Is there a bigger paradox in life than love? Even the mere question of whether one is in love can send convulsions through the soul. I go into the superlative because figuring out the difference between infatuation and love might seem as confusing as relativity, or as simple. The issue being, the start of both always seems agape. Of course, its an insult to one if his love is considered hollow, noone consequently accepts that its not love after all. “Infatuation is for the ones with less integrity, foolish”, say the great.

Accusations of being gullible in love are aplenty against many. However one may glorify the self as unique, another soul to be lost into is utopia. In this age of countless influences and self-reflections, the concept of unselfish, unbridled passion is panacea to everyone’s incomplete existence. The more one reads, or experiences extraordinaire like cinema, the concept of love seems the path to shangri-la. Then, in such light, do these accusations mean anything or is it just an inability of some to comprehend the breadth of the overly imaginative?

Does love withstand the test of time? … or whether its just familiarity that breeds contempt? Some say, many women are storgic lovers, where the strength of love is proportional to the familiarity between the two. Seems alluring on first thought, but then you wonder about the changes one goes through over the years. A theist becomes the loyal opposition. A romantic becomes a realist. Passions erode away under the winds of circumstances, and laziness. Whether one appreciates the mirror soul years later is obviously dependent upon whether it has been a process of self-improvement, in which case, you might lose the feeling; or in the contrary, the partner. So, one wonders whether stagnancy is the true essence and meaning of love, where both have come to a conclusion that they’re perfect, or whether they’re so inherently incapable of any such introspection at all. Hence, one might hypothesize that true love, rather, endless love, is a forte of either the saints or the intellectually challenged.

For the rest, the vast expanse that love might bring, might merely sound a trite after a while …

There are days … then there are nights. Then there are days when you feel life is so beautiful, everything seems to be going your way, you don’t crash your car, you don’t spill your morning coffee, you don’t screw up the build tree by your elusive ingenuity. Then there days when life seems so miserable, that you wish you’d be dead. I mean literally, not physically, I’m not dumb ! Days when you feel the universe has been bored of expanding and has finally decided to screw your brains until they splatter on the nearby ceiling. Today is one of those days, one where no human being but me can hold on to dear life, where life seems a trife, without a wife, with a knife, like a movie with Saif. I lost 80 cents today, to a lame vending machine. I feel like crying, but dying seems a better option, so I’m not crying.

Since I don’t have better things to talk about, let me undigress. Evenings are usually very painful for me. After the whole day of introspection and retrospection, and a little bit of code destruction, I feel very tired and badly yearn for a snack. After an hour of googling about how many cents make 80 cents, I decided to take the risk of trusting the vending machine nearby. I don’t usually trust people, but I was in a good mood today. My productivity during the day, in layman’s terms equated to 0, the first time in many years it didn’t go in the negative. So, I was quite jovial. Singing along a Beatles song like the Beatles would never dare to sing, I put in my hard earned money into the vending machine. Only to find out that the two ruffles lays were busy conceiving more chips. They were stuck! I had never seen a more glorious, yet painfully morbid sight in my life. I tried everything. Brute force, Delicate force, Dialogue, Monologue, Telekinesis … everything. After realizing that people were busy dialing 911 informing of some suspicious activity, I decided to go to my cube, be unselfish as I always am and call 911 too. I don’t really know what happened of that though.

So, I sit here, in my cube, alone, depressed, pondering about what could have been. These are the incidents, which make you look at life from a different perspective and appreciate how beautiful life is, of other people.
Forrest Bubblegum used to say: “My momma used to say, life is like a box of chocolates, but a vending machine is like a box of Lays”.

On that philosophical note, see you earlier …

Ok, so I had to do this. I would’ve loved to have killed Priyadarshan after seeing this movie. Anyways, I wrote this review for timesofindia.com in the ‘readers review’ section, and after 2 days of waiting and it never turning up on the website, I decided to put it here, with a wider audience base. Since it was for people reading reviews to decide whether they wanted to see the movie and not for people who don’t have much work to do and love critiquing movies, I tried to keep it short and simple, wasn’t too difficult for me. I guess, keeping the comparisons off the mallu movie was the most difficult task I’ve done in the last 24 years, in any case, I didn’t succeed .

bhool bhulaiya ka review

The biggest mistake you can commit before watching this movie is go with the Malayalam movie (Manichitratazhu) in your mind. If you keep that aside, it is not a bad movie, in fact, has an interesting storyline and contains more than a few good laughs.

If people are saying that this film was marketed as a laugh-riot, I’d say either the people are lying or the director just went plain crazy. The laughs in the movie have its place, but the movie is certainly a drama, and any movie-goer would certainly decipher that during the 2.5 hours. The script is interesting in that it deviates from the usual ghost stuff, and enters into a psychological realm, something that has been rarely explored in Hindi cinema.

The cinematography captures the essence of the movie and the ambience quite well: the haveli and the backdrop of the town has been shown quite beautifully, and to good effect. Nothing much to run home about the dialogues, simply because most often than not are just effective translations from the Malayalam version. Again, this doesn’t mean they don’t serve their purpose to the first-time viewer.

