Trouble in Desi Love - my 2015 webmark

Climate change had huge impact in 2015, Hollywood, the amazon of global movie makers, remained dry for whole year, while Bollywood had unusual drizzle of movies, I couldn’t believe that I ended up watching some of them.

Bollywood is quintessentially dishes out masala and romantic movies, most of the movies unwittingly have similar stories cleverly repackaged time again and again. A lot of stories and aspect of romance and life never see light of day as maker are not confident about viewer’s response and ROM  (Return on Movies).  This year two of the movies that dealt with romance in different phases of life had all the usual masalas.

Masaan – one of those hindi movies that we see occasionally in a decade. Masaan has both heart and soul in place and right amount of emotions, fun, romance and tragedy as its ingredient. It is a movie about perils of love in a small town India, revolving around two couples and the difficulty love brings. How unfortunate an intimate liaison would consequently turnout to be and how difficult courtship can be in a society divided on the lines of class and caste, is well depicted in the movie. Despite the seriousness of the theme movie blends light hearted romance of young generation. Life and lifestyle of small town is brilliantly portrayed by all the characters, last such movie that effectively covered the panorama with depth & variety in the story was 2011 movie Engaeyum Eppothum, which had a different take on love life in small town Tamil Nadu. Masaan doesn’t provide instant gratification like Maggi noodles, its only afterwards you realized what was served to you.

Tanu Weds Manu Returns – As love-life sometimes can turn out to be chaotic, unpredictable and devoid of all reasons and monotonous married life can be, the sum result you expect is disaster and stupidity amplified in a movie. Like all romcom movies that exaggerate the events and scenarios in life, this movie is no different from other. The movie also has almost all the elements of Woody Allen movie – characters are emotional, irrational and in search for elusive love, the only point that this movie differs is philosophical introspection and loud scenes, which makes it perfect for Bollywood. It fills all the holes with shoot & go punch-lines and impeccable comic timings of ensemble cast. For a movie to explore and perfectly mix a dreaded phase of married life with keeping Bollywood element alive is sure rare and unusual. The very reason this movie stands out among the other movies regularly dished out by Bollywood.

     

It's Different

The first and obvious answer to how it felt being married for so many years was good. What else you here from a married man caught between marriage and question on marriage. Well after some introspection there seems to be an answer to the question, it’s different.

It might be called clichéd comment coming out of desperate need to create some distinction in your married life, but I would insist it is really different. I know most of the people count similarities in married person’s life….well to begin with its called dead. People count numerous similarities in life of several married couples everything from bored life to similar family responsibilities that make people believe that your marriage can’t be different.

Well, it might not be wrong to say that married couples face similar situations and scenarios across the globe but to infer that everyone has similar experience and hence same married life would be mistake. Situations may remain same but people are always different, so every couple would have its share of arguments and fights but when it comes to my life its always different because same situations don’t yield similar solutions and outcomes, to expect my wife never reacts on expected lines, this brings element of surprise and fun in my life. You go home thinking that you have already won the battle but when you enter the house you realize that it has turned upside down.

It amazing that when people make you believe that your life is not going to be different, marriage turns yours life on unexpected lines. Marriage is a surprise mathematical equation, almost everyone knows the question and in fact they also know the outcome but surprise is the infinite number of ways that people take to solve it or mess it up, and believe me everyone takes his own route despite being told otherwise. In the end it may sound like ketchup slogan but its always different.

Humpty Dumpty and Humpday

An artist (Andrew) knocks the door of his old pal, Ben,a married man, instantly reconnects with him baffling his wife. His wife tries to comes to in terms with being sidelined in her own home, while the guys bond over conversation. This is amongst the movies which are largely build around conversation, also my major motive of watching this movie. Most of the conversation based movies are largely upredicatble, you don't know where conversation would take the movie to, but in this case, you do.

The couple in the movie are conventional people, who are brought up on conventional line of thinking and living such life, i.e. Finding job/other half, getting married, buying house and planning kids. Suddenly, our pal Ben is overwhelmed with the life, lifestyle and work opportunities of his artist friend; in comparison his life is pale.

