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Showing posts from May, 2024

Of nature and nurture

What forms the basis for ones personality - is it inborn or inculcated? is it based on the environment where one grows or is it inherent in their genes? If yes for either or both of the facts, what is the split? How much percent is attributed to each fact? Guess this question is omnipresent since psychology started spreading its wings and has always been a subject of interest for story tellers as well, right from the times of kings and kingdoms to modern day Manmohan desai's. I always think about my formative years and how different it was as compared to my friend's or how similar. What were the few things that were easily available for them which wasn't in my case, that ended up shaping their personality in a huge way down the line? The other question that runs in my mind being, when did i began to be so conformist? in the sense that i rarely argued with what my parents told me and if they shouted at me or got angry over me doing something, i seldom repeated the same thing

Laapata ladies - review

 First thing that attracted me to this movie was its title - very cute and easy to say. But was bit hesitant to watch it for almost every single member of the cast were new except for the inspector. But wow. If there ever were a crop of new bunch of actors who are so apt and super natural to watch, this crew would be it. Each person are so apt and perfect for their role that, it felt like a candid camera of real life personalities. The mousy vulnerable yet pure at heart village guy who is so smitten in love with his newly wed wife, of whom he had only shared couple of sideways glance during the wedding rituals, the unbelievable-that-such-kind-of-innocent-girls-still-exist kind of a character performed by one of the leading ladies who looks so innocent and vulnerable on screen that one actually wants to help her somehow, the sharp witted other bride who gets mixed up with the innocent one, the casting has been so perfect that, even on mute you can make out from their expressions. Lovely

Cricketainment

 I am not able to recall the exact series, but guess it was surely after Steve Waugh's retirement, for i remember him sharing his views on cricket coverage. Whether it was part of a commentary or an interview, that i am not sure, but the point he made was, how advertisements have began to eat up on the coverage.  It was an ODI series where India was playing Australia i guess, where either the first ball of the over or the last ball of the over would be overlapped by ads!! If it happens to be a wicket taking delivery they would force a replay else it would be more of a match with 250+ deliveries rather than the standard 300!! And even during the rest of the over, the screen space would be shrunk to a smaller square with a "L" shaped window being used for ads!! It felt more like watching cricket in between ads, literally and when Waugh made those comments, there were criticism as well, saying the Westerners are jealous of the growing clout of BCCI. Cut to circa IPL (well, I

Of miracles and other things

Ever felt like your heart is about to beat itself to a bursting stage in pressure? You are so much stressed out that you feel like the weight of the world is on your head and shoulders and whether you shrugged or not, it is going to crush you into a pulp, one part of soul at a time? The power of fear and how all encompassing it can be making every sane thing scarier and scarier things deadly?  There is a saying that you can measure the brightness of light and can increase or decrease it but the same never applies to darkness, for its simply the absence of light. To my knowledge there is no measure for darkness. But few weeks back, i felt i had found the measure of it and it deals in sanity as its unit of measurement. When you feel suffocatingly stressed out, you can actually see darkness in bright sunlight. In times like this, mind seeks divine intervention when logic rules omnipresent, unleashing the darkness or rather not making you look for ways to get out of such situations. I happ