Mansi

This morning, I managed to drag myself out of bed and step out of the house. After two weeks of a maddening fever and too many pills, I decided to risk a brisk walk in my park.
Perhaps with about four weeks past, with no exercise at this park, I felt like I was in a different place. The barren feel to Delhi's greens was missing. Instead, I felt like I was entering a giant-size laboratory experiment. Every inch of the soil was green and some of it was even invading the pathway.
Evidently the result of our recent spell of monsoon, the greenery had taken to growth with a vengeance. Everything seemed rich and overdone, like a young bride or her older mother-in-law to be.
Walking is just not like running. There is no release, no internal combustion alike that which propelled the Apollo 13 to space. Running, a friend told me aptly, is meditative. It isn't about thinking but about not thinking. To feel blank and yet be supremely aware of your presence. So many times, I feel like I am being exorcised out of my own body. In that sense, it's a great relief and like a pressure cooker, except with the pressure off. As another example, it's akin to Alladdin's genie and his lamp. Running helps release the genie in you- the essence of all your magic. To be aware and to to 'be' the genie is the drug that keeps me hooked to running.
Walking just doesn't do it for me.
There is something terribly inspiring about seeing another person run. I know, I have grown up envying it, always playing victim to a bad back or my many excessive kilos. Looking back now, I know that it was inevitable that I would become a runner. Sometimes if that is the only thing I do, I feel it's plenty.
As I walked into my 32nd minute this morning, my thighs and calves began to shake. My body was hot under my eyes and I felt the sweat to do more with the fever than anything else. Perhaps the greatest motivation to go out walking was to put a check to any more weight gain. However, now I know, that it isn't really the weight that has me hooked to exercise. It's the desire to run. It's not the fabulous park either, with it's forest and flowers. Those don't do much for me. It's the running, the ability to blast off, even if it is at about 7km per hour (technically jogging).
I can't wait to start running again.

Inspired from a poem by Alexander Pope, the title of this film comes from a verse in the poem that goes like this:
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted and each wish resign'd

I am sure you've heard about this film and I doubt you've heard anything ordinary, there isn't anything ordinary about this film. Plot, acting, direction, drama: for all of us who only want to be spared the simplistic Speilberg stuff, here's a real film.

War of the Worlds is running, Tom Cruise, Speilberg: I want out, is all I thought to myself. I don't buy the hype, I censor the right to hype. I like recommendations and passionate I dos. I don't want the Chanel wedding gown, or the three tier cake.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is Jim Carey's film, from start to finish. While those with funny faces often try their hand at comedy, here's a funny face that is thorough actor in and out and who also can make you laugh your head off, as good as the very best of them. I've always liked Jim Carey. It takes a whole pot of talent and then sheer hard work to be Jim Carey.
In Hindi films and malayalam films, comedians are the ugly ones, the ones nobody would make heroes. There're not even good for villain roles though some do pass by as villains. These ugly ones then get to try their hand at comedy. Some find a new lease of life, and in so doing, teach us, crude audiences, a thing or ten about ourselves.
And then there's Jim Carey. Granted brown hair, a thin and lanky figure, non-descript but wonderfully large eyes might not be what a Hollywood hero needs to look like ( I'm thinking Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves, Kurt Russell....)- - but what we have is a really classy actor. No doubts there.

This movie is just up Jim's street. He has the depth and breadth to play this role. He isn't just your wonderfully nice, next door kinda guy, he's also a child, a close to losing my mind stark raving romantic, and something else - He's as human as we are. Many times in the film, you will want to pinch yourself just to remind yourself that this is as much about you as it is about him.

The idea that our memories can be our biggest hell and heaven - the idea that we don't give a damn about that which is most precious - the idea that our relationships are wrought with 'happy - happy' stuck all over - - all of these ideas and more are explored in the most gripping and yet lucid manner.

This movie is a great watch and I can't thank HBO enough for actually screening it. What joy!

I want to get a hold of the soundtrack - - believe it or not, it has Mohd Rafi singing too. Kate Winslet -- She's not as there as Jim, but then this is a guy's film, all the way.

