Felicitaciones, Iñárritu!

I might have given him one for Amores perros. I might have given him one for 21 Grams. Probably even two. I might have given him one for Babel. I might have given him one for Biutiful.

But then I am not the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

I am just a young guy obsessed with films, wanting to praise his hero who was finally awarded the 'Best Director' Oscar at the 87th Academy Awards. 

Did Iñárritu deserve it more than Richard Linklater? I do not know. 
Did Iñárritu deserve it more than Wes Anderson? I do not know. 

Linklater's Before trilogy, in my opinion, is one of the best trilogy/series of films centered on human love. Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox is one of my favorite stop-motion animation films. Even their films that were in competition - be it Boyhood or be it The Grand Budapest Hotel -  are two of the finest pieces of filmmaking, as different as they may be with respect to their themes and treatment.

How then did Iñárritu win?
I do not care. 

Alejandro González Iñárritu is one of my most favorite filmmakers, after all.

In 21 grams, he brought on screen a helpless Sean Penn strikingly different from the one in Mystic River and Dead Man Walking. In Babel, he brought on screen a deserted (!) Brad Pitt strikingly different from the one in Fight club and Troy. In Biutiful, he brought on screen a guilt-ridden Javier Bardem strikingly different from the one in No Country for Old Men. Even in Birdman, however familiar the Riggan Thomson character might sound to Michael Keaton's, the lead character was more intense and more different than Keaton had played/lived before. 
A great director brings out the best of his actors and on that aspect, Iñárritu sure does earn the adjective.

Minimal use of music (Birdman, perhaps an exception), intense characterization, a continuous existential exploration, stories/screenplays that hold you/haunt you/hit you - when such traits define your body of work, artistic greatness wouldn't be at a very long distance.

These reasons suffice for the fan in me. Honestly, the fan might not even need the reasons.
But what about the film lover?

How could a director of a film describing the struggles of a to-be-forgotten actor trying to become a to-be-remembered actor be compared with the director of a film describing the poignant parts of a boy's life over the period of twelve years or the director of a dark comedy revolving around the (mis)adventures of a caretaker of a hotel and his employee?  

Can art be compared?
Should art be compared?

The artist does get the deserved recognition but on what basis?
How does one say that a meta-film is better than a piece-of-life drama or vice versa? How does one say that a dark comedy is better than a biopic about an unrecognized, ingenious mathematician or vice versa? 
How do you compare an eagle to a lion or to a whale?

I might go ahead putting forth many such questions but I guess Iñárritu's 'Best Director' acceptance speech sums it up.
"..talking about that little prick called ego. Ego loves competition. Because, for someone to win, someone has to lose. But the paradox is that, you know, true art - true individual expression - as all the works of these incredible fellow filmmakers can't be compared, can't be labelled, can't be defeated and our work only will be judged, as always, by time."

I might have given him one even for this speech.

Pig-face and Pacha pullu!

(This is a post written with the sole aim of tickling a person's funny bone. Not even an iota of offense is directed towards the language Tamil - I truly respect it - or the commentators mentioned below who do a commendable job of taking the sport to a larger audience.)

Being a guy in his early twenties and not being a very enthusiastic lover of cricket can put you in an isolated spot in any major city/town of India, let alone an engineering college. Especially when you have the ICC Cricket World Cup in progress, almost every statement that comes out of a guy’s mouth in an engineering college would revolve around cricketing statistics/cricketing teams/cricketing advertisements/cricketing anchors and when you want to not be a part of such a group, there are fair chances that you might be considered an alien who had been made to land at Rajasthan.