Ben warms upto the life of artists and over the conversation decides to be part of the of a movie made exclusively for a film festival that no one has heard of, all he got to do it tell his wife and if she is okay with it. One conversation leads to another and the baffled wife comes to know her hubby wants to make an “porn movie” and amazingly she is the one who tells that the movie fest is all about pornography least about art, which our fren Ben defends as artist's reinvention of pornography as art, an “alternate porn or art porn”. She asks her husband why he suddenly wants to make a porn movie, and like all normal people who are trapped in their conventional role and life, her husband is totally clueless why he wants to make an porn movie.

The most freaky part of the movie: the last part of the movie turns out to be the most freaky part of the movie. The two guys meet to make their porn. Well, i didn't tell you the kind of porn they want to make for art's sake; it's straight guy gay porn, yes, if this sounds freaky to you then you should see the last part. I was praying for lack of action, which would have made it kind of difficult to watch and digest. You would have to watch it to know if my prayers were answered or not. The two straight guys talking about ways to ignite chemistry create attraction and the reason & necessity for making such movie makes even more freaky conversation.

The Smartest thing: the whole damn movie is about a person's or writer's idea about two straight guys attempt to make gay porn for art's sake and the whole conversation which any one would have gone through while pushing this idea and the director amazingly turns this whole idea and conversation into a movie.

And finally, i really never heard of this art porns, i was really laughing at it being casting couch tapes of indie movie producers (anyways all porno producers are independent). But, damn if anyone has, please bring it to light.

A small ‘Update” and A Giant Leap

I know most of you would be thinking its too late to talk about leap year, if there was any. I’m not talking about it anyway. It’s about relationship. Once you get married and a few years pass by, then you see things stabalise around you. Its lot more peaceful as you are pretty sure when and how your partner gonna throw pan at you and you are very confidant that you will be able to catch it. Not only things stablise but also intensity and enthusiasm levels also come down, as every thing can’t remain same.

Once you are done with giant leap of slaying your bachelor life and years pass by then its very easy for everyone to sort life you or shall I say simplify it you…and the solution is always another leap (having kids). It’s the best argument, “what else you gonna do anyway”. But if you have not taken the second leap then you its somewhat different for you as you really need to do something before you start loosing some fizz.

It much like reinventing what you had already invented in your relationship (which described by women in two words is usually – stupid and useless). It’s somewhat similar like what corporates do, instead of launching a whole new version they release an ‘UPDATE’ when they are sure that their product is loosing some charm and they are not ready to take it to next level. Little bit shine over here & there, little bit re -jigging and result is an “update”.

“update” is the real short term solution to bring smile and excitement back in to the life. It’s a small step for man and giant improvement in mankind’s personal life (yeah, I get it its exaggerated). Oh, and talking about ‘leaps’, I saw leap of different kind when I visited a mall sometime back.

To my surprise, I saw a lot of the men holding their kid in hand while their better half enjoyed the outing. I had not seen so many men at same place and in similar condition (yeah its condition). I couldn’t believe it and I really didn’t want to! I cribbed to myself, how the hell men in this country took this leap of being “friendly” to their kids (all this bullshit was largely limited to movies), in my parents generation kids were scared of their father, now I see them hand in hand. Fathers were meant to be strict and scary, which always drove kids to their mothers and gave men free to do their stuff (which largely is doing nothing). Now this gone…gone forever. I couldn’t believe this leap had to happen during my generation only, couldn’t they have waited one more generation to pass by. But now, thanks to this leap by men of our country our lives are going to get screwed. Did I hear someone screaming??

Rush To Flush

Now that all hoopla around sania mirza and shohiab malik is over and they are done with chasing each other. I realised what just had happened and i know that it was result of being in one sceanrio that no one desires to be, i call it 'rush to flush'. It happens when you are just out of a relationship and the most unfortunate & immediate escape route goes towards another relationship.

Fall to 'rush to flush' is aided and abetted by two tools -'Stepney' and 'Open Window'. 'Stepney', as i call it, is mindware programme, it keeps tracks of all the alternate options, be it available or unavailabe in a person's life, it runs in the background while you continue your existing relationship (but remember 'stepney' turns from mindware to malware once you get married and has distructive affects). 'Open Window' as explined by our friend Ted Mosby, (in HIMYM series), is a real time relationship timeline alert tool that reminds you who has who has just moved out of relationship thus making window of opportunity open for the person.

