Watched Modern Love Hyderabad 2 weekends back and was totally floored by the whole series. What rich tapestry of human emotions and hues of relationship delicately and heart warmingly woven into a tale of ordinary humans going about their ordinary lives yet standing out due to a unifying emotions tying them all together - Love....
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Thursday, July 28, 2022
Modern Love Hyderabad Review
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
Half Lives
Shuttling between office and home,
shouldering the personal and professional,
one wonders if one is not leading a half life...
Leaving small cities with eyes full of dreams
and a resolution in the heart to make life fulfilling...
Fulfilling those dreams to settle in city of dreams,
yet looking back at the small city left behind…
the nostalgic memory and few places which seems to be frozen in history
as if waiting for you to return to once again embrace it...
A waft of morning breeze, a smattering of familiar smells,
bringing back suddenly waves of long past memories
deepening the feeling of half lives being led...
A promise of solidarity,
of being there with one's own loved ones
being relegated to the background in view of " life's priorities"
A journey which began in making the life full
now appears to be falling somewhere short,
showing the meaningless pursuit and mirages once chased...
I come to my balcony, looking at my piece of blue expanse
that I pay handsomely to get a
view,
I hear the sudden catching of breath from my adjacent balcony...
Looking at my neighbour's balcony,
I see a reflection of me staring right back at me
with the same journey and question in his eye –
" have we all lived and continue to live half lives?"...
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
The Migrant Worker
"Donon ka ik hi rasta hai
Donon jalti tapti sadak par
Suraj ki garmi se pighalte
Nange paanv
Apne thhake kandhon par
Apni bhookh aur pyas ki gatthri lekar
Jaane kitni sadiyon se yun hi chalte hain" (Javed Akhtar)
Both on the hot burning road
Melting in the scorching sun
Barefoot
On their tired shoulders
Carrying their luggage of hunger and thirst
Don’t know for how many centuries
They have been walking like this" (Javed Akhtar)
The Covid19 lockdown was declared in the country on 24th March, 2020
leading to the massive mass migration of the migrant workers across the country
walking back home thus evoking multitude of emotions. Well my post is not an
analysis of the mass migration, the utter chaos and bad planning behind it. May
be that is a topic for some other time.
And that person is me...
While the migrant workers mentioned here are at a basic subsistence level,
one may argue on how do I identify myself with them? While I may be better
paid many times over as compared to the workers in question, the other criteria that defines them also defines me.
Hence the migrant worker, sadly, will always be a migrant worker - in search of his identity in a city which considers him an alien and which he equally considers as a foreign place, never adopting each other, never comfortable with each other and never belonging to each other... '
So the spirit of the migrant worker floats around eternally unable to
find a place which he can call home and missing the era long gone by where he
belonged, mattered and cared for.... Continuously searching for it in the
earthy smell of the moist earth after the first rain, random smell of food
wafting through the air or in the games kids play on the
wayside...Reminding him of a time when he was alive, bustling with energy and
looking forward to life with hope, aspirations and joy glistening in his
eyes...
Saturday, February 25, 2017
Blast from the past
So here goes the list of things that kept us occupied and made our childhood a memorable one to yearn for a lifetime...
1. Going to School:
While we did not have fancy air conditioned school buses to pick/drop us and neither took rickshaw to school (that was a really 'girlish' way to do things), we went to school like our heroes from 'Jo Jeeta wohi Sikandar" - JJWS (which become sort of a cult movie during our days for school going kids where everyone pretended to be from Model School and the others from Rajput school) in Streetcat and BSA SLR bicycles...
2. The friends that eat together stays together:
While the popular phrase is " The family that eats together, stays together" we kind of replaced 'family' with 'friends' and it was to a large extent true... While all of us were classmates, but among us also there were groups which stayed together due to shared sports, subject or other interests (now do I need to list down all interest areas ;) and sometimes even common tuition teacher ! The best part about this grouping was that they stuck together during lunch time, small breaks and other leisure times and met up over weekends/holidays... The best part of it was the lunch break or also known as tiffin break where everyone shared their tiffin with others...For some, actually it was the case of entire tiffin being transferred (as they really hated their home food and shared it with others who had mutual likings for the others' food).
3. The seeds for IPL T 20 was sown in our era:
It must be hard to believe and it will be so for today's kid... But to be very honest, the concept for the shorter version of cricket actually was sown in our era... After school, we had only 2 hours to play before the evening study time and all of us wanted to play as many game as possible... Hence came the concept of 5 overs per game or the corresponding concept of even lesser number of overs... It also allows us to play individually (by 'numbering' method) if number of players were very less (less than 5)... As since we played 'gully' cricket, it allowed us to refine our shots in a way which no international coach or net practice can teach...The option of getting out was so much that in order to survive and also to make runs, we played like pro...And caution was necessary & required as the rule was whosoever loses the ball will have to buy a new one!