****

A case in example:

One of my friends in a regular WhatsApp conversation asked me last week if I was looking forward to February 22 and I replied that I had been waiting for this month's 22^nd for a pretty long time. He asked me who, in my opinion, would win and I replied that a victory for ‘Birdman’ would make me happier but ‘Boyhood’ had a pretty good chance of winning after having been shot over a period of twelve years ('Birdman' actually did manage to win - Hurray!). It was only in his next message that contained a few 2 syllabled and 3 syllabled Tamil curse words that I understood that he had been talking about the ODI match between India and South Africa whereas I had been talking about the Academy Awards. And after I explained him the confusion, his next message read “Periya ulaga cinema*@$&* ivaru! Feb 22 na naan match pathi thaan pesraen nu unnaku therla?”. When having to deal with such situations, you need to be very careful with your next reply. If you fail to be so and send a reply explaining in detail that Academy Awards actually deal with American cinema and not world cinema per sé, there is no use complaining later for a message that you received from your friend which if typed here would amount to two entire lines of special characters.

****

Being in a hostel when a cricket match between India and Pakistan (or any opponent, for that matter) is played makes things much more worse. You would be a happy person only if you did any of these two:

• Join the group in your hostel that is watching the live online streaming of the cricket match and keeps growing in size by a member every 10 minutes, shouting and hooting, for every ‘boundary’/’sixer’ an Indian batsman scores and every wicket the opponent team looses  
• Sign your name in the ‘Out-Sign’ register of your hostel and board a bus to the nearby town to explore its streets (which would most likely be empty due to the match, making it more convenient)

If you decide to do something other than these two options like deciding to stay in your room and watch a documentary based on the 21 years of filmmaking of Richard Linklater, you are very likely to get an expression from your hostel-mates (who step into your room to get an update on the score they had missed while having lunch) which is an equivalent to the one your mother would give when she catches you eating a handful of paruppu saadham that had been given to you to feed your 3 year old cousin. And of course, you would not have a choice but to give your hostel-mates the same sheepish smile that you would give your mother conveying indirectly that it was your first handful.

Caution also needs to be taken while drinking water on such days at the hostel as you never know when a sudden cheer might erupt from the match-watching-group that would make you spill the water on your face, especially into your nose, which might lead to your making a ‘pig-face’ for the next one hour.

Having been daunted by such threats, when you decide to sit down and watch a cricket match between India and South Africa on the television at your home and try to become a cricket lover (saying people that cricket does not matter without Sachin does not seem to have the same impact it had in the first half of 2014), the unexpected might actually happen, at least when the match is being watched on a Tamil channel with the commentary in Tamil.

“Pitch’a nallaa paarunga. Anganga evalo pacha pullu irukku nu paarunga!”  – when this is the statement that you hear as the game begins, would you be tempted to abandon watching the game? 

You would have gotten an unexpected incentive to watch it instead.

After all, where else do you get to hear Shikhar Dhawan called ‘Victoria maapilai’ and Imran Tahir called ‘Ulagam suttrum vaaliban’?

And as the match progresses and Shikhar Dhawan hits a ‘sixer’ and a ‘boundary’ on consecutive balls, you make it a point to remember the shots to mention it proudly to your friends at college as a validation to your having watched the game which is only made more easier by the commentary that follows – “Namma aalu ippa semma veri la irukaaru paarunga. Avaru bat ku bathil aruvaa, kathi vechu vilayaaditu irukaaru! Last ball’a aruvaa vechi velaasina maari velaasi thalinaaru. Intha ball’a chinna kathi vechu theetra maari wicket-keeper thalaiku mela theetitaaru! ”.

But if you believe that you have heard the best, you would be absolutely wrong. Because, the best would come about 30 minutes later when a commentator would say “Minaadi mega mootama irunthuchu! Aana ippa veyil nallaave adikka aarambichuruchu! ” and the other commentator would try to joke saying that “Neenga sariyaa sonninga! Aana minaadi mega mootama irunthathuku oru kaaranam irukku nu nenaikaren. Indian innings paakanum nu megangaluku ku kuda aasa vanthathu thaan athukku kaaranam. Athaan Indian innings mudinja odane megangal marainju veyil adikuthu!”.

#Respect #AbsoluteRespect

#PinnitingaPonga #KiliiKiliiKilii

#Awestruck #Dumbfounded #Speechless #Flabbergasted

(If not for hash-tags, how else would you describe such statements?!)

