The Great Point of Life

There are times when we think about the point of life. Even though we come up with many reasons during different situations, there is nothing much about it in the end. There are many parts of life which are supposed to be big turning points, and the great boosts, but none of them are in essence, what they seem to be. For some people, it is never really there to be found either, and some of us don’t try. All these feel more like the illusions brought to make sure that we continue through this meaningless existence. I still wonder if anything close to being the one true meaning can be found on this day or the other.

Birth, is it worth it? :: We come into this world without being given a choice. We are born at some random place where we grow up while entering our meaningless existence. This is the cursed moment when we become someone, and we are not even sure why. We are born to be judged, just like I had talked about in my review of the short-film AUFDRUCK, and I believe that we actually have no real right to life despite being alive. We are not in control our lives unless we are the fake new generation hero who keeps saying that his life is his decisions. The truth is that the life itself is a lie.

Birth has meaning, but not in the case of humans; nature does have it.

Education, is it worth it? :: Throughout my life, I had thought that it mattered. I used to feel that being educated should be a priority in life. But in the end, what happens is that it is of no use. You won’t get a job; but if you had failed in the tenth, there are jobs for which you can apply and from there you can get promotion. But being a post graduate is bloody over-qualified. Well, they take those who can talk sweetly and lie about what they can do. You just need to lie, cheat and steal all the way up to the top, and studying is really not worth it – you might have guessed in from the politicians already. I would suggest Salt Mango Tree as the right word to describe the situation!

Hope, is it worth it? :: “There is no worse death than the end of hope” – I heard this one in the 2004 movie, King Arthur. But there are times when hope has no meaning at all. Sometimes, having hope is rather too difficult, and its own existence is doubted. Well, hoping against all hopes is hopeless, and I would rather take it out of the equation. Maybe there was a chance during the earlier days, but not during the days of modernity; not when people can lie and pretend so much better. If you are true, you won’t be considered good enough, and so, truth and hope are at opposite ends. Even this year, there are movies like Mili, Rani Padmini, Su Su Sudhi Vathmeekam, My God and Jo and the Boy which provides inspiration and hope, but what for?

Hope no longer flows; it no longer has the wings, or even the feet.

Friendship, is it worth it? :: Yes, we have friends; there might be many of them. How long will they remain on your side? How many of the childhood friends do you know? How many of the school friends are there with you now? How often do you call the friends from college? Do any of these people ever call you back? They will move on, and they will find new friends. They will leave for big jobs far far away, and you will be stuck here having that bloody nostalgia about friendship. If they return, they will have changed, and things won’t be the same again. Nobody is going to go Amar Akbar Anthony!

Marriage, is it worth it? :: I see too many marriages with big wedding ceremonies, having cameramen who sneak through the wires like terrorists getting under the fences on the border. But these people who go through those meaningless pre-marital courses and series of advices from the elders finally go into that bond, but there is no real point there either. Is it going to make life any better? Well, it has never been good, and each and every day, there are so many people who make me wonder if they have any mutual respect and got an idea what they learned during that pre-marital course. The world is strange indeed.

Death, is it worth it? :: In the end, you think that may be death will have a meaning, but you keep wondering about it, and come to the conclusion that it isn’t either. The problem is that could be worse after death. Maybe it can’t get any worse than what can happen to you in life, but you can never be really sure about that. Then the question remains about what is really worth it – I hope at least the sleep is worth it; I at least can try to have some nice nightmares and weird dreams which can be converted into a post. I guess I will just brush my teeth and go to sleep then. In the end, my nightmares are immortal, and about that I am eternally grateful.

***The images used in this blog post were taken by me on my Sony Cybershot DSC-W310.

TeNy

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We are all Special

We are all different individuals with a large variety of tastes. If we look closer, the similarities become a lot lesser in number and this lack of similarities will assure each one of us that we have our own personalities. There are lots of things that contribute to this individuality, but in my case, I am going to come up with some weird reasons. Different might be nice, but weird is better. It is also special! What is the fun in everyone being the same kind of person?

The first point here would be that I don’t comb my hair. Well, I can’t remember when was the last time I did that. Nowadays, I don’t even have hair style. All the style depends on how my hair manages to be. I have cared very less about how I look like; it has been one my least concerns. If you see me right out of the bed, my looks will be the exact same as how you see me on the road. The looks should be one thing on which people are never to be judged, and I hope I won’t be. Seventy rupees in every one and half months and the hair is done.

