The school kid's travel

When I was a school kid, the travel from my home to school was always enchanting. Sitting by the window of a private van or a government bus, and watching the same locations pass by never seemed boring. Every ride was new and different.
Only as I neared my destination, the stomach turned upset and a heavy feeling overcame my heart. I knew it was not sadness. But it always accompanied me as I entered my classroom, constantly battling with my smile.
However, the poignancy lasted only for a span of 10-15 minutes. As my friends started filling in the neighboring benches, the heart turned light again and the curve of the lips started out on it's journey uphill. 

Of late, I have been reliving this cycle with my office.
Joy filled travel. Arrival with a burdened heart. Joy creeping in again with the entry of friends.
I keep wondering how the inexperienced, innocent, rote-learning-habituated school kid grew close with the improperly matured, guilt ridden, curious corporate.
Out of the numerous reasons that strike the mind, one stands out. 
One, I wish, will not linger away with time.

The people always outweigh the purpose.

The lost city

“So, how’s Bangalore?”

Whenever any relative or friend of mine asked me this question last year, I offered them a standard answer that only differed in the order of the descriptions.

“Pleasant climate.. Young and energetic people.. Continuously expanding construction sites.. Day-by-day worsening traffic.. Really beautiful girls..”

The last part of the answer was always accompanied by a sheepish smile. And I was so proud and happy that my answer served as a testimony to the general perception of this once-favorite-retirement-spot.

But for the past 2-3 months, I have been made to reconsider my perception of this city.

It all started with my house-hunting efforts.

Till then, the places I had visited in Bangalore had mostly been malls and a few parks. Having been surrounded mostly by the corporate crowd in such places, I had also assumed what most of the outsiders assume about this city.

"Bangalore is a city of young people hugging their computers 5 days a week, then moving on to hug their beer glasses and romantic partners over the weekends in pubs and malls and incredibly-priced theaters."

But the farther I traveled from IT parks and the deeper I entered residential areas, especially ones with houses as old as me or more, I realized a mistake I had committed.

I had never included the non-IT/non-corporate people of Bangalore in the equation.

Which I believe is a very common mistake.

Bangalore, in that sense, is starkly opposite to Chennai.

Chennai, when thought about as a city, serves primarily as the home of innumerable middle-class families, burdened by loans and earnest dreams, earning their daily bread from government offices and manufacturing units. The IT/corporate crowd, though continually increasing, still is a minority.

Since the reverse seems to be true with Bangalore, it makes me wonder if it is time that the minority rose up in revolution.

At least, for the sake of Kannada.

Once the IT/corporate crowd is removed from the equation, thinking about Bangalore offers a new perspective. Possibly, the real perspective.
This is a lost city.

****

Imagine that you are X and you have been living in a house for close to 2 decades. Naturally, the people down the street will refer to your house as 'X's house'. 
As time passes, you realize that your house is too big for you and you are also attracted by the prospect that you can earn easy money by renting out a small portion of your house to some other person. You decide to go ahead with your idea and rent out a small portion to a young guy named Y.
After Y's entry, something unexpected happens. 
Y is so young and so full of energy and so easy-going that it is just a matter of weeks before 'X's house' starts getting referred to as 'Y's house'. The newspaper-delivery guy, the milkman, the grocery shop owner - everyone acts as if 'X's house' never existed. For them, all that strikes a chord is 'Y's house'. 
When such an identity shift takes place, how would you feel?

****

This city has lost itself. 
As a result, its real people have lost their identity.
But then, what about the visitors?
By visitors, I do not just acknowledge the engineering graduates who leave behind their families and enter this city to embrace workplaces where their actions and restrictions would anger our selfless freedom fighters. 
By visitors, I also include the construction workers who come to this city from their tiny villages located hundreds of kilometers apart, just so that the cement and the mortar and the varnish that they breathe in, reaches their family as sufficient money for two meals a day. 
By visitors, I also include the innumerable pani puri sellers and innumerable small-scale eatery workers who pin their hopes on the corporate crowd still wanting to indulge in Indian cuisine. 
What about these visitors?
I see lost identities there as well. 

For the past 2 months, these thoughts have made me look at this city in a new light. 
Not a very bright, sunny one but a dim, subdued, wintry kind of light.
At times, I look around at the roads and trees and the mix of old houses and new towers and experience a feeling of pain.
I also look at the sky and wonder if the continually forming grey clouds and constant drizzles are the outbursts of this city's pain. 
Even now, as I am finishing up this post, I look outside my window and notice a grey sky. It stirs up in me an emotion which I have earlier experienced on days when my mom had been sick yet had taken the effort to prepare food. 
I decide to climb up to the terrace and spend some time with the about-to-cry sky. 
Perhaps, as a slow drizzle starts, I could start listening to the heart-wrenching 'Ennaku pidithal paadal..' from Julie Ganapathy and lose myself in the pain filled tears.

Till smiles and touches do us part

Yesterday, as I was going through the list of 'Recently uploaded' videos on YouTube, I came across the '440 Volt song' from the yet-to-be-released Sultan movie. I played the video, intrigued by the title and after I had watched the video, I couldn't stop thinking about it for some time. 
The video had not affected me because of its score or visuals. To be honest, the beats of the song had reminded me of 'Saree ke Fall sa'.  
The impact had, instead, been simply because of a line from the song.
"Lag gayi 440 volt choone se thaerae..." (Stung by bolts, 440 volts.. On your feather touch - translated as per YouTube).
On first thought, the line seems like an innocent celebration of the hero on being touched by the heroine. But thinking about it further, is this the catch-phrase we would want to leave adolescent boys with? 
Are we going to tell them that it is worth celebrating, perhaps even okay to fall in love, if a girl touches them?

