Slave?

Technology has ruined me & the irony is that I'm blogging about it!!
I have decided that I'll dispose of my existing computer. And by dispose I don't mean this




I'll just leave it at my home. And I won't get a computer/laptop after joining (at least for the first 6 months or so), and will try to rediscover things that could be done without excessive interference of technology like,
learn to swim, play guitar (I had started when I was in school but didn't go at it for very long, the old guitar still adorns my room ), read a lot (just like I used to, a long time ago), get an awesome camera and try my hand at photography.

Plus being out of Varanasi means that I can watch Hollywood movies in English in theaters as soon as they are released, and not in some crappy dubbing (Watch dubbed Spiderman 3 to get my point).


PS: I won't become a hermit though, I'll still have a computer in the office, right? =)

Why was R2 special?

I could never bring myself to watch Star Wars over all these years just because I had caught a glimpse of a furry lion headed creature in the movie which had made me laugh out loud at the preposterous manner of portrayal of alien life forms by the creators of Star Wars.

Mistaken gravely, I was. Chewbacca/Chewie is one of my favorite characters now!!

Artoo

So as I was watching the series, I observed the specialty of R2-D2. All other robots of the same make were getting their asses kicked left and right but this little devil always had a trick up his sleeve, in fact if he hadn't been there to save the day, the end result would have been quite different.
After a great deal of research, I have come up with the following clues to his different behavior:-

1. At the time of the Blockade of Naboo, R2-D2 was in the possession of the Royal Engineers of Naboo. The Royal Engineers were famous for their after-market additions to their R2 units, making them some of the most sought after units in the galaxy

2. Someone pointed out that It was protocol to erase a droid's memory after a mission, but this protocol was never followed for R2, Maybe the experiences of the countless missions accumulated in Artoo's brain/memory making him a much more intelligent being than other droids.

To be or not to be

To be or not to be, that is the question..

The famous line from The Hamlet, when Hamlet is thinking of taking his life.
He has two options, To live in a world of pain & suffering or to die and face the uncertain which could be better or worse but there's no way to know other than to die.

This is the situation we all find ourselves in almost everyday (not to the extent of thinking to kill ourselves though).
Do I let things be or do I do something and see how things change.
There is no answer to this question.

Love & Pain

I had never known what pain really felt like. Until then. I glimpse her in the distant horizon. Her hair flowing gently in the breeze, the smell of her perfume drifting towards me creating the illusion that she was close, as if I could just stretch my hand and stop her, her figure diminishing with every step she took. My heart bled and painted the sky red.

I had never considered the possibility that it was not in our fates to be together. Only if I had known..

We were opposites in every sense of the word. I never had a care in the world, where as her every step was carefully planned. She had a pure heart, mine was full of spite. She helped others, I was jealous to my very core. Now that I look back, the only thing that we had in common back then was the love of reading. It was annoying to me at first, how every time I went to the library to get some reading done peacefully, she'd look up from a book and give that life-is-so-beautiful smile of hers. It annoyed me further when my jibes intended directly at her failed to affect her in any manner. She would just flash her teeth as if saying, "You are confused. I forgive you."(Yeah, she had an assortment of smiles, one for every situation she found amusing).

The day we first talked, I mean a real conversation, not a barrage of remarks thrown at her by me, is still etched clearly in my memories. It was raining and I had forgotten my raincoat. I was soaking in the rain and cursing the gods when she came up to me and said "You'll catch a cold, Why don't you come under my umbrella?" Condescending as she sounded to me, she was right. "Why does she care if I catch a cold or not? I'd have left her soaking in the rain had it been the other way round."

"We should walk." She said, "This rain isn't gonna stop for hours"

"You call the shots, after all its your umbrella." But not for long.. I thought, as an evil grin spread over my face. She was a talker. She kept babbling about this new book she was reading and how she spent her evenings, when I decided I could take it no more. I snatched the umbrella from her hands and made a run for it. Talk all you want standing in the rain. Next day in class she came up to me and said "Will you be returning the umbrella or you still need it. Its not a problem if you do, I'll just get a new one. I had been planning to get one for quite some time now." God girl, hit me.

Teacher's day was round the corner and the preparations were in full swing. She was right in the middle of things, buying gifts, selecting the music, writing out invites. She even volunteered to decorate the walls. She was tying balloons to the ceiling fan when her foot slipped off ladder. I should have let her fall to the ground. If not for the fun then to teach her a lesson not to be miss-goody-two-shoes. But I caught her. She was light as a feather and I could have held her in my arms for hours, not that I wanted to.

"Thank you" she blurted out.

