My best friend's wedding

I ve known her for vaguely 15 years and closely from 12 years! Have spent 4 years like inseparable siamese twins who are everywhere together. Up until I met her, I had already had my share of good friends and I am one of those who gets pampered not just loved by her friends. So my standards for a best friend was and is really high. However , when she entered my life she took pampering to some other level so much so that when I was alone and ill , my mom used to ask a single question.. is namrata around..and end the call.(considering moms and their hysteria u shud know how big deal this is 😋)  ! She is one of those ppl on earth who are initially difficult to digest because you don't know ppl can be so good too! She loves a lot.. cares a lot.. puts herself as last priority in her list (which I don't approve of 🙄). Well I could not learn from her to be selfless and all but she did make me feel so cared that I realised how good you feel when someone cares for you.( I was almost an inexpressive analysing robot then) A bit of that care seeped into my character through her, fortunately. More than anything, she was the one who made me realize home can be a person too! Over the years we have grown as individuals and learnt to accept and respect our flaws,  love more and more with time and treasure our friendship. Though given a choice I would keep her all to myself, I am giving up my selfish instincts realising that time has come for her THE day..her wedding day ! In my eyes she is that tender flower which wrong ppl will hold the wrong way and crush . So I am secretly very protective about her and feel any man is not good enough to nurture that tender flower!!
So giving her away to a man is not easy at all! As the special day is nearing,I am trying to be all matured composed and dignified about it..but secretly I am just hoping that I shouldn't breakdown on her wedding 😂😂

The other shade of grey

As the sun shone upon me on a bright sunny Sunday, my mind was almost resolved to have a good day. In an equally bright mood I was casually crossing the road when a bike passed in front of me with a man calling aloud... big boobs...! Yes, I know I have them but I do not expect any stranger to inform me so, publicly like that. 🙄🙄 (Just in case if my disapproval was not obvious) No, it was not midnight but broad daylight. No, I was not inappropriately dressed.. I had wore a decent t shirt and jeans with a stole fully covering my so called big boobs. 😏

Well in reality, I am quite thick skinned,old enough to be used to such incidents and not someone who gets effected easily. Frankly, we women are so used to men looking at us with eyes saying the same words, silently but loud and clear.  If so, then someone shouting the same shouldn't bother me much right? After all ,this is not such a big incident ! But for few hours it did bother me a lot. Suddenly I was conscious of how I look, stand,walk,talk and what not. Not only did I question the bubble of civilized society in my head, I almost questioned my whole existence!  Moreover, I really don't know what we are supposed to do.. shout back at that man who passed a derogatory remark oh so casually..hold him and beat him up or just be thankful that he didn't try to touch me like they have in currently viral clip of blore. No,its not that blore has suddenly become unsafe for women. It is like any part of this country.. sometimes safe and sometimes not. Also, It's not that we women feel like this all the time about everyone. We are sensitive enough to feel and know the difference between admiration and ogling. I myself even sympathise with the theory of generalising every man as lustful. But here I was suddenly hating every man I know and every man who came in front of my eyes for next few hours. Is this something we are supposed to accept and get used to?
How do we change the sense of normalcy which has existed in society about few men having this attitude towards women ? How do we deal with both men and women having the attitude of ladke to ladke hai kind of nonsense in their heads? Why this obnoxious acceptance about how the world is ?? 

Being my optimistic self, I am hopeful that the next bunch of men and women will be better than us and by then we will learn to focus more on teaching men how to respect and behave with women than teaching women how to be safe.

But till then?? May be we should just rely on luck !!

Family by choice !

It had been long since I updated my blog and as I was wondering on a topic which would be effortless to start with, I happened to read friendship day wishes. I do not really understand why we celebrate so many days for so many specific relationships but one among them which has always been a big part of my life has been friendship. I literally celebrate it each day of my life in the true sense. Considering being the only child to my parents its expected out of our breed (of single children) to be lonely and egoistic, unaware of the meaning of share and care. On the contrary to these expectations of having a colourless self obsessed world ,friends have always coloured my world since childhood. I have always felt loved cared and never has been a day where I wondered with whom to share my lunch box with,be it my school, college or my post college studies. It's not that I didn't falter letting pretentious ones get the privilege of being a friend but I was quick to realize not everyone is worthy of it. Fortunately I ve an enriched treasure of friends (not to be assumed as my facebook friend list 😂).. few who share my everyday laughs and struggles.. few who be there for me even when thousands of miles apart.. few with whom I ve spent the most glorious days of my life. Few have even taught me important lessons in my life- be it strength ,courage, persistence ,selflessness or sometimes simply how not to screw up your lives 😛😂. Each one of them has been part of my growing up and responsible for what I am today. ( Good or bad 😋) They say Friends are the family you choose. I am proud to have one of the best !!  😇

To all my lovely friends who have always been there for me, Thank you 😘 looking forward for many more glorious years of our friendship...
Belated Happy Friendship Day! 😘

Lessons from Imtiaz Ali

Note: Imtiaz Ali is a famous hindi writer/director for films-  jab we met, socha na tha,love aaj kal, rockstar, highway, tamasha.