Then there is the point about tea. Most of you should already know it and this blog is also based on the same as you might have noticed the presence of tea already. My special skills include drinking a lot of tea; or rather it is my special need – I drink a lot of tea each and every day. It makes sure that I will write again and without tea, my life is empty. There might be other things among food and drinks, but nothing for me like a cup of tea. Even now, I had to find my tea for inspiration.

This is where I would park my car. There is tea all around, and so inspiration.

I have always loved the celebrities who were not crowd favourites. Even as a child, I tried to bring my own interests to light. Whether it was cricket, football or WWE, I used to come up with my own favourites who were not the biggest names at that time. I wanted my choices to be different and the kind of people whom everyone else loved. I guess that there was a certain amount of selfishness there as I also wanted to love these people without sharing with a huge crowd.

I try my best not to smile while taking a photo, or at times come up with half a smile. I have felt that there is no point in smiling in front of the camera when there is not much happiness in life and people hate other so much. As true happiness is rarely there and so difficult to find, I consider my smile to be fake and therefore will make an attempt to hide it whenever possible. True happiness is more of a fairy tale than true love, and I am not going to bring that one to light. If smiles are missing, I hope others smile for me too.

One thing different in my belief system is that I believe that we are all striving for one aim, which is death. I have good set of positive beliefs about death which I keep close to my heart. I used to have a few points printed about the same, but then decided not to keep that piece of paper because someone will think that I am suicidal. It is not like I am suicidal, but I wait for the moment of my end, and I started this waiting quite some time ago. Only death can bring the much needed equality.

So, let the dark clouds arrive and remind us about that dark end to our lives.

I am yet to really understand why I write blogs. I keep writing as if it is something which my life depends on. There has been no day without at least one blog post from last December onward. Sometimes I think that I know the reason, but most of the time, I feel that there was no real understanding about the same. Usually, people have an aim, they have ambitions and they know where they are going with their blogs. But with all my weirdness, I know nothing about it. Maybe I am a blog post robot who managed to gather a human soul.

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.

***The images used in this blog post were taken on Samsung Galaxy A5.

TeNy

The Story of Awards

We have seen many types of Film Awards, but this year’s Kerala State Film Awards managed to not just surprise but shock the movie lovers all around Kerala. I never really had much hope about it as the movies of 2014 didn’t have that big impact as 2013 which was full of wonderful flicks including Amen, North 24 Kaatham, Memories, Philips and the Monkey Pen, Drishyam and others. I have myself missed too many Malayalam movies in the same year because of the same reason, and so I wouldn’t say which movie should have won the most!

But it is easier to say which movies never really come close to winning, especially when the winners are from the list of movies which I have watched. I don’t want to talk about anybody’s personal choices, but as movies, none of these had that quality and neither did the performances – they were mostly good, but not enough to win anything. It is fair to rate movies and performances according to our personal choices, but there is something more about receiving a few big awards from the state.

There are three movies, Bangalore Days, 1983 and Om Santhi Oshana which came more powerful than the others in the list of winners, and none of them was a serious movie. I am not going to get into the other winners, but stick to these three. I will agree to the Popular Film Award for Om Santhi Oshana because I have heard even from a lot of non-Keralites about how much they liked this movie. I am also glad that Iyobinte Pusthakam won a number of accolades too, because I consider it as the best entertainer of the year which was supported by solid performances, visual beauty and fine messages.

I consider Amal Neerad winning the Best Cinematographer Award for Iyobinte Pusthakam as the most expected and perfect result. Coming back to the first movie in question here. Bangalore Days which had almost no script to talk about, has won the award for the same. It was a clear failure in connecting with the audience with the cluelessness which often came forward, and still worked because of the number of superstars in the movie. It was still not a bad movie, and there were entertaining moments, but there was not enough strength there, and it was never a movie to be taken seriously or supposed to have had anything in the script.

Still, we see the name of that movie associated with the Best Actor and Actress, as Nivin Pauly and Nazriya Nazim has that one in common. While the former’s performance was just too comic in nature, the latter does nothing special in the movie. I am sure that none of them did really have even a little guess about the awards when they acted in these roles. The movie was never really meant to be an award-winner, as it was just another movie for the masses, adding nothing that we hadn’t seen before. Still, Bangalore Days emerges as a winner, and one has to wonder why.

Then comes 1983. This strange and ridiculous glorification of cricket, which avoids all the game’s negatives and unnecessarily adds positives which never exist, never really had the scope for a serious performance because most of it is a fake. It pretends to be something that it is not, and there is no scope for any big performance. This makes the Best Character Role Award for Anoop Menon as another surprise because all that his character did on this movie was to bring hatred for people who doesn’t agree to his opinions, and inspired that abuse on Maria Sharapova – there is nothing in there. Nivin Pauly’s performance was good, but not huge.