"Whatever, Anyway get this in your thick head. I didn't catch you, you happen to have fallen in my arms before I could get them out of the way."

There-is-good-inside-you smile.

I was getting soft. I had to end this once and for all.

"Sir, she's calling you names" I stood up and told the teacher.

"What sort of names?"

"Something along the lines of 'You nasty piece of shit' ". The class roared with laughter.

"Get out of my class both of you, This very instant."

"Why me sir? What have I done?" I asked.

"What did you have to repeat the names for?"

"I was getting kind of bored sitting in the class" She said.

"Really, you are not mad at me for framing you. I'll understand if you are"

"Hey, you wanna grab something to eat while we are out. There's this place nearby that makes amazing sandwiches" she changed the topic of our conversation.

"Ah, Why the hell not. By the way, sorry for leaving you in the rain without your umbrella"

What the Hell, Where did that apology come from?

The sandwich was really good.

We began going out a lot together after that. I hated myself for it but couldn't do anything about it. It was great talking to her. It always left me with a feeling of inner peace, something which I had never before known existed. I knew something was going on. Hell, everyone around me knew something was going on. I vividly remember those days when we used to shy away from the prying eyes of the classmates, the long evening walks hand-in-hand, the arguments, always started by me, which used to fizzle out because she would concede anything rather than fight me.

Days passed, months passed and so did a whole year. Suddenly I found out she was leaving. Not a word to any soul. I ran as fast as I could to the station but she was gone.
That night I had a dream. I had never known what pain really felt like. Until then. I glimpse her in the distant horizon. Her hair flowing gently in the breeze, the smell of her perfume drifting towards me creating the illusion that she was close, as if I could just stretch my hand and stop her, her figure diminishing with every step she took. My heart bled and painted the sky red. I knew I would never be the same again.

"'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all."

First Year

I think I've come a long way since the days I used to be buried in phy/chem/maths books trying to battle one problem after another. Those days were some of the best of my life but its now that I realize that those days appear to be special because I can no longer re-live them, they are gone and all that remains are some fragments of memories, both good & bad, that I'll forever cherish.

My First Day:-

I hate this place, its old buildings, the trees growing out of everywhere, the heat, the fat maharaj, the know-it-all lobby boy, I hate them all with every fabric of hatred I can muster. This isn't the college shown in the movies, Where have I come? Would I have to spend the next four years here? I have never been away from home before. Groups of students & parent keep pouring in, which one of them is my roommate, I suppose?

I found out a few hours later. Vivek walked up to me pompously and announced that he was my roomie. My first & last roomie (last because I am never going back to college, never ever). You were awesome.

Meanwhile someone has gotten hold of the name list of the students and is reading it out aloud.
" Who says girls hate mechanical? Look 5 girls!! Rakshita, Sonal, Soni, Shweta and even an Aishwarya, I bet she's as beautiful as Aishwrya Rai. God, this is amazing."
This is not as bad as it looks, I thought. 10:1 is manageable?
His/My/Whole branch's dreams were shattered the next day.
The least damage was caused by Aishwarya being a boy.

The Next Day:-
SK Sharma, HOD, Mech deptt: "If I ever see that red T-shirt on you again, I swear to god I will rag you, I will rag you so bad that you all will shiver just by hearing the word ragging"
Me (to myself): "Oops!!"


My First Month:-
Dad: "Stay clear of the seniors, and don't even think about smoking or drinking"
Me: "Well, you know me."
Mom: "so, Stay clear of the seniors, and don't even think about smoking or drinking"
Me: "I won't"

We used to move around in groups. These groups, as you all know, tend to be a little disorganized. The seniors noticed this and helped in policing our groups, maintaining a straight line, uniform dress code etc.

Also, what the hell are these abbreviations supposed to mean? VT, LC, LG, HG? WTF??

This is the time when I met my baap. He was as awesome as a baap can ever be. He is responsible for lack of my personality development as he single-handedly ensured that I was never ragged.

Baap: "Daaru piyega?"
Me: "No sir"
Baap: "Net surf karega?"
Me: "No sir"
Me: "Sir, notes chahiye the"
Baap: ROFL (He didn't say this, he was actually doing this)
Baap: "Chal kat le, koi dikkat ho to batana"

It was also in this month that we had the official fresher (given by the insti to show that the ragging period has ended, the proctor can go back to maintaining their tummy & moustaches and now whatever is done to the first yearites is just for fun, not at all ragging)

There she was dancing. My first crush in college :-)

Vivek: "Wow, Bhabhi ko dekha?"
Me: "$#^%!$@#!, Teri bhabhi"


My First Sem:-

Ist CTs come.
It was during this time that a manifestation took place in our hostels. He was a myth, a legend, known by many names. You could spot him from a distance. He knew everything, had everything you wanted,
Omnipotent,
Omnipresent.
We call him Pondy Baba, members of the fairer sex call him Prasad Uncle/ Bhaggu Uncle.