With the excitement similar to a child during Diwali at heart, I prepare for Imtiaz's films with a dedication of a tenth class student by learning lyrics of all the songs of his upcoming movie before hand so that I don't miss any micro part of the "experience". Be it how he writes interesting characters and fresh dialogues or how music becomes inseparable part of his movies, my list of reasons to love the"Sufi director" (as he is referred to sometimes) runs long. There are certain commonalities I ve observed in his style of storytelling and since my prime years of understanding myself and my environment has gone hand in hand with his movies, sometimes I ve also realized a thing or two.

Being yourself is awesome :
    Our unforgettable "main apni favourite hu" Geet (in jab we met) is one of the most loved characters ever played on silverscreen till date. She makes us want to be the best versions of ourselves and celebrate being one. Her chirpy innocent uninhibited energy is infectious as much as jab we met itself is! She taught me to love myself a little more 😇

Women are more emotionally intelligent : 😉
   Have you observed most of his male protagonists tend to be oblivious to their deep feelings for pretty long , be it in love aajkal, socha na tha or rockstar ? It is their women who kind of have the grace and strength to realise and pursue the relationship. They are the ones who make it happen!  Well it's true..we agree or not.. but we always know. 😜

Travelling can open unknown boundaries in our mind :
    When we travel ,it is not only outer journey to another place but also an inner journey of self exploration and liberation which unwinds many mental knots making us closer to ourselves in the process. Veera (in highway ) who discovers her hidden inner demons  and unleashes them liberating herself or Ved (in tamasha) who sets himself free in Corsica from the suffocation of expectations engulfing him in reality ; both find liberation in lands away from their own eventually celebrating their inner self. For me, just watching Veera or Ved has been liberating! So,l am sure travelling must be really capable of all these wonders!

Honest friendship can be really enriching :
  The break up party in love ajkal after which the ex-es decide to give their honest impressions about each other becoming closer buddies or the "gand machadenge"  rockstar couple who are their most honest self to each other ; they make us crave for that one person with whom you can be your uninhibited self ! Highway goes one step ahead to show a relationship of affection security and longingness which need not even end on a romantic note.

Love is not love if it alters when it finds alteration : 
  Our generation strongly believes that "out of sight is out of mind " and long distance relationship is a myth. On the contrary Imtiaz has time and again told us the opposite. Remember Jai in love aajkal working alone for his dream but with an unknown void or Tara searching Ved for years in tamasha ? He always points it out that the vacuum your love leaves behind cannot be filled no matter how many other choices you have or how busy in life you are. Time does have a wonderful way of showing us what really matters!

Love is the same, then now and forever :
  If you observe ,we don't ve many real deep love stories written in 2000s. Even those few tend to be superficial or skin deep with chiselled bodies making love than two people finding solace in each other.Thanks to Imtiaz Ali we have atleast few gems to show love of our times. As shown in his love aajkal ,though we are supposed to be "love at first sight and break up at first fight" ( in the words of Mahesh Bhat ) generation, all of us thrive on good relationships and suffer from the same side effects of being in love ! 😂

Most times I cannot differentiate if this man makes me discover myself or makes new additions to what I am. Nevertheless few of these are my observations and few what I took away from his stories..😃 Do share if you have any..

Art of criticism

I wonder if this is a societal defect but I find most of us being very sensitive to criticism ; be it in any context- individual ,community ,state or nation. Even if accidentally or indirectly someone points our flaws or something they don't approve of, we defend in a second without assessing even tad bit if it may or may not be right in any way. But why is it such a big deal. What if we have flaws? What if someone doesn't approve of our opinions /actions ? We could ponder and correct ourselves if needed and move on. Why this erratic need to defend ourselves all the time? Not just that, even if it is a government we support politically or a particular Khan in Bollywood we love ,we tend to blindly support and jump on every other person who gets critical. 

Although I do agree it's not always about whom criticism is targeted at and how it is accepted, it's also about how someone criticizes. Most times it reduces to an argument winning competition which in turn results in words which don't serve the purpose. Also if the person criticising thinks too much of himself , then no one is going to care for his/her criticism. On the other hand if it is someone who has accepted their flaws and is comfortable in their own skin, they don't even let u feel they were being critical. Now that is exactly the reason why I feel that the act of being critical or criticized is an important art for any kind of intellectual brainstorming.