These two tools are though independent of each other but are also complementary.Sometimes, both of these run together on same person and sometimes separaely. In case of sania mirza it was desperate need to escape from aftermath of a disastrous relationship and she turned to 'stepney' to find solace. Sohaib Malik on the other hand waited for 'Open Window' alert to make his move. Both these tools work perfectly fine until your immediate reason to be in one relationship happens to escape ruote from another, as you are emotionally drained mind plays its own game thus leading to 'rush to flush'.

I have seen it happening to two of my friends, one needed stepney and other was waiting for window to open, they hitched in this scenario dated for long even got married but still couldn't save the relationship. And,i also remember thelast big celebrity 'rush to flush', aishwarya rai and vivek oberoi; we all know the outcome. It usually follows the same pattern withperson thinking why the hell i got into this situation.

Woman's Activism!

Every time I enter a shopping mall I face the same irritant, and no they are not sales persons offering new schemes. If you ever go to men’s section/floor, you will find more women then men. More women in men’s section is not a headache but the women activism sure is a headache. The sense you get on men’s section is almost like it belongs to women, the smell of perfume tells you who dominates the floor, you always see them calling shots taking decision about what men should wear, which they actually should take. I can’t believe that I have seen woman actually deciding undergarments for her men (yeah and this doesn’t happen vice versa in India) and the man looked clueless, what kind of looser that man can be who doesn’t know about his undergarments.

I fail to understand one thing, how come men have really no idea what they should wear. Men’s fashion is not as complex as women’s fashion and there aren’t many frequent changes in their fashion either. Still, most of the men seem to be clueless about what to wear. Lack of sense of fashion amongst men is acceptable as lot of men have this particular quality, but not being able to make decision about your worst sense of dressing is more appalling.

Last time when I went to a mall, it was usual, women commanding their men. I saw a person being dished out number of shirts for trial, all by his wife, he got a good number of options to choose from but unfortunately none were his!!! Well, this is classic case of clothing decision made by most of men in India; they get to make none of the decisions.

Since childhood, it’s mother who makes all decision about her son’s clothing (sometimes fathers too) though kids go out but decision is generally don’t get to take any decision, this usually goes on until child reaches to college gates. In some unfortunate instance even during college days moms decide what their kids would wear, this one can still be observed in any mall in India. But, these guys are not the most unfortunate; the unfortunate ones are the guys who bring their gal to decide what they should wear. This usually is freedom time to develop your own style and sense because at next leap this freedom usually gets curtailed. I still don’t know why guys do this because girls don’t really get impressed with it but they do get idea whether guy is conformist/confrontationist (and you know who a girl would better like!).

For married men the problem is very different, despite being financially independent devoid of any upper-hand from parents, he still can be coerced to accept choice of her partner. Married men gets bewildered by the consequence of saying no to his wife, anyone can guess the consequence of saying no to the parents but in case of wife consequence is always unpredictable. I kind of sympathise with married men especially the ones who are cheered at lot when they come out of the trial room and has no idea about what he is wearing, a reluctant smile and deal is sealed (..so is his misery).

I’m not pretty sure what trigger this indecisiveness amongst men, lack of fashion or lack of judgment. Though, space for lack of fashion actually never gets filled but women don’t give second chance to men when it comes to occupying the ‘lack of judgment’ space.

The Mystery Look

Just a few days back I was having lunch with my colleague and was joined by a another colleague with whom I hardly have had any interaction. The other colleague was surprised to know that I was married. “You don’t look like married”. This had happened a lot of time and it was followed by a similar reaction in all the occasions, but I hadn’t paid much attention to it. Suddenly, after lunch i thought how does a young married man really look like?

I really didn’t have the answer, how can I! And last person to answer this question would be your wife, how could she believe that you don’t look married. So, how does a person who doesn’t know the other person really makes out if the other person is married? This ‘ring’ thing doesn’t really work out in India as Indian wear too many rings (sometimes they double up on same finger!!).

So, what does? Apparently aged look may be a good proof, especially in countries like India where traditions are upheld, age and marriage are very much interlinked, and everybody can’t be George Clooney/Salman khan (old and in demand). Though, I must say that aged look can’t be strong argument in urban India as now it is at par with global trend of marriage at late age. But, anyways, this argument doesn’t suffice for young people.