Last Night...
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Not one for metaphors, atleast not those I had to 'grasp' in high school poetry, perhaps today I am at an age when I see no more and nothing short of metaphors all around me.
One of the last scenes of the movie - House of Sand & Fog - is shot over a bed, rich, gold and splendid. To the left is an Iranian Colonel. To his left is his delicate, still beautiful wife and somewhere to the center lower half of the bed, crouched as a baby is a young American woman.
This movie to me was about the ultimate dessimation of civilization.
We might be today a globe of boundaries and territories, but as a whole, we are still and will always be one civilization. Whenever we have rocked our world, it has always been about adding, extending or removing a boundary line - nothing more. Yet the impact on our civilization has been phenomenal.
In our civilization, there are some of us who've been here long, tempered by time and ages of learning. To today's children, we may seem irrational. Iran, Iraq, the Middle East and Asia, to name some of the current hotspots, represent this older civilization. The United States is on the other spectrum, the younger part of our civilization. The older civilizations are struggling in this new economy that favors the youth. Yet they feel no shame in leaning on their youth and hence transfering traditions forward. Their children will live in today's world but they will bring with them the wealth of their past.
[I see the same pattern being fostered between nations, where older nations seek the support of the younger, stronger nations in gathering together the traditions of our past and taking it forward for the benefit of civilization at large]
The United States today stands guilty of exterminating the old, the powerless. In face of any danger, the Americans respond with fear backed by the only force they have - military force - their only heritage in their brief history. They will use this force to get what they want even if as a culture, they possibly cannot know what it is that they seek.
In such fickle hands lie the dessimation of an entire civilization. Just like the museums and libraries of Iraq burnt to rubble and ash, the Americans in their fear will bring on us the end of all that we know and understand.
This is the message of the movie - House of sand and fog.
Everywhere we look today, especially in India, we see the hand of America. Seeing Manmohan Singh address the US Congress was more NEWS to us than watching an American president address any other gathering. Through movies, television, film, MNCs, retail and merchandise, we are being invaded by the American way. While I take no offence with success and some of us seeing it as the American Way, there is more to a coin than just heads.
9/11, the American embassy bombing in Sudan, the bombings in Indonesia and the recent London terror attachks - all point to the other side of the coin. The means certainly do not justify the end, it is too simplistic. American occupation of Iraq was the first of many firsts that like a tidal tsunami hovers over the life of civilization itself.
"He is a scared man. He is nothing without his gun." Lines from the movie apply to America, when hurt and provoked. The retribution in the movie is the life of a young man, the custodian of our civilization. Without him, our children, we have no identity. Without us, America will cease to be.
I was warned earlier that this movie would be depressing. I understand that now. I am depressed.
We have a scared nation ready to nuke just about anybody in order to get back that which was not only theirs to behold. America is but a deep crack, molten lava beneath, waiting to wash this world anew.

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This morning:

On further reflection, the concept of old and young, the circle of life extends beyond just nations. It is far more basic and modular to how we respond. It is a fallacy to think that the aged are rigid. Instead, I learnt that it is they who are most flexible when it comes to handling change. In contrast, their rigidity is their commitment to the good times, to take learnings forward. In order to do that however, someone needs to change. I feel as the younger generation, it is our role to step up to embrace that change. It is up to us to let go of our self-centered wants and desires, and instead brace up to accept the learnings of centuries past. We cannot afford to doubt ourselves and look to the American way. Theirs is a society of discards, runaways, wonderfully packaged into something they refer to as the American Dream. More and more we see them hijacking our heritage to make up for their lack of any. We are only eager to share, since that is our heritage, to share and partake of one circle.
I also see that I am coming out far more harsh against the United States than is warranted or even desired by me. Which brings me back to the circle of life. The conflicts demonstrated in this movie clearly apply to any society, group or individual. We are all changing, growing and with that comes the need to tranfer learning and knowledge, fears and weaknesses. Let us not exalt in our youth but persevere with our aged and partake of that which is for all of us to behold.