Meanwhile, Om Shanti Oshana was a pure fun ride. It gave a twist to things by moving things through the viewpoint of the heroine rather than the hero. Even the cupid on the poster was female there. But there is nothing to be serious about this one either. It is a very happy feel-good movie full of nice jokes. But there is nothing to give Nazriya Nazim a chance at the Best Actress Award. I had actually thought that things were clearly moving towards Manju Warrier in How Old Are You? – but that was not to be. Then there is Mammootty who got the attention of critics. Well, Asianet Film Awards had got more things correctly. Apothecary also deserved better; so did Jayasurya.

***The images used in this blog post are from the Facebook Pages of these movies.

TeNy

The Overrated List

I usually hear that Premam and Thattathin Marayathu are overrated, and even though they did happen to have too much hype, there are others which were even more overrated considering the reception! Yes, these choices are hundred percent personal, but if you watch them and compare the critical opinion as well as the box-office collections, you will understand that there was surely more achieved than what was deserved. There are also some messages that these movies provide, and they are really strange. Keep in mind that this is not a critical evaluation of these movies.

Annayum Rasoolum (2013)
Suggested better title: Infatuation: Full Slow Motion
Message: Patience is a virtue, and all movie viewers should understand that because you will be waiting for a long time, and sometimes with nothing happening, the opportunity to wait might be all you have.

The speciality of this movie is that nothing really happens for most of the time. We waited and waited in the theatre, and my friend almost fell asleep. He even went out and came back, and understood that nothing really happened. You can have a lot of tea and even lunch, and even after that, you will realize that nothing has happened yet. It was a real painful movie which keeps the audience completely away from what happened on the big screen. There is no connection made with the people on the screen, and we really hope that all of the characters just go away.

Most of the movie is about how the characters look at each other, and it takes a very long time to make us feel that there is a very minute chance that something can actually happen here. It is not even realistic like some people claim to be. The hero just has an infatuation about the heroine and the whole movie keeps dragging and dragging due to the same. Nothing even gets close to having true love, and there is even some slow motion in this already slow movie. With the initial trailers and advertisments along with the half-time advertisements, this movie had stretched to three hours with material of only about half an hour.

If we wait for the movie to finish, it can feel like our whole life time until death.

Neelakasham Pachakadal Chuvanna Bhoomi (2013) 
Suggested better title: On a Motor-bike: Riders into Nothing
Message: Always be confused about making decisions, and come with a quote “my life/fate is my decisions”, and feel free to run away from the duties to the family on a motor-bike because you can.

This movie has tried to make use of the random desire of people to travel and gives them an excuse to leave home. Wandering away from home has been the trend for the youth, and this movie has successfully inspired many youngsters to stray away from their duties and wander around. After this movie, random young people have wandered around away from home much to the dismay of the parents. There are not many movies which have brought a negative influence like this one. We read about Premam being a negative influence, but the truth is that this is the biggest of those terrible influences.

The hero of this movie is a person who gives trouble to his family by loving a random lady, and then he brings the problems to the lady by bringing her home, which also creates tension at home. He keeps breaking the trust of the lady or the family as she deviates between both, and then he keeps traveling on his motor-bike with his friend. With not enough of the journeys shown in this movie and no real connection being made with the places were he goes through, the protagonist’s lack of ability to make decisions take the centre stage instead of bringing us a road movie as promised.

They could have chosen this boat for the travel instead – saves at least the fuel.

1983 (2014) 
Suggested better title: Brainwashed: Into the Abuse
Message: If anybody says anything which is not that positive about your favourite star or even show lack of knowledge, abuse him or her – for no reason, feel free to hate people.

We have often wondered why this movie received such appreciation depsite being nothing special. All the time, we were staring at the screen and there was nothing there to make a positive impact. The whole movie is about how a person moves away from his duties and decides not to do anything for his family. The protagonist is someone who deserves an instant dislike, and so are most of his friends in the movie who move away from being of use to the society. The protagonist even tries to force his own son into something rather than making him decide on his own.

The movie also tells its audience to abuse anyone who says anything against their heroes, and it was also the main reason why the abuse against Maria Sharapova happened. It makes the point that if someone has a role model, anyone who says anything not that positive about that celebrity should be abused. There should be just hero worship, and in the absence of the same, there should abuse – it is the message that the movie hands over to the audience. There is nothing positive about this movie which can be taken home by the viewers, and this one is also very much an empty movie.

***The photos used in this blog post were taken by me.

TeNy