Legend of the Pondy Baba
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Now, in my fourth year, I often come across 1st yearites asking why he is named so.

Back in the old days, when the information super highway did not even exist, forget CDs even video tapes were not there, people watched DD1 and also enjoyed it, There was a man. This man satisfied the needs of the poor students by giving them what they wanted and he came to be known as Pondy Baba.

(Details left to your imagination!!)

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God, is this what tests are supposed to be like? Am I on another planet or what? After the rigorous prep for JEE everything seemed like a cakewalk.

IInd CTs come and go.

This is roughly the time when I began interacting with Kartik & Viresh on a regular basis. They would go on to become my best friends in college.

Kartik was very noticeable, specially during the exams. He used to come out of the examination hall and knock everyone of their feet by saying he had solved the one problem that had eluded us all.

We still don't know why his marks never reflected this :P

Maybe because he used to solve just that one problem. Whatever the reason be, He just doesn't surprise us anymore. And Viresh, well he tried to give his roomie a particuraly offensive nickname and in turn returned with a very nasty one of his own. We still call him by that name, and its arguably the most popular nick in the batch.

I and Vivek decide to stay here for Divali. Our biggest mistake ever.

We had no form of recreation, save for TT racquets & my cd player+common room's TV.

We scourged each & every cd library in HG (yeah, I'm using HG, VT faster than you can bat an eyelid now), all we could manage was Evil Dead I, II & III.

PURE TORTURE.

If you hate me, kill me but never subject me to that shit again. It was then that we decided never to stay in hostels during another vacation again.

End-sems come.

Vivek: "Is the theorem on page 243 coming?"
Me: (Laughs) "Yeah"
Vivek: (Laughs) "OK"

He thought I was joking, A question from that page came. He still claims he would have gotten a branch change & not me had it not been for my laugh. Nobody ever trusted my laugh, ever again.

Papers were a cake-walk. Time to leave for home. Hell Yeah, I've made it through one sem.

My Next Sem:-

The first computer in the lobby arrives courtesy Anurag.

Its an ancient piece of shit, but it does the job, well who gives a damn till you can play UT, AOE & watch movies.

We have fun watching movies together, something we never do now, now that everyone has his own computer. Viresh is mortally afraid of horror movies and when we start watching The Ring, he runs off like a scared rabbit, his tail between his legs.

This is the time when I come to know some of the people from my to-be branch.

We used to play UT together and when it comes to UT, there's one name I have to mention. C2.

C2 was in the 3rd yr at the time.

He was fking Godlike. He could kill you just by staring at you. Now a person playing on Bathla's lappy had a small edge over the other players. You could move at twice the speed of your opponent and all he would see is you teleporting from place to place because of your speed. We tested all the possibilities and then I mustered the courage to challange C2 to a duel.

I won 20-19, Yeah he killed me 19 times, in spite of the handicap. It was the last time we played against each other. I could never spoil that beautiful feeling by getting pwned by him the next time.

I know this now.
In IT the Btech course is effectively of 2 years. The even semesters are just a wild frenzy of fests and the end-sem to top them off.

Technex:-

We make an amphibot (It could walk on both land & water). How cool.

We lose but it still is fun. All those sleepless nights. All the time spent in IT workshop. It was then when I saw that the workshop assistants knew more about the practical stuff than the teachers. Yes, the could talk about High -carbon steel & fitting & other stuff for hours, but when it actually came to doing something......

Kashi Yatra:-
Lucky Ali's performance is awesome and Niharika Singh is as beautiful as in the pictures. All this in the first year itself. Lets see what the coming years hold.

Spardha:-
WOW, a hundred time WOW.
File after file of girls from different colleges, cramped together in a small space. It just doesn't get any better than this.

A smile comes across my lips now when I look back.,
"Hamara yahi sapna hai..
Modi ka coach banna hai"

Freshers :-)

This was all a fresher is supposed to be, we even rope in a couple of foreigners to dance with us.
Booze is flowing all around and some of it mysteriously makes its way into my tummy. Hmm, not bad.
Ashank has his moment with the paper dance.
Kartik has his first attack of smoke-induced nausea. Anurag comes to the rescue and saves the day (By cursing everyone around)
Viresh confesses his true love.
My baap gives me a "special" cold-drink (Laced with the strongest alcohol containing beverage he could find).
We give bumps to one of our seniors, who in his anger threatens to call of the fresher this very moment.
He can't do that he's bluffing. Hit him harder.
We pee while drunk!!
Mishra speaks english (most of which is about this girl he knows) on the way to hostel. He's damn good but tries to be goofish when he's not drunk.