4. Bollywood - The ultimate panacea:
For us watching a Bollywood movie in the theatre was an Utopian dream... The only close brush with Bollywood which we had was with the Binaca/Cibaca Geet Mala or the 9 a.m. songs on Vividh Bharati... The closest we came to seeing a new movie was during Chitrahaar when few selected songs would be shown as promo for the upcoming movies.. And there will be counting done on how many times the hero or heroine changed costumes...
The only time we were able to see new movies were during festivities when VCR/VCP will be rented along with colour TV to watch new movies over VHS along with the entire family. That too there used to be an 'ordinary print' (no guarantee on picture quality) or 'master print' (full guarantee with high clarity of picture) VHS tape. With the VCR/VCP came along with an operator who was accorded maximum prestige in the house especially by the kids...
5. The national Entertainer - Doordarshan:
What Doordarshan meant to our generation can never be appreciated by any other generation, for in Doordarshan, we found our ultimate escape to the world of Nukkad, Buiyaad, Ye jo Hai zindagi, Byomkesh Bakshi not to forget of epics like Ramayana & Mahabharat (I still remember, a crowd gathering outside our window each time when ramayan were being telecasted to watch the serial)... The good things about Doordarshan serials were that it came once a week and actually had some good subject and storyline and not like today's Saas-Bahu drama which is artifical and manufactured; not to speak of the concept which is done to death in umpteenth daily soaps...
Later we were introduced to the world of animation.. We still fondly remember He Man, Spider Man, Tale Spin, Jungle Books etc. We also remember the days when Shaktimaan was a crazy hit and kids started copying Shaktimaan and jumping off roof tops! Poor Mukesh Khanna actually had to oame on TV to demystify how these stunts were "engineered" with special effects which might have finally proven to be the cause of the serial's decline in popularity leading to it being finally taken off air...
6. Exam Blues:
Cometh exam season, when even the climate indicates through their change from the cozy and comforting wintery chill to a gradual warmth in the air which nay turns to an unforgiveable sweltering afternoon; make no mistake that exams are round the corner... And who knows it better than the young adolescent preparing for the myriad exams be it the 10th, 12th, competitive exams for Engg and medicine...
Our era of the baggy pants and Bazigar specs were no different. we somehow identified the exams season with not only the seasonal changes but with some Bollywood numbers which sticks to one's mind in a way which is difficult to separate from one's memory of the ultimate test of life - Exams...
6.a. Shardi Khaansi na malaria hua...
How can I or 30 odd of my batch mate appearing for 10th exams forget that fateful day when we had the most important paper of our life (Science) fall on a Holi day... Now let me pause here to explain... Since we were appearing in our 10th ICSE board exam and as per their (ICSE) calendar, Holi was celebrated a day before in North India as compared to eastern India (Odisha, W. Bengal etc)... So we were actually writing our science paper when the whole town was celebrating Holi... To make matter worse, our school was strategically located between the ladies and gents' hostel of the city's one and only reputed medical college, the SCB Medical College. This caused a lots of heart burn amongst the lovestuck pairs from both the establishment as we had encroached on the only vacant land which was supposed to be their free zone... So to take their angst out on us (we were also culpable of 'vitiating' the lovers' moment whenever they were having one ), they started playing the recently released Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman song on a loop for the whole day... The reason why this song stuck to me and many of my classmates is beacuse this was played on full volume during our 1st paper which happened to be the most difficult - Physics...
So to sum up, for all of us and especially for those who did not do well in Science exam, till date are left wondering that even though we did not have any Sardi (cold), Khaansi (cough) and malaria; why fate (and nay the inhabitants of the hostels) were unkind to us on that holi day in 1993... Anyways, bura na maano, holi hey...
6.b. O' priya priya.. Kyun bhula diya..
This became a common theme of pathos for our chemistry group friends who used to go for chemistry tuition from a 'learned' man who was living at the other part of the city. Now it so happened that the learned man developed a sudden liking for building his own house and with this endeavour all desire of our's to own good house went out of the window. As we regularly went for tuition punctually, we would find or beloved teacher missing with his new young bride coyly conveying the message that "Sir has gone for the house construction work"... We kept on following him and he kept on eluding us and as a result when we sat for our chemistry exams we were found humming this tune from Dil... RIP Chemistry...
So see, our genration had their share of fond childhood memories which, how one might say, is very ' organic' and actually meant real human interaction with friends who are friends for a life time... Still...
Friday, June 24, 2016
Who Knows...
Sunday, January 3, 2016
Welcome Back !
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Rage, Enrage and Outrage - A collage in the day of a common man
- Other species of the animal kingdom on the "Holy Cow Approach":