Anyways, after 3 more hours filled with memorable statements like “80,000 Indian supporters minaadi South African batsman’ku kannu maraika thaan seiyum, kaadhu adaikka thaan seiyum! ” and “Soodu patta poonai maari egiri gudhichu antha batsman defensive shot aadinaaru! ” leading to stomach-aching-laughter and occasional face-palm moments, the match would end and you would make note of the scorecard carefully in order to vomit it out during the discussion amongst your friends at college.

But as you keep trying to get the scorecard into your head, a painful thought might strike you – How nice would it have been if Tamil commentary had been facilitated long back?

It would have given you a reason to love cricket in addition to Sachin.

It would have, more importantly, saved you the pain of having to suffer from water being accidentally poured into your nose.

*@* - Try holding such a face for an hour. You would probably understand the feeling. 

Food for thought - II

Excess results in luxury which, for its part, never fails to create ignorance/negligence.

How then to imbibe the value? 
By imposing a hardship? By enforcing a necessity?

The humanity in us would triumph only when the need is felt even when there is not a need to.

A painful purchase!

His glance ahead was nothing special

Just like on any other day, on any other road

The mud and gravel grabbed his attention

Trees and birds too, but people not much

The color of the dresses, the accessories that accompanied

Mattered lesser than the least to him

But the pointless glance fell on a dress

A dress that made his heart a bungee jumper

For he knew the dress, its color and fabric...

The embossed dots at regular intervals by the sides

The thin threads that hung by the ends of the dupatta

The color of the dress - a color he loved

For it reminded him of his favorite ice cream flavor

Even the smell of the cloth, he remembered

The same smell as his mother's starched sarees

And his glance slowly raised 

From the threads to the embossed dots to the face

And there he stared into the eyes

The eyes that had kept him alive for days.

Months had gone by since their last encounter

And he looked at her speechless

Like he had done the first time

Like he had done the last time

And she spoke the first word, her smile hugging her word

He replied, his smile failing to hug his'

The result - her smile's ego was hit by his smile's failure to show up
Her lips came to their normal

A moment passed as he looked at her

And unconsciously was placed an order with 'Memory' by his heart..

She looked at him, her smile peeping out again

But this time hugging the wave of her hand

And he looked at her helpless, as she walked away

Like he had done the first time

Like he had done the last time.

A pat on his shoulder made him turn

It was the delivery robot from 'Memory'

The order was handed out

It had bold letters printed on it - 'Pain'.

He received it with a smile 

After all, frequent deliveries of the same item 

Had made the delivery robot from 'Memory' his friend..

He was handed the feedback form

A minute it took, to complete his statement and hand it over

By when a delivery robot from 'Reality' had landed.

He looked at the 'Reality' delivery robot 

His mind filled with suspicion

"Why don't you start ordering from us?"

The robot meant business

But its question did not fetch a reply

"We offer you happiness.

We offer you opportunities. Why not buy them?"

The 'Reality' delivery robot pleaded..

He turned away, his stare falling on the 'Memory' delivery robot

"All they can offer you is pain! Why do you want that?!"

The pleading had become anger

The 'Reality' delivery robot was not at fault 

It was missing out on a valuable customer

"At least, let us know why you keep continually preferring 'Memory' over us"

It asked of him, the business strategy perhaps needed improvement

"It does not have anything to do with you"

Finally came his reply, his glance now on his received order

"Does it have anything to do with her?"

The 'Reality' robot asked, pointing its steel hand

He turned to look at the way it pointed

She was walking at the far end of the road

And he turned towards the 'Reality' robot

Replying a 'no' to its question.

"Why then? Why then? Why 'Pain'?"

The delivery robot shouted, its 'Reality' logo shaking with its frustration

"Calm down!" said the 'Memory' delivery robot

And handed its counterpart the feedback form he had filled

The feedback form had a question

"What makes you constantly order 'Pain' from us?"

And below it lay the answer he had written

The answer for the 'Reality' robot's question

The answer for his continuing relationship with 'Memory'

And the answer read,

"'Pain' reminds me of us."

You are hereby sentenced to teach Engineering!