End Sems:-
Again, cake walk. One year over. One Amazing year that will never come back.

I simply love this place, its old buildings, the trees growing out of everywhere, the heat, the fat maharaj, the aloo-fry, LC ki chai, VT pe masti, the know-it-all lobby boy, I love it all................................

Primer

Primer makes my belief, that low-budget movies from independent directors are way better than over-hyped & over-publicized high-budget flicks, even stronger.

The plot is inherently complicated because of the implications of time travel.
Now when it comes to Time Travel, there are two ways to approach it:-
1. Consider that everything you did/do/will do is part of your destiny. The result will remain the same whether you toy with the past or not. The universe will course-correct itself if you meddle with it. You are a pitiful slave of your fate/destiny.
This is the approach taken by LOST so far, for everyone except Desmond.

2. The second approach is way cooler. Remember Back to the future? Go ahead, play with the past and get a brand new "present" every time you return back. This is what happens in Primer, even though there are very little repercussions of messing around with time.


I won't spoil the movie for you by going into the details of the plot, but here's an illustration of the mechanism involved in the time travel in Primer (courtesy Wikipedia). You can safely take a look at the pic, it won't spoil the movie for you.

--REMOVED :-(

Primer is a Sci-Fi movie "for the thinking man". There are no fancy gadgets or effects. Even the machine is never shown in detail, all we see is a box. This is the only movie that I've seen till now that comes close to The Man from Earth, in being a sci-fi without the standard Hollywood sci-fi elements in the movie (Robots, space ships, an abundance of artificial intelligence).


PS: When I say close, I am talking about light years. The Man from Earth is simply amazing.

Twilight

This movie sucks so bad that I can't even begin to tell you the number of better ways I could have spent my last two hours. This movie doesn't merit a long well written review so here I go:-

PROS:-

1. Kristen Stewart, and the ample screen time given to her. She looks beautiful, specially in the dress she wears to prom.

Allow me to post some pics to drive my point home...

--REMOVED :-(

--REMOVED :-(


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CONS:-

1. Story is really really bad, I haven't read the book but if it is even half as bad as the movie, it ought to be burnt.

2. Catchy one liners is all that the movie has, in place of normal conversations.

3. Vampires playing baseball and doing normal stuff. Give me a break, will you? At least just stick to the medieval ages.

4. Robert Pattinson - This dude sucks, He looks smug, acts smug and has one expression on his face throughout the movie, of smugness. No wonder he plays the part of Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter. He is fresh, by which I mean it appears he has been picked of the streets and cast in the movie.

5. Stupid emotions. Couldn't get even one bit of the emotional stuff going on between the characters, specially the lead ones. The makers didn't explain the attration that Bella has towards this smug-faced-excuse-of-an-actor.


Thats it. Go sleep or just waste your time thinking what cool stuff you could do if you were a vampire.

Maquinista, El

First things first, Why is this movie called Maquinista, El instead of The Machinist. Reportedly the director, Brad Anderson could not get the funding for the movie in States so he had to get it from Spain & shot the movie almost entirely in Spain. But don't let this fact deter you from watching this movie. There's not even a single word of Spanish in this movie (not that Spanish movies are bad, Pan's Labyrinth anyone?)

Christian Bale lost 63 pounds for this movie & was a mere 54 Kg during filming of this movie (who says I'm thin? Just take a look at him in this movie. In one scene you can actually see all of his ribs which is creepy & cool at the same time)

The Machinist can be categorized as a thriller, a Psychological Thriller to be precise. Some great movies of this genre are Fight Club, The Jacket, Memento, though all these fall under many different genres too and are not just Psychological Thrillers.

If at this point you haven't watched the movie, I suggest that you go and watch it right now. If you have, please continue.

So, the plot follows a Machinist named Trevor Reznik who is so thin that "If he were any thinner, he wouldn't exist." Why is he thin? because he hasn't slept for over an year now. What is the longest you haven't slept for?
Slowly, he begins to doubt his sanity as increasingly bizarre things start happening at work and at home. Haunted by a deformed co-worker who no one seems to think exists, and an ongoing stream of indecipherable Post-It notes he keeps finding on his fridge, he attempts to investigate what appears to be a mysterious plot against him.

