I'm a rock chick in a hard rock world!

So I've seen MI2 like half a dozen times, but I still get the damndest knots in my stomach when I watch Cruise rock-climbing. How can you not: it's so real, even when you know it's well, not. :P I think I'm one of the very few people who still like him, though. And that's kind of sad. He's still very cool, and let's not forget this. On the other hand, the new The Mentalist ad on Zee Cafe makes me really happy. I cannot find it on youtube, but I did find a Sad Song. 


In updates, I watched Gangs of Wasseypur yesterday. They're right; it's brilliant. It's a celebration of awesome. It's a complete saga, it leaves nothing out, and is very entertaining. Shout out to Sneha Khanwalkar, who's the music director - apparently one of only three female music directors in Bollywood - for a supremely fantastic job. 


I read a biography of Aamir Khan by Christina Daniels called :I'll Do It My Way". It's good; it's short, doesn't linger on controversial things, covers everything and praises him too. But I felt it didn't really justify its title. It doesn't make him out to be as much of a non-conformist genius or an individualistic self-made dude as might be expected from the title. But then he's probably not like that at all. 


Now I'm reading Bertrand Russell. Book is called Marriage and Morals. It's about the change in society from matrilineal to patriarchal and how women's subjugation became necessary to maintain the latter. It's quite informative in the sense of very gently explaining how society changed and how it can be modified. I don't know if the book caused a stir then, but now it seems like a very padded blow. Then again, he was neither a feminist nor an anthropologist. 


Okay now I'm going to listen to Jarrod Radnich on repeat. 


P.S. The title of the post - one of the things that made Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara  so fun. :)

Liberation? From what, I liked this place.

Exams got over today.

Somehow I never have that, 'Oh, exams are over', 'let's go crazy', 'let's party', and the rest of that crap. And hence, right now my friends are at hard rock cafe while I'm writing you this. It's probably because I don't get too stressed about exams in the first place to experience such relief when they end. But then, I like to believe that I'm not of those extreme emotions types.

Nonetheless, I went and watched Shaitan today. Anurag Kashyap, need I say more?
Anyway, so the movie was really cool. Very awesome, very snazzy, very my generation will love it, yours will gawk at us type, is how I described it to my mom. It's got Rajeev Khandelwal as the cop. He's pretty awesome. All the other actors are very good too, Kalki, Shiv and Neil come to mind immediately. It's a little slow, but the speed is not what you shoud watch this for.

The background score is simply splendid. It's an assortment of various artists, including Bhayanak Maut, whose earliest memory I have was through mtv. The camera work is simply awesome; they've used like every technique there is, it's gorgeous. And, like thegirlwithoneheart said (make that repeatedly said), there was so much emphasis on every little detail, it was like every scene looked so untouched and natural, totally unlike movies where plaster casts are on the right arm in one scene, and on the left in the next.

Good movie, watch it.

Oh, and and I'm going home tomorrow. For a whole month and a half. The best part is not having to pack all properly like the outstation people, but still, I have no idea how I got so much stuff in this little room in the first place.

Time for mosquito hunting, turrah.

So be it.

I woke up at 9:30 today, my mother's aim has been fulfilled: it was because of a false alarm that the police were towing away our car (so random!), but I did wake up, and didn't go back to bed. So now I'm fully ready, waiting for 12 o'clock so I can go meet some pals. Like, finally.

Yesterday was a bad day for all us Nadal fans. Very, very bad day. You know, Federer has the style, Federer has the charm, but Nadal is the man who epitomises all that talk of mind over matter, and the power of believing that you can do it. There are countless instances where he picks up shots, or hits shots that you'd never think were possible. Just impossible shots. Just mind-blowing; every single time. It's a common rumour that he plays on two courts when practicing, so he covers double the ground, making a single court look like a kids court. Yesterday also, we saw one man fighting against his illness, fighting against himself, and fighting all the forces that were against him. In the peak heat of Australian summer, he was sweating thrice as much as a normal person, but he continued; he probably knew he was going to lose, but he finished the game nonetheless. Yes, he never going to be second after Rod Laver for his streak of Grand Slams won, but he can surely keep up the number one rank. Kya yaar, aadmi ko aaram se fever hona bhi allowed nahi hota sports mein! :(

Also, I saw The Social Network yesterday. It was a good film, nothing extraordinary though. I also felt that they made Zuckerberg out to be this golden boy, forever cool, never wrong. And Saverin the bad guy. There can easily be made a movie making Saverin look nice and Zuckerberg really pathetic. So I think it wasn't a very neutral film, with emphasis only on the story. Otherwise, pretty decent. And Andrew Garfield is cute, as always.

Anyway, phone calls coming in, friends are arriving, till tomorrow!

Reel-ing

I'm typing this right to left, for no other reason than the fact that it's quite cool. And new. Obviously. There was  this one time when I owned a diary that had the dates and names of months in English and Urdu, and I actually traced those in Urdu and learnt how to write the names of the days of the week and months in Urdu. 

