Just a hug!

Honestly, I didn't think I was going to write anything today. Just wanted to take a break from writing for a bit. Yes, I have moments of complete disillusionment with self and of course the world at large. How can I forget the world baba, it's the big bad world which is the reason my life is the way it is and see how messed up I am, boo hoo, and all that jazz. Thank God the world is large enough to accommodate the rants and raves of constantly cribbity souls like yours truly and not have a moue of resistance. Phew!

Yes, yes, I know I'm all those adjectives that you'd like to throw at me and yes I'm also self-centred and just luuuuuuuurv to play grand-standing. There! I take a bow. This is my space though, just a gentle reminder.

Well, so what made me write today? Well, today's been one of those 'total couch potato' Sundays. After an extremely restless night, bitten by my friends Amos & Co., also colloquially called 'saale macchhar' or the ubiquitous mosquitoes, the night was simmering, nope, not with some undercurrent of passion and drama and sex and love et al, just plain hot and no speed of the fan could quell the ensuing suffocation. So of course one tosses and turns and gets up, goes for a drink of water, sits up, thinks, yawns, changes positions, lies down on the floor cushions, uses the blanket, tosses the blanket aside, feels the irritation with the pyjamas and the room and still tosses and turns and finally does manage to get more than a shut eye and no, not at the crack of dawn as one would naturally assume as the logical corollary to the description.

So of course I got up after a restless night and decided that today was going to be a day of rest. No newspapers, no books, no taxing of the mind, just a completely chilled out Sunday, minus the beer. So that is what I did. Watched TV. Lots of it. Many hours that could have actually been more productive. But I just sat or lay down and watched.

Last night,(yes, the 'couch potato Sunday' started last night really), when I watched a very engrossing movie called 'A Good Woman', I thought I'd review it here, but am not good with reviews. As usual I bumped into the movie and hence didn't see it from the beginning. But as soon as I saw Helen Hunt's fantastic profile, and then the plainly ugly Scarlett Johansson, I snuggled into my rocking chair or my chaise longue, to see the film. And the setting, the language, period, the storyline, all had me completely engrossed. When my ears encountered the dialogues, I knew they had to be written by an Englishman. There is something about the stiff upper lip when it comes to limning the screenplay with dialogues that are a fine balance between eulogy, philosophy, common sense and poker faced humour. Anyway, it so happens that I did an IMDB on the movie and found out that it was an adaptation of a play by Oscar Wilde called 'Lady Windermere's Fan'. No wonder the dialogues and the story were so engaging! Who can forget 'The Importance of Being Earnest', or the 'Canterville Ghost'. Oscar Wilde has a wonderful body of work and you can glean some of it from this wonderful site that I've googled - http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/ - I must return to Oscar Wilde and his literature in the very near future. Definitely a master story-teller and an astute observer of human frailties and hypocrisies prevalent in English society then, and no surprises, prevalent everywhere in society today. I have to, simply have to unleash some of the gems in the movie, which of course you can regale yourself with, by going here - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379306/quotes - so here goes:

"Marital bliss is a terrible burden to place on two people, Tuppy. Sometimes a third person is needed to lighten the load. "

"Undying love is like the ghost in your villa. Everybody talks about it, but try and find one person who has seen it. "

One of my favourites - "Every man is born truthful and every man dies a liar".

There's more where this came from. But better still, just see the movie. See it not just for the dialogues, but see it also for Helen Hunt. I've never found her beautiful. Beautiful in the conventional, 'oh she's breathtaking, she's gorgeous, she's lovely' sense. But she's one actress who seems such a natural at being an earnestly honest woman. So this character may not sit very well on her shoulders, but see her profile, see her carriage, see her conviction. She's lovely. I absolutely love her nose and that profile is to die or kill for. As for the young Ms.Johansson, that America gushes over, over her looks, her acting ability and of course her body, all I have to say is, guys, who're you kidding?

