The Pain of Innocence

Poets have mourned for centuries on the loss of Innocence and whole nations have been blamed for the loss of Innocence. Yet the world succumbs before the truth that Innocence and Humanity cannot coexist. In spite of all those verses preaching you on Innocence, it never was a virtue and more so NOW. Sanity pleads before morality, yelling out 'Let me go. Let me abandon my Innocence with thee. What use is it to me apart from being the source of unfair affrontry and a dead weight around the neck?'

The mere evidence of its presence in your kith shrinks your soul and brings you untold pain on the realization of what pain it is about to engender him, beset by men and hounds. Then why do you still try to hold onto the rope of Innocence that is fraying before your own eyes, to keep from falling into the abyss of reality.

Knows: Dear, Don't trust everyone. They might deceive you.
Not Knows Yet: Ka, What does deceive mean?
Gulping in air. Ah! He doesn't know. Why, God?
Knows: Dear, deceive is a harsh word. It is something like. see, your friends might be with you all the time when you are having fun but later on they might leave you and even forget about you. deceive is much more than that.
Not knows Yet: But MY friends will never leave me.
Knows: (Sadly accepting the pain): Yes, Dear. Your friends wont.

Let it remain so. I shall try to preserve it until i can.
And thus the world spins.

Currently Reading

FURY - Salman Rushdie

Serves as a vent for my own fury that has bottled up inside me for sometime now.


Excerpts

Rome did not fall because her armies weakened but because Romans forgot what being a Roman meant. Might this new Rome actually be more provincial than its provinces; might these new Romans have forgotten what and how to value, or had they never known? were all empires so undeserving, or was this one particularly crass? Was nobody in all this bustling endeavor and material plenitude engaged, any longer, on the deep quarry-work of the mind and heart? O Dream-America, was civilization's quest to end in obesity and trivia, at Roy Rogers and Planet Hollywood, in USA Today and on E!; or in million-dollar-game-show greed or fly-on-the-wall voyeurism; or in the eternal confessional booth of Ricki and Oprah and Jerry, whose guests murdered each other after the show; or in a spurt of gross-out dumb-and-dumber comedies designed for young people who sat in darkness howling their ignorance at the silver screen; or even at the unattainable tables of Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Alain Ducasse? What of the search for the hidden keys that unlock the doors of exaltation? Who demolished the City on the Hill and put in its place a row of electric chairs, those dealers in death's democracy, where everyone, the innocent, the mentally deficient, the guilty, could come to die side by side? Who paved Paradise and put up a parking lot? Who settled for George W, Gush's boredom and Al Bore's gush? Who let Charlton Heston out of his cage and then asked why children were getting shot? what, America, of the Grail? O ye Yankee Galahads, ye Hoosier Lancelots, O parsifals of the stockyards, what of the Table Round?

Rock On! Rocking....

Rarely do we get to watch a movie based on rock music as the prime theme and for a country plagued by masala flicks and aging superheroes, Rock On! comes as a refreshing whiff of fresh air, bringing out the flavor of Indian rock music. This is the story of four friends who dream of making the greatest Indian rock band ever but circumstances lead them to break apart vowing to never return back to music to complete their dream. After 10 long years of failed music careers and forgotten relationships, a chance meeting leads them to come together and rediscover their friendship and relive their passion. The gigs, the music and the lyrics make us go totally gung-ho over it.

The four guys start out with dreams of making it big in the world of music and they form a rock band "magik". They win a rock competition owing to Their natural talent and originality and so are entitled to make an album for their rock band. Conflicting egos and demeaning circumstances lead them to break apart and forget their dreams. each of them goes his own way, vowing to never return back.

Reposing on the lack of life in her marriage with Adi, Sakshi wishes to bring back Adi's past as a rock singer and with it the happyness that he lacked as the suave investment banker. Adi does not want to confront his past and his failures, the memories of which he had carefully restrained in his mind. After Sakshi leaves him stating that their marriage too was a compromise for Adi, he decides to face his other self and revive his friendship with the other band members. The four meet and they realize that they cannot give away their passion after all. The jamming sessions at Adi's place brings out their raw talent and also their friendship. They decide to complete their album and after many set-backs, they do finally fulfill their dream....

The scoring point of the movie is the intense emotional content and the complex relationships emoted flawlessly by the actors. Farhan Akthar brings out the actor in him by his apt reactions with no excess frills and unwarranted sentiments. Arjun Rampal deserves high commend especially in his violent upsurges against the director and more subdued as a failed musician in the later half. Having seen Purab as the irritating VJ earlier, he comes as a complete surprise, fitting perfectly into the role of the spirited drummer and the happy-go-lucky gujju seth. :P Luke Kenny plays the low-key, forgotten keyboardist, disgruntled with his own life of composing pieces for second grade music directors.

The ROTFL scene is the one in which the band performs at a typical Indian wedding!! Other look-outs-for is Purab's loong beard plait and Arjun's long hair (sigh!). Overall, the movie was totally smashing!!

Zebra Crossing!