Monday, April 18, 2016

Old wine in an even older bottle

It is incredibly hard for me to express my thoughts in 140 characters or less. There I have said it – I am old school. I need to publish a blog post. Ah how times have changed in the last 11 years since I started this blog!

Theri – What a blitzkrieg of promotions!!!!! So for the first time in my life I actually contemplated watching a Vijay movie in the theatre. Thankfully better sense and lack of company prevailed and I watched the movie online. In this day and age of fantastic short films and amazing directors, I cannot believe that they decided on this story line. This story is as old as the hills and the treatment is older than most hills!!! The music pre-dates the music director who made the music. It probably boils down to high expectations but all through the promotions the director kept talking about how his movie has a message and the message was that good fathers are very critical and can help shape society. Now that is indeed a good message to give to society, albeit a slightly sexist one. However, this good father message comes at the end of the movie for all of probably 2.5 minutes. The rest of the movie is a good old fashioned cop revenge story avenging the death of his loved ones. Had the treatment been different it would have still appealed to me. However, besides a hero introduction song where the hero keeps changing colored sunglasses (The biggest in-thing now. Guilty as charged) there is nothing new. For instance, the hero asks his wife what she would like in life or some such thing and she goes into this dreamy speech about wanting to live in a place without cell phone connectivity (Lady, it’s 2016 - How exactly do you propose to live this way? That too with a guy who sang – Facebook le pichikidum like and share than) and 15 seconds later she is shot dead. However, she miraculously comes back to life after the goons leave the scene of the crime to drag herself up two flights of stairs, wrap her baby in a towel, drag herself and said baby downstairs and rouse her unconscious husband and tell her that if they get the baby to the hospital in 15 minutes she will be saved AND (wait for it!!) she hands the baby to her father only after he promises to resign as a cop. She then proceeds to die, I presume but she doesn’t come back so it’s a pretty safe assumption to make. The husband who manages to save the daughter and himself could not save his wife – Again 2016!!!  Now during the process of wooing her, he woos her entire family and even welcomes them into his house with an aarti after the marriage. Miraculously after the death of his wife that family is completely AWOL!! What happened to the whole spiel about how his father – in – law is now his dad and so on?


The movie is ridden with clichés such as this and I have come to strongly believe that the team knew that they didn’t have much going so to promote the hell out of the movie. This will bring in an audience for the first few days and they can recover their investment before the Twitter and Facebook pundits words get out. 

Thursday, April 14, 2016

The Paddling Duck

Have you ever seen a swimming duck - The kind that looks calm and unruffled but is paddling frantically under the water surface? That was me for the last 5 years.

For the most part of my life, I have been someone who has been in complete control of any given situation. I can predict exactly how a situation will turn out and very very rarely have I been wrong about a person. (Please note I said “Will” as opposed to “Must”. I used to be that confident in my abilities)

However all that changed a little over 4 years ago, when my older child was born. I realized very quickly, in fact early on in my pregnancy that there are some aspects of life that one just cannot control and you just have to let them happen. Now this was incredibly challenging for me, one (aka my husband) would say had been frustrating for me. It impacted me to such an extent that it took a toll on my physical health! It was basically my inability to come to terms with my lack of control.

Maybe it has to do with me growing older; maybe it has to do with me hitting rock bottom and then coming to terms with my lack of control; maybe it has to do with me being better prepared for every possible outcome of a given situation but with the birth of my second child I have mellowed down. Everyone and I mean everyone (including me) thought I would crumble rapidly after I lost the help and support of my mother who stayed with us 6 months after Vaasu was born. When my mom was leaving, I told her that I might be on the next flight over with both kids in tow. However, almost a month to the date we are all still surviving. Everyone is getting fed, bathed and put to sleep at a reasonable time. Everyone makes it to daycare in one piece and I make it to work at a reasonable time with or without some baby spit up on my clothes.

Do I have situations that I just cannot do anything about?
Yes

Do I have situations that are frustrating and make me want to scream?
Yes

Do I have situations where in spite of extensive planning there is one little thing that must have slipped and that is the one thing that will happen?
Yes


However, I have learnt to take it in my stride. I have learnt that things are not as bad as they seem and more importantly I have learnt that things will get better and to differentiate between situations that I can control and situations that I cannot control and for once A is not a grade I am aspiring for.