My affair with Insomnia

 I cannot sleep.

 Insomnia is the name of the girl I went to sleep with.

She has me under her spell, every night, 

no matter how much I fight, she takes me through hell....

Much like a bad habit, I go back to her every night....

 

It is 1 am, I cannot sleep,

Every time I close my eyes, 

Into my thoughts you creep....

Moving along in the mysterious ebb of night,

With a thousand thoughts in my head,

Why do I wander aimlessly, without putting up a fight.

I hear someone pound the door...

Wait, is it the door?

No, my mind is playing a trick, as the clock continues to click

Why this restlessness, why this confusion? Why this state of mind?

This kamikaze of thoughts will destroy me. 

I’m trying to find something, an answer?

There is a face around the corner,

 smiling at me, sticking it's tongue out,

Mocking at me, asking me to go behind it....

I know, no matter how fast I run, I cannot catch up.

There are times when a feeling of expectancy comes to me,

 as if something is there, beneath the surface of my understanding, waiting for me to grasp it.

 It is the same tantalizing sensation when you almost remember a name, but don't quite reach it.

I yearn to see dreams that I saw as a kid,

when these thoughts were non-existent,

there was a sense of calmness in my head....

Perhaps someday the revelation will burst in upon me 

and I will see the other side of this,

and then I'll laugh and close my eyes

and wait for sleep....

wait for dreams of my childhood, long since forgotten...........

Oscar Frenzy

“And the Oscar goes to......”

Yeah, yeah, I know it is December and we still have 2 months to go for the 84^th Academy awards that will be held on 26^th Feb at the Kodak theatre. Why am I writing about it now? Well, my senior colleague and dear friend, Mr.  Zahid sheikh got me thinking about it.

This is what I wait for through the year. Why do you think I watch over 100 English movies (the count increases as the ceremony nears) every year? The answer is the Oscar night (Oscar morning for people reading this in India).

For me, the Oscar night frenzy started the year Lagaan was nominated in the “Best foreign film” category. I loved the movie, and was happy (for the lack of a stronger word) when I heard that it stood a chance at being honored at “the biggest stage for movies”.  The 12^th of Feb, 2002 was a Tuesday and the whole world was gathered (well, my world then was pretty much limited to the bunch of my loony friends). We waited to watch a sardonically (much against the Oscar dress code) dressed Aamir khan walk up to the stage and receive the award as A.R.Rahman’s “O re chori” played in the prestigious Kodak theatre.

Thus began the ritual of taking a day off from college / work for witnessing the evening / night when Hollywood’s best of the best turned up in their best. The word “glitterati” was etched in my mind forever. I mean, here was a show where people were asked about the dress they wore before they were asked about the movie that got them here in the first place!! The suave suits, the plunging necklines got me hooked. This was and still is the place that truly celebrates celebrities.   

This was also the year when my dad gifted me my first ever Manorama yearbook, and said, “I do not see you reading your textbooks, see if this interests you”. It did, as I directly flipped to the movies section that gave me a list of all the Oscar winners till then. I thought I had the knowledge of “the secret scroll” as I rattled off names of Academy award winners and trivia a couple of days before the ceremony. I was conferred the title of “Shrinivas Oscar Vasishta” (which I boastfully accepted).

Much to our & the Indian media’s dismay, Lagaan was piped by No man’s land (Bosnia) won the Best foreign film award. The Oscar was lost, but the ceremony itself managed to hook us. Whoopi Goldberg (who hosted the show a record 4 times) became an overnight star for us. It made us download (from limewire, which was pretty much found in every boy’s computer those days) all the nominated movies on to our 20 GB hard disks. It converted us into movie freaks. It made us go to this newly discovered website “ww.imdb.com” and scrape for info on all the nominated stars and their movies.  Never had me and my bunch of friends found ourselves so busy and passionate about something. We had found a passion we could hold on to and nurture. The Oscars gave us something that mathematics and physics never gave us.

As the years have passed, the Oscars got better (or worse, take your pick), but one thing has not changed. Every year, our secret brotherhood exchanges notes on the year’s best movies and root for them. We make our own lists and like young kids, match our picks with the actual winners.

This year will be no different. It is that time of the year. The time of lists. The time when you, amongst other things, take stock of the year gone by.  I have my list ready, waiting to tick off one by one. Watched the splendid Ides of March yesterday. Shall watch Midnight in Paris tonight. I hope to get all my predictions right on the 27th Of Feb, 2012.