While watching the movie I thought maybe this is all a dream that the main character is having, maybe he is in a coma or something. I was close enough.
At the end of the movie we come to know that Trevor had run over a kid while driving his car and had sped away without even trying to help the kid. When Trevor is run over by a car, later Stevie curses the "damn hit-and-run drivers"

1. Trevor is distracted by a co-worker Ivan (whom no one else sees) and leads to an accident that costs Miller his arm.
Miller says to Reznik, "I need a hand." About a minute and a half later, Miller loses his hand in machine.

2. Trevor seems afraid to touch the car cigarette lighter, this behavior is repeated several times.

3. The game of hangman is all along pointing to Killer not Mother or Miller

4. The ride 'Route 666' almost causes the boy to 'die'
'Route 666' Loudspeaker: You're going straight to Hell on Route 666!

5. Trever gets hit by a car, and Stevie says "Damn these hit-and-run" drivers

6. Trevor reports Ivan's car plate number as 743CRN, the reverse of Trevor's number - NRC347, and the Police officer says that the car was totaled an year ago.

7. Ivan does not exist as pointed out by Stevie & the non-existent body in the carpet.

8. Also,The time of 1:30 AM is significant throughout the movie. This is the time when th hit-and-run took place.

Every interaction he has had with Maria, Nicholas, Stevie and Ivan has been fictional, a hallucination brought on by extreme insomnia and repressed guilt. Finally, Trevor arrives at the police station, escorted by an encouraging but silent Ivan, to confess to his crime and at long last falls asleep in a holding cell.




I am sure everyone has been able to come up to these conclusions on their own. Now here's the real catch.

Trevor is dead. He has been dead for an year now. He is dead but not free. He is in purgatory, still unable to come to terms with the crime he committed, trying to erase it from his memory, trying to forget about the incident.

His car was totaled an year ago. During the ride 'Route 666' a red car was seen for a brief moment, the car was totaled & the passenger was dead, his internals strewn all over the road.
The car is seen entering bright white light on exiting the tunnel. He comes close to having an accident several times during the movie indicating that he had in fact been in an accident after the hit-and-run incident and is no more..


BTW "Reznik" means "butcher" in Czech language.

Greased Lightbox

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Into The Wild

I had seen "Into the Wild" some time ago and was planning on writing something about this gem of a movie for quite some time.

This movie is supposed to be the biography of one Christopher Johnson McCandless. I had never heard this guy's name before and neither had any of my friends so let me begin with who this man was (Sorry my friends in Alaska, I know now that everyone among you knows who this man is and hates him with every fiber in your body).

McCandless was born in South California, was an intelligent person (at least compared to the jackasses he was surrounded by), was raised in a dysfunctional family, donated 20,000$ of his college fee, and broke free of all bonds by taking on the name "Alexander Supertramp".

Throughout the movie he travels all across America doing weird stuff & following whatever his mind tells him to. He also meets a girl portrayed by the beautiful Kristen Stewart during his journeys. But he keeps one thing in mind, to never get attached to someone. Maybe he did so because he had lost faith in relationships of the constant fighting between his parents. This is what a typical Supertramp response is before leaving someone in the wild to move ahead in his journey :-

"I will miss you too, but you are wrong if you think that the joy of life comes principally from the joy of human relationships. God's place is all around us, it is in everything and in anything we can experience. People just need to change the way they look at things."

Sounds okay, right? Wait till you hear the rest of the story.

So Supertramp has some sort of an obsession with Alaska. He wants to end his journey with Alaska. He wants to keep moving North till he reaches Alaska. He wants to live in the "Wild", in Alaska on his own during the harsh winters away from the prying eyes and whispering voices of another human being.

Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild.

Now whatever you do, you don't wanna end up in Alaska on your own in the wild during the winters. By the time Supertramp realized he had to end his journey, it was too late. It was during these days that he realized "HAPPINESS REAL ONLY WHEN SHARED".

He died of starvation (There's some evidence that it was brought upon by some plant seed). These were his last words:-

"I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL!"

Now here's the twist, had he done some research about the place he was going to, he would have known that it was abundant with fish (You can pull the out of the water with hands, if you wish) and that there was a bridge a few hundred meters away from the place where he failed to cross the river (This is why Alaskans hate him, for making their home look bad & dangerous).

So, the real question is, Was he a fool?
You can call him many things but not a fool. I feel that he was a man who had to undergo the journey in order to find the answers he wanted for himself.
Would you have the courage to do the same , if you were in his position?
Would I have the courage to do the same, if I were in his position?

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods
There is a rapture on the lonely shore
There is society, where none intrudes
By the deep sea, and music in its roar
I love not man the less, but Nature more... - Lord Byron

In memory
Christopher Johnson McCandless
February 12, 1968 - August 18, 1992