When 'the name given for a teacher in an University or college' is searched, the results returned indicate that the North American usage is 'Professor' whereas the Britain usage is 'Lecturer'. Since we are more familiar with a culture that has begun to so easily creep into our daily lives since the inception of the internet than the one that was forced upon us for nearly 200 years, I brought about myself to proceed with 'Professor'.

But before I proceed ahead with the small story which caused me hurt and prompted me to type this post, one needs to be made aware of the 'Open elective' system prevalent in our University for engineering courses. As students reach the final semester of their under-graduation, they are required to study/learn 4 elective courses which are in no way related to the engineering curriculum but play a larger hand with general life. And the choice of the courses is left with the students, their cumulative grades being the only criteria for the allotment. 
The choices that a majority of the students make are seldom based on the application relevance of the courses to life but instead on the 'leniency' and the 'selfless mark awarding' levels of the professors who handle the courses. I would be completely at fault blaming this majority because I followed the very same requirements before selecting my choices for the elective courses but a very trivial and a foolish (or probably not, thinking about it now) mistake that I committed by failing to save my preferences ensued with me being allotted 4 courses that no other student had picked - in our University's words, 'Default courses'. And I guess it would be clear from the above statements that the professors who handle these 4 courses were ones whose 'leniency' and 'selfless mark awarding' levels were close to zero and the other students who had been allotted the courses were also ones who had failed to register their preferences.

Needless to say, I never cared about what every single professor taught in each of the four courses, since their commencement, though two of the courses were closely related to everyday life applications. It was a conscious, and if I may state bluntly, an arrogant decision on my behalf - one that just continued in its course ever since a one-and-half-year prior revelation that it was pointless to try to learn something that the heart found no connection with.

But there are days when you run out of personal problems to ponder over and filmmakers' lives to dream about. There are days when both of your regular companions in the classroom decide to absent themselves for the class, leaving you alone at your desk. And it was on one such day, out of absolute boredom, that I decided to pay attention to what my 'Physics of earthquakes' (1 among the 4 elective courses) professor was talking about. The first two statements that I listened to made no sense to me. 
But his third statement began, "For example, try recalling the poori and chappathi your mother makes at home." and my interest was piqued. He continued, "If you look at the poori, you will notice that it has a golden brown shade evenly spread throughout its surface. But when you look at the chappathi, you will notice that there are black spots unevenly distributed at a few regions. Why do you think this happens?" and there was a five-second pause with a glance to see if anyone responded and realizing that there was not going to be an answer, the professor continued, "Oil, which is a liquid, causes the heat to spread uniformly. And hence the consistent golden brown shade with respect to the poori. But this is not the case with solids. That is the reason for the uneven black spots in the chappathi. Very similar are the processes of convection and conduction that take place within our earth's interior regions." 

His explanation surprised me and thanking him in my mind for the topic he had given me to think about, I decided to switch over my thoughts to the times at home when my mother would exclaim with delight when a chappathi would rise like a partially filled balloon from the pan and would start making comparisons to the one showed in the Pillsbury atta advertisement to my utter dismay. But his next statement blew me away.

"If you want another real time example for the method of heat transfer in liquids, just think about the Communist agenda. They want equality throughout and they stress that the wealth be equally distributed among the people. Something similar with the liquids too. They are communists. They are not like the capitalist solids that try to disperse wealth to only particular regions."

And I looked at him dumbstruck. He was the first professor/teacher who had used a political example (especially one that involved communism) to explain a scientific concept in my entire academic life. As I looked at him, my heart filled with joy at his utterance of the term 'communist' - You rarely get to hear a fellow college student or a professor speaking about communism in Tamil Nadu except if the field of study is 'Political science' - there grew a loud murmur among a few students, no way related to the professor's explanation. And the professor, one who could be easily angered, started shouting out at the students who were causing the disturbance. As his anger filled statements continued to fly towards the victims, a thought that had never before struck me, looking at my professor, hit me like an earthquake (metaphor intended!).