Anyway, so yesterday I saw this Japanese movie called love Letter. Utv WorldMovies is quite cool, yes. It was, a very, very beautiful movie. It was about this woman in one town of Japan whose fiance dies while mountaineering. His name was Fujii Itsuki. Now while going through his junior high yearbook she sees his address in another part of Japan and just out of impulse, mails a letter there. What she doesn't expect, however, is a reply. So continuing the correspondence, she finds out that that Fujii Itsuki is a classmate of her fiance. Curious, she asks the other Fujii, who's a girl, to share all her memories of junior high with her. Fujii does that, and the memories turn out to be a little unpleasant as the boy Fujii was quite unfriendly and queer. Hiroko, the fiancee asks Fujii if there ever was a romantic relationship between them. Fujii denies it saying that the same names actually caused them a lot of problems, making them the centre of a lot of jokes by their classmates.

Eventually, Fujii starts remembering more and more about her junior high years and starts seeing her classmate in a new light. Ultimately a lot of incidents and discoveries make it apparent to her that Fujii actually liked her. This gives Hiroko the impression that Fujii proposed to her because she physically resembled his classmate. She thinks that the love at first sight wasn't really love at 'first sight' for him. She doesn't get upset though. What happens is that both the women, through the correspondence, fall in love with Fujii Itsuki, a dead man. 

In the end, Hiroko pretty much rejects a friend of Fujii's, who's interested in her. And the movie ends with nothing definite. It was a really gorgeous, abstract, artsy film, with a lot of places where the viewer's interpretation fills the gaps. This reminds me of a lot of people's reactions to Dhobi Ghat; the whole unclear, vague thing. I find it quite interesting how different people, based on their personalities, experiences and temperaments can attribute wholly different meanings to simple incidents. It's the true meaning of art to be able to be interpreted in diverse ways; poetry, paintings, instrumental music, there are so many examples. Let's hope Indian cinema also becomes more like that, and less rigid in its story-telling. 

Lastly, I can't WAIT for Kiran Rao to make a movie on Delhi. Lol. 

Aaj ki Khabar

Played Brainvita/Peg today. Four rounds. Pegs left:
4
3
3
3 respectively.


Listening to 'The way I loved you' - Taylor Swift. Nice-ish. Very energetic for Swift though.


Apart from that, I'm listening to a whole lot of Western classical music - Piano, Cello, Violin, Clarinet etc.
Fun stuff, when you come to think about it.


You're so in love that you act insane
And that's the way I loved you


And I never knew I could feel that much
And that's the way I loved you


Nice!


I realised day before that when Sid (of Wake Up Sid) says 'Usne teri khuddari ko lalkara hai! Be a man!', it actually a copy of Akash's dialogues from Dil Chahta Hai. Yes, so now you know I have nothing to do ;)


Anyway, So DU admission forms are available now. And I'm not going to be one of those standing in long queues in the searing heat. My mom suggested I should exchange board marks with somebody; cos I need over 50%  only, but that someone may need a lot more. Very benevolent. But not possible.


Today's weather is kind of funny. Since midnight there's this kind of stormish sky, with great noisy winds and also thundering noises. At least its possible now to go out of the house. So no complaints. 


29th is right here now. Tomorrow is to us as wednesday was to aspiring IIT-ians: result time. Let's see what happens. 


Then to Pune on 31st. Yay.

Now

Hello

So yes I got a site yesterday. And yes, I was excited. And yes, I was disappointed. There are no good widgets; you have useless stuff like weather and all. I mean come on who goes to someone's site to check the weather? Although this factor did not stop me from adding it :P

The interface is so un-user-friendly I don't even feel like updating it. I wish blogspot would offer sites. They are so clear in their designs; wordpress (god knows how its so popular) is so messed up.

Anyway, enough complaining for one post.

I watched Zubeidaa yesterday. For those of you who don't know, its an old Karisma Kapoor movie set around partition but not actually on it. Its about this Muslim girl who gets divorced by her husband because their fathers have an altercation. Silly? Definitely. Sad thing is, women throughout our civilisation have put up with such nonsense. And they refuse to support women who want to fight against dogma. Its like crabs who pull each other down to prevent them from getting out of the jar.

Anyhow she then falls in love with this king played by Manoj Bajpai, whom she later marries. So she's this girl who's voluble and beautiful and extremely temperamental because of which she feels like a chained bird in a cage with bars of royal customs and propriety and rules of conduct. When I had seen it as a kid, I'd perceived her to be the good girl and Bajpai's first wife (Mandira Devi) to be the bad woman. But yesterday, since I have grown up and I realise how some conventions need to be followed and how its harder to be disciplined than not, I saw Mandira Devi as the good one who has to put up with the rebellious and moody Zubeidaa; who in turn appeared to me to be without any sense or stability or any real, strong character. She was stubborn, volatile, selfish, and without insight or restraint. Funny how our perception changes over the years!

Its like this line in a song she performs in the movie:
Pagli hawayein mujhe jahaan bhi le jaye 
In hawaon ki saheli hoon main

Being like this might seem cool initially, but if one's nature were really like this, it would be a nightmare for everyone around, I think. By the way, there's a beautiful song called so gaye in the movie with awesome music. Do listen.

Movies like this and Pinjar are so beautiful and emotional that they leave you with this sadness which stays and gets aroused whenever you recall them.

Changing topic, I hate summers. Enough said.