Juhi Speaks Her Mind

On a cloudy Sunday afternoon, i sat in a restaurant with Juhi. When the waiter arrived with the menu card she immediately grabbed it before i could take it in my hands and then try to act chivalrous by handing it to her before having a look at it. She asked me, "What will you have?" I said, "Coffee". She told the waiter to get a cup of coffee for me and one sweet lime juice - without sugar - for herself. These acts, as i found out later in our interview, were an indication of her nature: she turned out to be moderately feminist and also a person who is frank and does not add a sugar coating to what she says.

I asked her, "Do you consider yourself a conservative or a liberal or a moderate?" She said she couldn't decide between moderate and liberal but eventually settled down for liberal. I tried to test her response so i asked her about her views on the decriminalisation of section 377. She replied, "i am very happy about the Delhi High Court ruling. Up to the age of 18 i used to be disgusted by the idea of homosexuality, but now things are different. i have had friends who are homosexuals and so i am very happy. I don't like anything being kept in the closet. It is better for every one if they are open about their sexuality"

Next i asked her about her views on abortion. She said that it is a practical option to having a child out of wedlock or even an unwanted child. however she does believe that couples should plan for a child so that a situation where they have to consider an abortion is avoided. She may have not used the cliched statement 'prevention is better than cure' but that was what she believed in.

At this point of time the sun came out, and it got brighter as the clouds of doubt in my mind about whether Juhi is a liberal started clearing. My next question to her was whether she was a feminist. Her response was an unsure one, much like the one she had for the first question. She said that is very proud to be a woman and that she believes in the equality of the sexes. However she added that she is not a radical feminist. Then i asked her whether she finds Indian society sexist, to which she gave a fairly elaborate response: "To a certain extent it is, but i have not been a victim of it yet. I have worked in Mumbai and people have never considered me incompetent just because i am a woman. however when you go to small towns you see men treating women badly; women are denied education as they are married off at an early age. I consider all this a social evil. I believe that men and women are equal, and that society should give them the same rights. for this to happen the mentality of the people should change."

I drank the last few sips of my coffee and called for the bill as the interview was over. I thanked her for speaking to me and left with a feeling of satisfaction, that i had interviewed an intelligent progressive woman: the kind that this country needs.

Friends in Solitude

They say, 'misery loves company',
Let me then express my gratitude
For that, what can't be bought by money
My dear friends in solitude
In nature lies everything in a pair
And just like one needs the breathing air
All need one other to love and to care
In who's hearth there is a flare
The lack of that is a grim chasm
To our restless youthful minds
We all generally seek orgasm
To get a room and draw the blinds
But we do as our reason dictates
And wait till we a re grim and old
So we distract ourselves in our patient wait
In this dark time when we do as told
We seek solace in our unpaired comrades
The ones we call - our friends-
Our companions till we are college grads
Or till our wait eventually ends
"Friends in laughter, friends in tears
From the from the deepest valley to the highest altitude"
Memory remains all through the years
Of our dear friends in solitude.

Lonely Heart

"It is better to have loved and lost
Than not to have loved at all"
One is ready to pay all of the cost
Than to save one's heart from the fall
The destiny of life is not written by men
Thus I don't know from where to start
If you ask me "what ails you then?"
It is your presence in my lonely heart
It saw the world in its solitary gaze
And found you and gave a wail
Logic said "it's just a phase"
But you endured like a timeless tale
Before you it was incomplete but fine
Then you burst forth like a stone, shattering glass
My heart now yells "Be mine! Be mine,
And I shall love you like no one ever has."
I want to know what it takes to win you over
Is it any science or is it an art
For that my most precious possessions I offer
My only and lonely heart.

Juvenile Love

I witnessed the moonlight on the grounds
Where I once used to play football
Oh how we ran like hunting hounds
And returned home before nightfall.
Those were the days of innocence,
Before my lips had touched a bottle of beer
Or those of girls, for it was of them
And darkness that I had great fear.
That is why i love the moonlight
For it saves me from the night's groping darkness
It shows me the path that is right
I wish there'd be a path towards greatness.
So that I could have shown you what I am
Not to boast nor to brag, but to win your love
But all I did is what an innocent child can
Tried every trick in the book, to win your love.
I could juggle the ball or make my finger vanish
What does it take for a girl to be impressed?
Thinking of that, from my class I got banished!
It was for you that I was often well dressed.
But it was all in vain
So I took to the verse
To vent out my pain
For I didn't know how to converse.
Those are all that remain of those times
And shall remain for as long as I am alive
Memories may fade as the clock chimes
But in my verses the child will survive.