Before I sign off, here are a few links to some awesome Oscar trivia for you guys to dig on:

http://history1900s.about.com/od/1920s/a/academytrivia.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award

http://www.oscars.org/index.html

Happy reading!!!

Sherlock Holmes - A childhood hero makes a comeback

I was given a copy (I choose to call it that now, but way back, it was the thickest book I had ever held) of Sherlock Holmes – A study in Scarlet, during my 8^th standard Summer vacations. “Why don’t you do something useful?”, my grandma asked. I was the black sheep in the big tambrahm (Tamil –Brahmin, for the uninitiated) family who flunked in mathematics and did not touch books until he was 13!!

The book was supposed to be my birthday present. My appa, amma and uncle looked at me expectedly, looking for a trace of delight on my face. I beamed with joy(it was fake, of course). The little bird is finally taking flight, my dad would have thought. All I had in mind was cricket and meeting the girl next door at 5 in the evening.

The birthday went, my friend, Kapil, went away to Bombay for vacations and I learnt that the girl next door had a crush on some weirdo from the next compound ( well, that’s what I thought of him then).

I was not left with too many choices. So with a heavy heart, I pulled out my birthday present from the darkest corner of my cupboard.  Little did I know that this would suck me into a vortex of literature that would hold me captive forever!

Hold on, this is not about my shenanigans as a kid or my love for books. This is about the greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes, one has ever read about, probably [ Mycroft Holmes (Sherlock’s brother) and Hercule Poirot (Agatha Christie’s greatest creation) come a close second & third].

At 13, I idolized Sherlock Holmes. He was a hero, though he was a miserable, irresponsible drug addict, who would insult his best friend, experiment on his dog and was a brawler who practiced martial arts.

These are traits that a teenybopper would love. But what was it that made him so awesome? Irresistible? Great?

With his study of Science at university, keen mind and powers of observation, Holmes employed a process of deductive reasoning in his work, with great success. He went about his work with amazing callousness, yet “observed” things and events, most others would dismiss as trivial.

He could walk away from the gravest of situations  by turning on his charm (as per his whims and fancies). The detective with the deerstalker cap could solve cases with such ease, constantly embarrassing the London police department.

As time passed, I moved on from Arthur Conan Doyle to John Grisham, Sidney Sheldon, Jeffery Archer, Ken Follet & Lee Child and characters like Kane & Abel, Jack Reacher etc made me wade through my troubled existence in School & college. Had I forgotten Sherlock Holmes? No , I had not, but fascination for the Holmes kind of died with age.

At this point, you may wonder (rightfully), why am I writing this? Well, it is because a week from now, on the 29^th of Dec, Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes – Games of shadows makes it to the large screens in India. Memories from the novels / short stories and the hugely successful 2009 movie came flooding back.

Do Guy Ritchie and Sherlock Holmes fit? Why, it’s elementary, (as the great man would himself say) dear friends. History tells us that great literature may not necessarily translate into great cinema, but I tell you that great literature in the right hands, makes for some awesome experience.

In Guy Ritchie’s movie, Holmes is an avid boxer, a martial artist, a dabbler in many sciences, and a master of disguise. Most importantly, he is an expert in logic and deduction. His version in more swashbuckling, more thrilling and more edgy than the stories / novels but that does not make it any less faithful to the original. Ritchie's directorial style also comes through, from the dark, grimy Victorian- London production values to the violent boxing and martial arts matches.       

Robert Downey Jr. is right at home in the role of the infamous detective. Swapping out futuristic armor for a pipe and fiddle, he plays another character with the wit and confidence of his Tony Stark persona in 'Iron Man.' He brings quick-wit, cunning, and a scruffy toughness to a role long seen as stuffy and dry. He is ably supported by Jude Law. He brings in distinguished charm that, at times, spills over into testy aggressiveness. Both toss off the one-liners with ease. They take top honors, arguing like an old married couple while deep down knowing that they'd be lost without each other.

The direction is great, the locations are likewise smart, the costumes are admirable, and the effects are gritty, proving to be another benefit of having a director like Ritchie at helm. The musical score is supplemental to the frantic convolutions of the film's earlier scenes, providing a spirited tune that rides the energy of fiddling and poses as anything but generic.

 

 

With so many positives, a visit to the theatres on 29^th to witness the sequel on large screen becomes a must.

It will be interesting to be wowed by action in Victorian era just a week after Ethan Hunt pulled off the Burj Khalifa stunt. Also the fact that Holmes will be pitted against  his most feared nemesis, Prof. Moriarty makes this movie an interesting prospect.

Here is hoping to see off 2011 on a high.

Over to you guys………