There is a scene in the beautifully shot and brilliantly composed 'Aasai oru pulveli' which plays out like this.
The hero and the heroine are seated next to one another, having a conversation. The hero slowly moves his left knee closer to the heroine's leg and as they are about to touch, he hesitantly pulls it back. But he does not give up. He moves his left knee again and on the second attempt, manages to touch the heroine's leg. As their legs touch, the camera rises to the hero's face to show a sense of triumph. 
The first time I had watched this scene, I had smiled. But yesterday, I was made to rethink about it. 
By showing a boy's leg/hand touch a girl's, and by symbolizing it as a victorious step towards romance, are we presenting a very wrong idea to the teenagers?
(Attakathi, in a way, seemed better than most other films depicting such scenes because it also showed by its tragicomic climax, the result of such false romantic assumptions)

Many Tamil films (and many regional films of India) commit this mistake of glorifying the smile or touch of the opposite gender. 
"Ava enna paarthu sirichaa machaan" ("She smiled looking at me, dude") is either treated as a motivation for falling in love or as an indicator of romantic success. 
Seriously?!
Is love that easy?
What about the slow and beautiful process of getting to know one another, becoming aware of the likes and dislikes, coming to terms with the mistakes and shortcomings?
When will we start showing love blossoming out of time spent with one other instead of the usual norm of love happening in a paltry 3-4 scenes?

Cinema has had a very important place in our culture, at times to such an extent of letting some of its favorite kids become leaders of states. That being the case, the responsibility that falls on cinema and its practitioners is huge.
Does this mean that a filmmaker should not express in entirety his thoughts or opinions?
No. That would be a sin. A sin, we as a country, are already committing to a large extent, letting our artists suffer. 
But if a film is going to leave a 15 year old boy believing that a girl's smile is an indicator of a positive romantic feeling, I feel really scared for his future.
Which I believe is a warning of sorts that we need to mature as an audience. Perhaps, also as a society.
Till the time we continue treating the opposite gender's touch or smile any different from our own gender's, we are never going to progress. Or for that matter, let our art progress. 
Our cinema is in bad need of memorable female characters like Nina in Black Swan, Amy in Gone Girl, Christine in Changeling, Julie in Three Colors: Blue and the Bride in Kill Bill. 
And that is not going to happen till we stop our heroes from breaking into songs just because the heroine's shoulder rubbed their's. 

Also, if love had been as simple as a touch or smile, bus conductors and portrait photographers should have been the luckiest guys on this planet. 
But I really don't see that many bus conductors beaming with uncontrollable happiness. 
Which makes me wonder if some of our filmmakers do.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz...

The other night, I was travelling in a BMTC bus and I was amazed to notice nearly 90% of the passengers with their earphones inserted.  As I scanned the bus to see how each passenger was reacting to the song he/she was listening to, a strange thought struck me.

How would a mosquito feel in such a scenario?!

We tend to label the mosquito as just a blood-sucking insect but what about its not-given-due-credit hobby of buzzing in people’s ears?!

When a mosquito buzzes in our ears, we just try to push it away without the motive of killing it. But when it tries to suck our blood, there is a high risk of violence from our side.

That being the case, how sad would a mosquito be, looking at an earphone-wearing guy, to know that it can only connect with him through a fatal blood-sucking-mission and not through a jovially irritating-zzzzzzzz-game?

The thought made me feel bad for the mosquito but more importantly, it made me lower my earphones.

If one can tolerate curse words and gossips and impatient vehicle-horns, how much harm could an innocent buzz do?!

Understanding old age

Few days back, after finishing my dinner at home, I walked to the wash basin to wash my hands. As I stood by the wash basin, I noticed that the bathroom light was on though there was no one inside to reap its benefit. I realized that it had been that way for quite some time and I tried remembering who had been the last person to visit the bathroom. Since I couldn't, I asked my grandmother if she had been the cause for letting the light suffer without company. Before she could reply, my mom admitted that she had been the culprit. Which shook me terribly.
My mom had never left any light unnecessarily switched on before that day. Never. 
I slowly switched off the bathroom light and walked away hoping that the miss from my mom's side was just a one-timer. 
The next day, at around afternoon, I heard water dripping from the kitchen tap. Seeing that there was no one in the kitchen, I went to close the tap. I noticed that the curry on the stove was on its way to completion and I understood that my mom had been in the kitchen few minutes earlier. Which shook me again.
My mom had never let the kitchen tap shed unnecessary water drops before that day. Never.

I have spent significant time thinking about my future self but I had not really given thought about my old age. "It's just a part and parcel of life", I had told myself. But the realization that my mom is growing older seemed very hard to come to terms with. It felt like a medical condition that would have caused lesser pain if it had not been diagnosed.

That night, as I waved my mom goodbye for my return to Bangalore, I noticed that the number of grey hair strands on my mom's head had increased. My heart sank.
For the past two days, I have been observing more hair strands of mine turning grey. 
Perhaps, a mother's ageing process tends to have immense impact on her child's ageing too.