Male balding, I thought could be another clue; but I read that at least a quarter of men start going bald in their 20s itself. So, young, bald and married is a weak correlation. But, my hunch is that men always resist baldness until they get married. Once, married they don’t resist this inhuman torture to their heads. And off course this argument doesn’t apply to men with congenital divorce defect.

I’m not sure if married man looks grim or aloof, it largely a media creation. Married man is always presented as tormented in visual media, which makes everyone belief that’s how a married looks. If this was true then around a billion married all over the world have be identified with a single expression. Not knowing where to look for further clue I looked other way, Google way, which has invaded our lives; surprisingly image results were totally incoherent with my expectations. They were the same images depicted in movies and magazines (and there was an unexpected discovery, I realized that in most of unchoreographed images of couples they were looking in different directions).

Well, I have realised that it is quite difficult to indentify young married man until unless it’s very much written on his face. I know this will one of my friend (who still has not changed his status on social networks) very happy that his market value is intact. I’m totally out of ideas But, I really want to know if you still find how a married man looks like, if anyone can help me out then this would be discovery than Monalisa smile.

Anniversary Special: Discovery of “LazyMan”

There was time not long ago I used to here this mythical stories married man being lazy. It was all over be it movies about couples, television or any conversation about couples that you ever overheard. Though, I didn’t believe it much.

Laziness is something which is almost impossible for a man to be unfamiliar with, throughout the history men have actually been competing with other lazy animals for dominance, so that only man survives. Dodo, one of the laziest and popular birds in recent history was made extinct by another lazy animal and most probably it was sub-species of social animal known as “Married Man”.

Laziness comes to the male character unknowingly since childhood, especially Indians, after being spoon-fed and pampered. That’s how we grow up, getting everything without having to make much of an effort. By the time man grows up he remains totally unaware of his super abilities, till he gets married off course.

For women, men have always been one dimensional figure preferably known by words such as stupid, dog/kutte, pervert, and for married women it’s always ‘lazy’. It does takes a wife sometime to realise how movable a man can be and in most of the cases they turnout to be immovable, even then this immovable property still offends his ‘laziness’ title by twisting his fingers on tv remote, on mobiles and computers.

A wife’s sixth sense comes to this realisation soon (usually after a year) that there is inherent relationship between man’s DNA and sofa design and they stick to each other. On the other hand, it is always incomprehensible for (lazy)man why things have to happen and needed to be done!! (I guess this is the reason why lazyman despite being available in abundance is not popular as spiderman or superman if someone dare shout “lazyman” for help in a public space then a lot of heads will turn on and then they will quickly turn-off as well.)

I think at this point of time wife names married man as ‘lazyman’ for perpetuity. Then, it makes appearance in your conversations, one out of ten, and most probably it is the first word that falls into married man’s ears, when he runs into argument with his wife. Soon, this word spreads like wild fire and married man discovers that it is by this name that he is more recognised in the neighbourhood and social circles. But, smartly married man makes out that ‘lazyman’ is a common noun, which he can easily masquerade in public, but at home he is more comfortable with this identity.

The Syndrome

It was late in the evening and I was surfing through the television, Seinfeld was on a channel. Despite watching the series numerous times, I again hooked up. Seinfeld is kind of spiritual…ageless body timeless mind, nothing changes over period of time. Seinfeld was facing “you gotta watch the baby” problem. He was bugged with friends inviting him to watch new born baby. That episode reminded me something similar, the numerous syndromes that I observed in young people and my friends, in particular.

Just few years back, some of my friend suffered from “when are you getting married?” syndrome when they got married. One of my friends got severely affected by this syndrome. His obvious question on every call used to be “when are you getting married?” After a few friends got married, I realised that it was odd-man out feeling that made him constantly ask the question for assurance that he was not alone. Anyways, my friend’s question to all of us was answered after some years.

By the time I was married, he already had headstart….. to another syndrome-”when are you having baby?” he had worked out all timelines (no, I don’t mean time to make call to us), the human clock, biological clock and most importantly family clock. Earlier he wasn’t persistent with anyone. But, now he feels the need for all of us to join his club simultaneously. Now, we hear all the clocks and amazingly I also had to hear the dialogues that even my parents haven’t said to me. The trouble with this syndrome is that the only time it gets cured when you join their ranks and in some severe cases people become of them and also act like the ‘syndrome’ guy.

Anniversary Special !

