World's toughest Job!

Isn’t it true that we “really”, really appreciate things in our life once we experience them ourselves? We cannot appreciate friendship without being a friend; we cannot appreciate love without falling in love; we cannot appreciate marriage unless we are in one (or divorced); we cannot appreciate humor unless we know how to laugh at ourselves and the list goes on…. We don't live through other experiences. We live through ours.

So, even though I have appreciated my parents a lot, until the point when I actually held my son and saw that little bundle looking at me with helplessness and wonder, I never ever, even for once think how big of a role my parents played in my life. Not even for a second did it pass my mind that the life that I am living today was given by them. I just took my life for granted, but the truth is that they shaped it from the moment I came screaming into this world. They may not be as influential in my life now as they used to be, but God, where will I be without them? It’s a question that I never want to find the answer for.

Parenting is such a tough job. At no point can you just shrug your shoulders and say “I am done. I am outta here”. Once you get into it - that is it. It takes different sort of courage to keep working on a relationship that lays the foundation for a human life when there’s no incentive for the parents in the long run. That’s why I admire my parents or for that matter, any parents, who made their relationship work through thick and thin for their kids.

I have had a wonderful life and I owe that to my parents and my family. I was not an easy child to bring up and never once have I seen my parents rattle or give up. I have a tough task ahead of me and the one question that keeps coming into my mind frequently is: Will I give for my son, what my parents gave me? Honest and truthful answer is – I DON’T KNOW. But I am hopeful, because, I realize that parenting is something you learn through years. There’s no “Idiots guide to Parenting” or “12 quick steps to Parenting” guide out there. I read somewhere that the job description for parenting goes like this:

“You need to show affection without sentiment, authority without abuse of power, discipline without aggression, humor without ridicule, sacrifice without obligation and companionship without possessiveness. “

Ugh?!!?? Sounds like a fun job!!!! Well, I need another post to explain how I have become helpless now in my son’s hand and so you can see what this job does to you!!!! :-0

Bigger is not always "Better"

Well, I am back. Life has been so busy that I haven’t had the time to pen (I mean type) my thoughts. Let me say that every time I decide to blog, I draw a blank on the subject that I want to blog on. I know there are lots of topics, but for some reason, I always draw a blank.

Having said that, I thought I will blog about the “Movie of the Year” in the Indian Movie Industry – Endhiran- The Robot. I was thinking of watching this movie once the DVD or Blu-ray got released, but the hype around it and the way my friends talked about it, I thought I will give it a shot. As usual, my husband was least interested and I had to drag him to the theatre to watch this movie. We were 20 minutes late, but realized that we didn’t miss much. In fact, my brother-in-law’s comment on my going late was that I missed the best part of the movie (the first 20 minutes:-o!!!!)

By now, everyone would have read like zillion versions/reviews of this movie in the web. So, I am not going review this movie. What I want to ask, basically, is this: Is Bigger better? Do you really think that Endhiran is a landmark movie in Indian Cinema?

I realize that this movie is supposed to be the land-mark movie in terms of special effects/technology usage in Indian movie making, but does it mean that this movie is one of the better movies that get released in the Indian market and in the international market?

I found nothing innovative in the storyline. There were absurd scenes in the second half that made me wonder what had happened to Shankar, the director of the movie. To me, this is one of Shankar’s mediocre movies and we all know most of Shankar’s movies have tight screenplay and wonderful storyline. The only other Shankar movie I wasn’t impressed with was “Boys” and I am sure it’s on everybody’s list. And not to say the least, the special effects were not definitely “Hollywood Standard”. Some scenes stood out and kudos to Shankar for that, but on the whole, this was just another love triangle with stitched special effects that didn’t fit into the canvas drawn by Shankar.

The only thing that kept this movie together was Superstar’s performance, charisma and screen presence.  If this movie didn’t have Rajni, it would have flopped. Period. If anyone thinks otherwise, let’s have a debate. My, what a screen presence!

I appreciate the effort put in by the team to make this movie and I know it’s easy to criticize and difficult to innovate, but if we need to gain international market, we need to do far better than “Endhiran”. We still have only 2 genre in our Indian Cinema – “Masala Action” and “Love”. With just these 2 genre, Indian Cinema will never be able to compete with World Cinema, no matter how tech savvy the Indian Cinema becomes.

Endhiran is not a sci-fi film. It falls into the former category I mentioned above. Endhiran is also a  good example of why bigger is not always better.I just wish Shankar had put in some thoughts to the screenplay and brought in some innovations to the story. Instead, he spent in on special effects that just didn’t make sense. Endhiran is just another attempt to move Indian Cinema in the right direction. My guess is that we need to wait for quite some time to see the “landmark” movie that changes the landscape of Indian Cinema.