Stupid Common Man

'India is my country and all Indians are my brothers and sisters...'

This is the opening line from the school pledge most of us must have repeated umpteen times back in school. Back then, it was just another ritual which was to be performed in the morning assembly.Now I wonder...

Woke up today to the newspapers screaming about the serial blasts in Delhi. Times of India's first line on the article says,'It has become nauseatingly familiar'. I guess that very much explains it. Five blasts over a span of fifteen minutes, and life for hundreds,maybe thousands, would never be the same. 

After every such incident, and there have been quite a few in the recent past, our reactions range from shock, fear, outrage to indifference, in that order. The question is, what next? Is forgetting things and moving on the only way out? Can we, the Stupid Common Man, do something about it?

Saw A Wednesday. And yup, the title's from that movie. Everywhere I go, be it in the office, the malls, on Orkut, I hear many of my friends say that A Wednesday is actually what is required in India today. They may be right. I don't know. It was a movie afterall. 

'We are resilient by force, not by choice', Naseeruddin Shah says in the movie. But is it really so? I mean, all of us, we have been taught to adjust in life. If Ariel is not available, Surf Excel de do. If we don't get admission into engineering, we adjust and take a diploma instead. The point is, we have been taught that adjustment is the only way out. And that I guess is one of the many reasons we have become so resilient. We say to ourselves,'Another blast, OMG, I hope everyone I know is safe', and then we adjust the incident in our memory like some piece of cheap cargo stashed into the corner of a cargo van. We are resilient because we think we do not have any other choice. And people are taking advantage of this mindset of ours. But what these 'people' are  forgetting is that, just like the incident, this cargo is also a bomb, ticking, biding its time...

Anyway, Ganesh Visarjan processions doing the rounds in the city today. Pune is on high alert, owing to the incident in Delhi yesterday. By the way, came to know from Mehul, my flatmate, college mate and one of the few guys who actually love reading newspapers, that the Ganesh Pooja ritual was formally started in India by Bal Gangadhar Tilak as a means to unite Indians during the reign of the Britishers. Nice but strange, isn't it? That a religious ritual like this was used as a tool to unite Indians. Afterall, in present day India, religion is simply modified, mutilated and reduced to the bone of contention for almost all issues concerning the country, political or otherwise. 

Anyway, the question remains unanswered- Can the Stupid Common Man do something? I tried to ask this to myself, but am as unsure and confused as always. Signing off for now.

Weekend..Finally!

Woke up at ten today. What used to be just another day back in college has now acquired a coveted place in all our lives-Weekend! Afterall, unlike college, it's not everyday that you get to wake up at such a leisurely hour, and continue to while away the whole day successfully.
Prepared Khichdi last night. Actually, for those who don't know, there are four of us sharing 'A-701' here in Pune. And since we have so far succeeded in failing to find a cook or a proper tiffinwalla, we decided to take matters into our own hands,literally. Till last fortnight, we actually cooked food at home, and we fared well I guess!
But for the last two weeks,since we had to work from an office located 25kms far from our place, we switched back to Choice, Pune's very own Klassic. The food is reasonably priced, the service is fast, and the food's great. So, as I said, truly Klassic!
Still waiting to get a project. Half of the new joinees have been allotted one, and the rest of us are expected to get one on Monday. There was a sudden rise of tension in most of us, the reason being that there were speculations that few of us would have to relocate to Kolkata for our projects. And then ensued a list of fears and suggestions and consolations and what not. 'Dude,Kolkata is so cluttered','Food there is so cheap','Flats are so cheap,you won't face a problem there','Man,Bong girls!' and so on. But the point remained that after having stayed in Pune for almost three months now, nobody wanted to start from scratch at a new place. But things seem to have cooled down a bit, what with somebody coming up with the news that there are projects lined up in Pune as well, peace seems to be prevailing for now. Lets see..
For all sufi music lovers, there's Bulle Shah from the movie A Wednesday. The song's awesome, and so is the movie. Also, a song I have started loving suddenly is All I Want is You from the movie Juno. Again,beautiful movie as well as the song.
Reading a novel called Bombay Rains,Bombay Girls by Anirban Bose. It's about a medicine student hailing from a small town in Bihar coming to study in Bombay, the city of dreams. Just begun with it, so watch out for a proper review in a few posts.

Ah-Sick Banaya...

Most of you must have guessed what am talking about. Yup people, its Himesss. And he's back, to vasool his Karzzzz. Atleast that's what his new flick is called. By the way, the title of the post, it's from somebody back from college. 

As I see it, last year saw the ultimate dip in the standard of Hindi Music, what with Himesss having arrived with his box of infinite songs, each one almost identical to the other, like penguins. Some people always argue with me that he's actually good. Afterall, his music tops the charts. Point taken, par the point remains that too much of anything is bad. Initially, when he came up with his first movie album in which he lent his voice, people, including me, found it quite ok. But after that, he literally deluged the industry with songs sung by him. 

Also, when we have got fundu people like SEL,Rahman,Vishal-Shekhar, Pritam(his original numbers are actually great), that should ideally leave very less space for Himesss. Anyway, as they say, 'India is a democracy'!!

By the way, talking about SEL, you seriously have got a problem if you haven't listened to Rock On yet. Awesome music. And like SEL puts it, 'It's pure unadulterated rock'. Listen to it, and you'll realise that there's still music left for us to enjoy and get lost in.

Also, there's one album called Ada-A Way of Life by AR Rahman. The movie din't create any waves, and that's why probably the music din't. But listen to Hawa Sun Hawa, and you'll realise what am talking about. 

Anyway, whatever you do or say, Karzzz  will surely create pandemonium, the movie as well as the music. It's like rain, you can't help it. But Gandhiji had long said something which I dearly  hold on to-See no Evil, HEAR NO EVIL, Do no Evil! Ciao