A week back, a year had passed by and I almost didn’t notice it. Though, I remembered it and everyone did remind it was my first marriage anniversary. Good thing that a year of married life passes away and you don’t feel it, probably don’t have marriage blues in the beginning. The week coincided with three of my friends getting ready marriage and they all asked me how I felt like and what my experience was.

Though I could hardly recollect (see the impact, man) but I tried for them. I realized that by the time you get married, you are so molded in your personality that its hard to adjust. It is even more difficult to adjust to traits of other persona or even make other adjust to your personality. And that too for everyday, I think it is quite a mission impossible task. If your habits match then it is good as it is duplication of activities (as said in our biz lingo). But if your habits are different then it is mostly fun, sometimes its weird and sometimes its fight. When it is fight, it is really tough. Because, when you are newly married then it is really difficult to fight, I mean REALLY difficult ‘coz you are really not sure if you should argue!! If you can then you don’t know how long and how far you can take it. If you do indulge in fight with a friend then you can go and make up with your friends after a week but that time you don’t have in marriage because by that time damage is already done. To undo that damage you have to damage something else- your money. That why for whole year I have been trying to preempt such situation; me and my wife have been practicing and hurling those filmi punches (and we never forget to add that background), so if we are angry we make it look really REAL. I must tell you that I still don’t experience in facing assault of all kinds of kitchenware, so can’t tell you how you can defend. In all, you may forget anything but you remember what time of night you have to reach your home. And, yeah what’s case of hair loss, I still can’t make a right guess, if its Bangalore water or marriage taking toll of my precious hairs. Sure, would like to believe its water.

SecondLife: New Wave, My Predictions

More than three years back, someone started a virtual life community, SecondLife, where anyone can create his/her virtual persona/character and it develops a community. Soon I forgot about it, but it didn’t end there. A few months back, one of my friend came and told me how much he loved Secondlife and how it had evolved - you can buy a piece of virtual land, so many companies had opened virtual stores and virtual shoes, cloths could be bought for your virtual life; they even started their own currency. He loved it so much and had become addicted to it. This was frustrating to me, why the hell people were spending so much time to make themselves up in virtual life? What gratification they got doing by wasting time in creating virtual characters and dressing them up.

It was freaky to find so many young people indulging in it and mostly Americans; I lost no time in terming them as childish and the ones who were more hooked to the virtual life than the real one. Anyways, even that didn’t put the issue to the rest. Few days earlier I saw a report - some hotshot from IBM was telling that they had developed a system wherein people can send sms to virtual characters and users could also transmit the sms to people using their virtual life characters, and added that this would set stage for next level evolution of communication in virtual and real world.

Well, when I thought this fad would die its natural death, it came back and probably it may grow even bigger this time. Then I started thinking what else it could evolve to? So, here is my take on what this virtual world can evolve to! People would surely enjoy reading and sending sms for time being through Secondlife though such effort may not last but who knows it may evolve to mms video massages of SecondLife characters speaking to you. If something like that happens I bet it would be a big hit, people would love watching animated videos of their characters. I guess most of people would be sending weird and freaky massages, specially the times when people are angry with someone.

But what if SecondLife also becomes an alternative to e-cards and people start wishing each other through their characters (specially those valentine ones, guys would get a better tool to purpose- really hidden virtually visible), I think that will nail e-cards business out of business. If something like that ever happens it won’t be limited to a few such offerings. If people become so hooked to sms on SecondLife then they might also like reading their massages on SecondLife with each character reading out the massage, what if you open your mail and your boss says “you are promoted”, I believe such stuff would be a real rage and it would pose serious challenges to e-mail providers like yahoo or hotmail.

Such developments may lead to a lot of such companies starting up their own virtual life portals to protect their market. I know most of you people now will not believe if I say all the social network sites may start using virtual life characters to make it more exciting or SecondLife itself may become social network site like Orkut where every user would have animated character and can talk to other, I know its kind of weird but it may have a future prospect. Then the real and virtual life would get immersed(or, shall I say, messed up) in each and there would be a thin line to differentiate.

But this is not all, my biggest out of the world idea is, if companies start verifying virtual characters just like the online signature and then you can shop online in real life using your virtual life character, man that would be massive, it will blow everyone’s mind. I know most of you reading this may feel like banging their head on wall but what if it really happens, I know most of it wont happen any soon but probably some will in next few years.