So anyway, like I was mentioning that this Sunday the TV watching continued. Be it to see the not-so-shocking news of India's defeat against Bangladesh, or The Amazing Race or 'shopping in Bali', I was lapping it up. I watched the CSI series which I absolutely love, some more of the Amazing Race and surfed, surfed and surfed some more. Then in the evening, again caught a glimpse of a face that I'd like to get up to every morning, even if it's lined, furrowed, sun spotted - Robert Redford. Now that's a man I'd definitely wait for an Indecent Proposal from. Oh yeah! Naysayers be damned! So I caught his angular, lined face, looking at this lovely woman and telling her, 'You want to change the world, change mine!' Why oh why don't real men say those things in real life to real women? Aaaaarrrrgh! Yes, yes, I know they're the movies and that's what they're supposed to do - transport you into a world that is so reel. So I didn't get to see the whole movie, saw it in bits and parts and saw parts that made me go all mushy. And then that scene where RR is going back to America from Cuba and bidding adieu to the love of his life? Well, I just wonder how they do it. Say it with such equanimity, with such controlled emotions, just a clench of the jaw, a clouding of the eye and it's 'bye'. Just like that.

Is moving on so simple really? Of course technically it's about putting one foot in front of the other and literally walking away, but figuratively, can one just turn around and let it all slide into a 'past' that is best left where it is, in the past? I can't relate to that kind of almost clinical estrangement. After all we're people and we feel. We feel the touch, taste, smell, sight and sound. We need to. We can pretend to be stoic and restrained and in control. But then when do we express what we really feel? Of course I'm relating all this to my experiences and my behaviour and my reactions. So I'm biased, forgive me. I scream and shout and yell and...well...yeah...and whatever. (I have a tee-shirt that I helped design for an online internal magazine that I was actively involved in, in my previous place of work, and it had a line, 'I xpress, therefore I am').

So there's this show called Koffee with Karan. I watch it avidly. And his guests today were the inimitable Tabu and Mira Nair. She'd just directed Tabu in the much-acclaimed book adaptation of 'The Namesake' by Jhumpa Lahiri. I've not read the book, though I've read her short stories in 'The Interpreter of Maladies'. Going by the comments of Johar, Tabu is supposed to be superlative in the film and hinting at an Oscar nomination, etc. So through all the cheek-bussing and 'dahlings' and giggles that I love, Mira Nair said something so mundane and yet it struck me because it's such an everyday notion we never really look it in the eye and live it. She said how important it is to just love and cherish and express, because life is short and no one knows what tomorrow promises. It promises to come (no double entendre there), but not necessarily clothed the way you'd prefer it. We know this, we understand it, we give lip service to this statement, we sneer at it, we do everything I think, but live it.

I know cynics and skeptics will go 'smirk smirk' if they read this, which thankfully they don't and no one does (yes ghost I know you're lurking around but you're just a recent and probably a short-term entry, till the ghost-busters get you), and it's okay. Time and again we read self-help books and 'Conversations with God' and a gazillion 'feel good' sometimes 'soul searching' words, but we never ever really go, 'from today, I'm going to be nice to mom and tell her I love her' or any such thing. Like movies our lives too are time-bound. But unlike movies which can get remade we can't relive our lives when our time's up. I'm not preaching and of course no one will go, 'from this moment, today, tomorrow, I will tell my father, brother, uncle, blah blah blah that I appreciate them, respect them, love them, etc. etc. etc.' Sure that's fine. We're this uber cool generation that believes in expressing. Be it angst, sexuality, greed, desire, ambition, big bucks and a whole gamut of adjectives that I can't even think of. We're an 'in your face' Gen Y (or is it Gen Z?). All I know is, I don't do it. I know I love to express, but when it comes to just telling ma she's the anchor of my life, I have withdrawal symptoms. Just a simple affirmation of love is so bloody difficult. Damn! I need to wake up and smell the muesli.

It seems that love does make the world go round. Even if money rears its ugly head and goes 'Not a chance honey'.

Let's give everyone we love a hug shall we?

(And thereby hangs a really really really long post. I need a break and of course a hug).