Since I cannot be completely indifferent to the original version, and comparisons are inevitable; the direction here was quite appalling. The only good that could be taken out would be the recreation of the set and the Hindi-fication of the scenario in hand. Apart from that, every scene is copied, essentially rendering no original screenplay in this version whatsoever. The laughs are completely attributed to the original version, and whenever the director has tried to improvise, he has failed miserably leaving a “huh?” expression on the audience. There have been obvious holes, like showing the king to be young rather than old ( when the opposite was mentioned in the start of the movie ). And so on …

Vidya Balan has done a good job, certainly the best of the lot. Shiney Ahuja has overacted wonderfully. Paresh Rawal is too good to do anything bad in such a simple role. Akshay Kumar was good in the funny parts, and funny in the serious parts. Vikram Gokhale’s casting was very intelligent, although he doesn’t have a large part in the movie.

Having said everything, the movie is still a decent watch. For people who’re watching it the first time, I’m sure it’ll be a good experience. For people watching it after the Malayalam version, it might still be an interesting experience, albeit for other reasons.

Being the alpha male that I am, everybody expects me to do everything that a successful man does, but only better. Driving is something that has been traditionally and chauvinistically assigned to be a male dominated activity. All you gorgeous girls reading my widely-read blog, don’t get offended, this is just a popular opinion, and I’m obviously not supposed to be responsible for what is written on my blog ! Oh and, I don’t mean driving your life, we suck at that (and I can better the normal man there too), I mean driving a car.

However, I never cease to spring surprises at mortals, and in this case, it is certainly an unpleasant one. I hate driving. There, I said it. I hate driving. There, I said it again. I hate driving. There I said it again twice. Ummm, Math is another thing I’m bad at. Anyways …

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a seasoned driver. I have driven in all seasons but rain, winter, autumn and spring. If you see me in the driver seat, you’ll never have felt safer – if you’re outside the car, far far away from mine. If you decide to race me, I’m sure that won’t last long either, because I’d soon make you go on a 90 degree detour to hell. I’m an extremely safe driver, I never drive without proper ‘protection’, seatbelts et al. Inspite of all these qualities, I still hate driving.

So, my tryst with driving has been very interesting. Forget about the time I drove in India, because even I’ve forgotten about it; it was quite insignificant. Driving tests in the US have been commonplace for me, I’ve tried to give it twice, both times have been sent back because of lack of documentation. I would like to point out to the audience that this has nothing to do with my driving abilities. Going by the ‘law of addition and multiplication’, one can only hypothesize as to how many times I would actually have to give the driving test ( once I’m allowed to i.e ) to get the damn license. Ofcourse, I have to get time out of my busy schedule of doing nothing to actually go there and attempt, but hey, as I said, I’m a busy man..

So, my first driving accident was really serious. I was flung about a hundred feet over the ground, through the roof, and incredibly enough, landed right back on my seat. I was safe, except that I grew an extra leg. The other time, I was parking like a genius, so much so that I didn’t hear the slight scratch on the front right bumper. The scratch was only slight, the damage on the bumper was serious though. I returned that car and got a Chevy, which was brand new, if I would have got it about 20 years back. The latest one was one where this young girl was so smitten by me that her legs froze and she crashed onto my front right bumper. I don’t know what’s the deal with front right bumpers, thank heavens I don’t have one. Ofcourse, I handled it all with my usual charm and calm, only that I noticed prominent wrinkles across my forehead, and a zillion white hairs the next day in the mirror.

And after all this, incredibly enough, I still hate driving. Every time I sit in the driver seat, I feel that this might be my last day in this car. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I meant if I buy my own car that very day. Every time a car whizzes past me, I wonder whether the driver is intelligent enough to notice my towering persona and crash onto me. Even today morning, when it was raining very heavily ( I mean real heavy people, it was pouring cats and bitches everywhere ! ), I still decided to take my car to office. Only, I didn’t. And decided to rather rely on Urmila to drop me. I mean, I didn’t wimp out or anything, I just wondered whether its better to crash with a friend than crash alone. Its just intelligent thinking, if you think real hard and not burn yourself out …

Now I’m at the crossroads in my life, a very important phase. More about that later. Less importantly, I have to decide about buying a car. I had very minimalistic ideas about the same. You know, get a mustang, be happy and move on with life. On careful examination of my complex chaotic mind, I’ve come to a conclusion that maybe I shouldn’t have such measly dreams after all. Bah, what’s in a Mustang, except for a muscular car, which guarantees thrills and chills. I’d rather go for a second or a third hand Honda, which will make me feel more with the crowd. I’ll gel better, my hair will look better because of the gel, and I’ll have a more holistic experience.

I’ve also begun to realize that public transportation is very important in my life. Why would anyone drive a car, when you can save so much petrol and horses by traveling via public transport. Ofcourse, Austin has an incredible transportation network. It looks as complex as the ARPANET. So, here I am, stuck with the difficult decision of buying a car, and living with the perils of everyday driving …