about the person appeals to either your HEART, MIND, BODY or SOUL but you don’t want to do anything about it.
But again, these are just definitions, labels or just words…
Think about that first feeling you got when you were in school, when you were attracted towards a girl/boy for the first time in your life. That to me, is pure unadulterated love. Because, it was unconditional. There was no criteria or thinking behind it all. It was just love.
As we grow older, we start adding the criteria with the pretext of maturity. We give it names and definitions as I have just done.
At the end of the day, it’s just about time and space. The more time and space you spend with one person, the more likely that you are going to be more attached to them and at some point, even fall in love. It’s very scientific at some level. Which is why arranged marriages in India WORK. Two people who spend a lot of time and space together, discover each other and learn to live unconditionally, in spite of what the other person actually is, as he/she is and for what he/she is… even if its ugly, fat, lazy, stupid, evil or exact opposite of what you really wanted in the first place.
It is the will that matters. The resolve. Determination. Add Understanding each other to that and any two people in this world can live with each other. Love is that unconditional being-there-for-the-other element which keeps people together. Which is why best friends make great life partners and great life partners make best friends.
I wudn’t say I’m totally accurate about these observations and it differs from person to person… but yeah, this is wat I think!
So cheers people!
L:)tsa L:)ve,
(Yes, my heart, mind, body and soul is happy to be here)
Your friendly neighbourhood Suderman!
People!
I don’t feel like blogging today. I’m having a great time rolling on the floor laughing, reading this. And I’ve just read a few links…
There was this one on the importance of beating kids. Really had me in splits.
Then another that made fun of my favourite sci-fi movie. Matrix. I loved that too! This guy is just too good!
Then I read this one on things that piss him about women. I partly agree.
It’s really irreverent, always politically wrong and yet makes sense. Almost.
🙂
So since I’m not blogging today, thought I’ll recommend this 26-year-old’s page.
Enjoy.
Warning: Not suitable for women and children. Keep out of reach.