For something like a community or religion we should realize and accept that if there is no one to point us when we are wrong ,then we will stagnate and anything which is stagnant becomes obsolete with time. Change is inevitable and natural evolution of a society is what is going to keep it healthy.That too in a society like ours where there are too many forces pulling us in different directions, pluralism should be celebrated. It is very important to have a conducive environment so that our democracy flourishes. I earnestly wish that we would all learn to respectfully agree to disagree and realize that the whole beauty of democracy is to have the right to dissent and still peacefully co exist.

My musical life

One evening when I was 16 or so, a normal nonsensical fight with my mother made me rush into my room with a strong urge to shut the door hard. ( Only urge because if I had done in real ,it would ve dire consequences lol) I was in tears as I entered my dark room. However , just because of casual natural habit I switched on my radio before I put the lights on. And there it was.. a song playing on the radio which I had longed for months. In a fraction of second I forgot my tears and hurried to pick my writing pad and pen ; which by the way used to be always next to my radio for such emergencies. I started to pen down the lyrics of the song like some short hand expert!  😂 When the song finished I started practising the song and by then I could hardly even remember that I was crying before. Such has been my madness for music! 😃

Those days there were no internet sites or YouTube where ready lyrics or songs were available to access. Hence, I used to have books and files with lyrics of hundreds of Bollywood songs written down with utmost dedication. It's my labour of love and a  valuable treasure. Being the only child I should have felt lonely at times. But somehow a part of it was filled by few dear friends and rest by music. Music taught me to enjoy my solitude. Most of the times there is background music playing in my head for all kind of absurd situations I am forced to face.. good or bad. Like when someone is torturing me I am playing "tera emotional athyachar" or when elated I am playing "aaj me upar aasman niche" in my head. Well yes, I am pretty much self entertained. 😋 When I am low, I listen to melancholic ghazals of my favourite jagjitji and cry my heart out pushing out all the heaviness inside me finally feeling rejuvenated. It's therapy for me! I even sing myself to sleep when stressed out. If someone was to tell me I have 10 minutes left to die , I would just listen to one of my fav songs and die with peace and joy in my heart.

Not much has changed since I was 16; rather, my relationship with music has grown mature with time. Even today I collect lyrics like my 16 year old self (procedural change with technology 😁) and can't concentrate on anything until I finish learning a song which I badly want to. This madness for music makes my normal life crazily special and worth living.

Glad to have a prized possession which can never leave my side and will accompany me forever!  
😇

Sairat!!

I have so many pending half written posts but this one had to come first because of the mad urge to write about it.. Sairat!! For people who dont know about it.. it's an awesome Marathi movie breaking all records ; for who know.. yes! I finally watched it.😇

For a movie buff the most thrilling experience is when you fall in love with a movie. It's like the feeling of first love all over again when you expand every moment with your beloved and live it again and again .. 😋  we mad movie buffs reminisce every bit of that 3 hour experience and relive it.

For starters I have never seen protagonists so real.. a girl who is not slim or fair but the way most of the population of that geographical area actually is. She even has a 'bold' scene where after she realizes her love for a guy, she shamelessly stares at him in the class (which normally is  considered as a man's fundamental right). Well that's what is bold in real sense and not a bikini clad heroine. Watching that scene had me in splits and left a deep urge in me to go back to college and  make a man blush like that lol 😂The director himself expressed in an interview that the "kam kapdewali" bold heroine is a man's fantasy  and women are running a wrong race..😂 True that!

The movie addresses a very prevalent social evil -honour killing. Few days back I watched a documentary where a mother who had lost her daughter said it's obvious that when a daughter marries out of her will ,the men in the family have every right to be enraged and kill her( mind you it was same caste) .That had really appalled me. We speak of women empowerment emotionally physically financially and so on. But in another part of the same society there are places where a woman is not entitled to have a will of her own, forget following it. In Sairat the girl is bold enough to ride a royal enfield and has the guts to boss over ten men at once (in a small village) ,but when she falls for a guy of lower caste her world turns upside down. Well, I fail to understand why in our society the "izzat" of a family is enclosed in a daughter's vagina and why not in the son's so called balls !!

What the film very effectively portrays is the play of power politics and caste politics in a small village of India. A boy slaps his teacher for stopping him from speaking on his phone inside the class because he is from the most powerful family in the village. His father even compliments him saying that the boy has inherited his grandfather's rage. This kind of upbringing of men happens in real and until this happens there will always be men whose ego is insatiable and who will have a compulsion to enforce it on their women. This in turn is obviously going to lead to evils like honour killing.

Altogether Sairat was an enriching cinematic but earthy experience with an insight to realities of our society accompanied with the thrill of a great love story! This one is going to be one of my favourites forever! 😀