How would the gentleman feel when he realized that he was made to handle a 'Default class' because he refused to crack silly jokes and award easy marks? How would he feel when he realized that he was overcome by other professors who, less knowledgeable and less capable than him, did not find an issue with making compensations by awarding gracious marks for the areas of their courses that they failed to cover properly at class? How would he feel when he realized that he had been rejected unfairly?

As I continued looking at my professor, I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. 
Rejection, in any form and in any manner, never ever heals completely. 

And as I thought about this issue later, a much more discomforting question arose.

How would any professor who faced 50 students feel when he realized that there was not a single eager person in the class to whom he could impart the knowledge that he had so passionately gained over a period of 10 or 15 or 20 years?

An immediate response to this thought was memories of the first days of each of my semesters that had passed when a professor would ask, facing my class, as to how many of us had chosen Bioinformatics on purpose and all of us would start laughing with one of us stating it out, after a few moments, that it was the only course we could get for the higher secondary examination marks we had secured. 
Earlier, on every such occasion, I had taken pride in laughing at the professor for asking such a silly question for which he knew the obvious answer. But after the discomforting thought that had cropped up, I imagined the moment when the professor stood facing the class, knowing that none of the students had taken the course out of choice, and had to make up his mind to teach every single concept he had so lovingly learnt, for the entire semester that would follow, to a classroom filled with students he now knew had no interest towards what he was about to teach.


The imagination hurt me. Terribly.
And the hurt slowly transformed into anger as the main cause became clear.

The 'engineering' mania.

There is a general outcry that thousands of students are made victims every year by being forced to pursue an engineering degree when their hearts truly lie in other fields of life. 
But we seldom pay attention to the professors (as is the case in most engineering classes) who face a new batch of students every year hoping that they might finally have more students in the new batch, than the earlier batch, who would want to really learn what they have to teach.

The professors, in fact, are the real victims. 
They, unlike students, cannot hope to escape after 4 years.

And it is for this reason, I believe that the least any student could do is to pretend that he/she is interested with what is being taught by the professor instead of making an outright demonstration of disinterest.

Why should the professors suffer for our incompetency to convince our parents to let us pursue our real interests?

The professors, unlike most people, are doing what they really set out to do.
If not anything else, their passion in itself needs to be respected.

Reading poetry

Imagine that you are sitting at the edge of a lake. Before you lies the vast expanse of the lake that is still and motionless with the sky the color of blue hydrangeas. Behind you lies a lush green field that seems endless with a lonely huge tree at a long distance with all colors of flowers adorning it. And there is not a sound heard. Silence - absolute silence that screams in your ears. As you begin forming meaningless patterns in the water at the edge of the lake with your hand - the coldness of the water spreading through your entire body from the tips of your fingers - comes flying a white unicorn with golden wings from the sky. It lands near you and folding its wings, bends down and starts drinking water from the lake. You keep looking at it with no particular feeling. Slowly, the unicorn turns to look at you, beginning to flap its wings. It does not fly but is rooted to its spot just flapping its golden wings. And your eyes meet. 

How would you feel then?!

A lot of people would reply that they would be overjoyed or excited or many more such. But the truth is you would be undergoing a mixture of emotions. Your heart would be filled with a sense of serenity and joy but at the back of your brain, you would know that it is not real. You would realize that it is a dream but you would wish that it would have the faintest chance of becoming real so that you could spend more time at that place till reality hit you.

That is the exact feeling mixture of feelings I experience every time I read a good poem. It is never a particular emotion or feeling but instead, an overlapping mixture of longing, joy and sadness.

And the beauty of good poetry is that it takes every single person to a different place and allows him/her to be subjected to an assortment of feelings and emotions that have never been felt before.

Words when carefully (or on occasions, even playfully) arranged could lead to new worlds.

The option of throwing out the keys that unlock these worlds as we complete education or carrying them along as we continue with our existence lies with us.

After all, we begin our lives with the simplest of poems - nursery rhymes - and if I might tread further sentimentally, lullabies. Why not cherish a few more good ones along the way?

P.S.: Why is there a general belief that unicorns are loved only by girls?!

We, boys, are crazy about horses. Why then the disparity when it comes to the ones with wings?!