I wrote this poem nearly 2 years ago in order to do exactly what the person who is the narrative voice in the poem seems to have struggled to do. Impress a girl. Some things that worry a child are really funny when we grow up and one such thing which worried me a lot was being impressive to the opposite sex (ok adults worry about it too. But not as much. I hope), something that I failed miserably in! Things got better as I got older, wiser and started writing poems such as this one. This is one of my favorite poems not only because the ladies found it impressive, but because it is an honest confession. I have edited several times and here is the final result.

Angels and Demons

I watched the film Angels and Demons today with a few friends at Chandan theatre in Juhu. We bought tickets in the stalls, not because we ran short of money, but because we wanted to go through the plebeian experience of siting in the stall. It was quite a let down because the general crowd which graces the seats in the lower altitudes of the theatre and entertains the other movie goers with their antics such as whistling and loud comments was missing today. We should have known! The general Chandan crowd would be missing for an English movie. Our disappointment didn't end there, we were left disappointed with what we saw on the screen as well.

The movie is based on the novel of the same name by Dan Brown of 'The Da Vinci code' fame. It is set in the Vatican city and the plot revolves around a symbologist trying to solve a murder mystery. The most notable stars in the cast are Tom Hanks and Ewan McGregor.

The movie had the general flaw that all movies based on novels have. It is very difficult to incorporate the entire story from the novel unless its one written by Hemingway (but then a director might not be able to show on the several elements that make Hemingway's work great) and therefore the audiences that have read the novel before, may feel that the movie is incomplete. My friends accompanied had not read the book before, and hence their opinions were useful to me to gauge how that half of the audience felt about the film. They found the film to be too quick paced with the character of Robert Lagdon played by Tom Hanks talking too briskly about the various historical facts which were central to the plot. Even though the movie is fast paced it is 2 and half hours long and hence they said the forgot a great number of the interesting facts that the story reveals. The various historical facts about the catholic and art, and about the famous medieval period men such as Galileo, Michelangelo and Raphael was the USP of Dan Brown's novel. Without the seemingly controversial trivia the plot remains an ordinary murder mys try with only a couple of twists. This trivia was not as prominent in the movie as it is in the book and hence the movie did essentially seem like a murder mystery. Hence my friends were left felling that they were served an old wine in a new bottle.

It is clear that the director must have had two things to keep in mind while making the movie i.e. to make the audience understand the plot and to make the audience understand the the historical details. Unfortunately as illustrated earlier these to objectives are conflicting. If the director had chosen to make the audience understand the historical detail then the movie would have become unreasonably lengthy. Therefore it seems that Ron Howard has chosen to give the plot the paramount importance.

What the movie lacks the most is strong characters. The movie has half a dozen important characters and director hasn't focused enough on developing them and the relationships between them. If he would have focused more on the motives of these characters then the movie could have probably have been more entertaining. The acting being average at best does not help this cause. Moreover he has wasted time in the opening scene by showing an elaborate scientific experiment when he could have used that time for a prologue or developing the characters, which would have drawn a clearer picture about the plot.

What is good about the movie is that it is shot in Rome. Here the movie wins some easy brownie points as it takes the viewers on a virtual trip to all the historical Churches in the city, which are rich with art. The cinematography is brilliant and captures the buildings from various angles that makes them look breathtakingly beautiful. The one image that remains in my mind is the one inside the Sistine chapel. Since i have not been there in person i was stunned at the brilliance of all the art on the walls and can now understand why it is said that some people break down on their first visit to the arguable the greatest piece of art ever created by a man. There is only one small shot of the inside of the chapel in the film, which is probably a good thing, because few more seconds focusing on Michelangelo's marvelous paintings on the wall could have led to the audience forgetting what had so far happened in the movie!

Angels and Demons is great advertisement for Rome and the tourist board will be very happy with the out come. However as a movie it could have been much better given the success of the book.

A Walk in the Woods

It happened during a morning stroll
Surrounded by the woods i walked
I heard a cry of a ghastly fowl
As near the carcass the vultures had flocked.

As I watched the end of the creature's life cycle
I felt that the end of the woods was near
For the homes of men and their food, staple
Men are the vultures that trees should fear.

Apocalypse is near for nature's beauty
Where then will the animals go?
How can I stop this monstrous catastrophe,
As difficult as stopping a river's flow?

I decided to gather tree lovers like me
So that all hope for the woods isn't lost
Like the birds then, the woods will be free
And their roots will not be reached by the frost.