Kaminey: As good as the name

Kaminey
Director:Vishal Bharadwaj
Rating: ****

The thing is I love underdog gangster movies. Who doesn’t? If you watch Kaminey you will know for yourself why it’s as good as its name. ‘Company’ or any other ‘Ramu’ movie doesn’t come close. It’s very stylish and double entertaining. It does borrow from ‘ Gangster gurus’ from the west but Sahid is Desi and he rules the screen. Bharadwaj was right when he mentioned ‘It’s my most stylish and challenging film’.

Love: Na Aaj na Kal..

Love Aaj Kal
Director: Imtiaz Ali
Rating: ***

Are you in a long distance relationship? Or Have you never been in a relationship and find love every complicated? In both these cases you will enjoy the movie. It’s not a classic love story or a very new one. It’s just another fresh love story from Imtiaz Ali. He has a way with love stories, Punjabi culture and trains.

Life as confusion

The idea of being married to someone and being in love with someone else has struck a chord with me. First I thought it couldn’t be possible then I equated it with another situation and realized it could surely happen. You are shackled to a situation and deep inside you know you will always want something else.

There are all kinds of people in the world. Most I know are characters from books I skim and they are more real than most individuals I meet. Some know what they want from their lives? Where they are, where they are going to be in two years or ten. Some go with the flow. They embrace everything that comes their way. Some are always confused. I like this category. Maybe I belong to this one. See, even now I am confused.

Here’s an excerpt from one of Bernhard Schlink’s stories, ‘The woman at the Gas Station’ .It portrays love as confusion.

So he stood there out in the drive, halfway, between his car and her house. She went inside, the door closed behind her.
How long, he asked himself, do I have to decide? One minute? Two? How long will it take her to get the change? How organized is she? Does she have a cash register with all the bills and coins separated, so that she only has to take out a couple of coins separated here and a couple of bills there? Is she hurrying, or does she know I’d be happy to have a few minutes more?

He looked down at the ground in front of him and saw that the gravel was wet from the fog. He turned a piece over the tip of his shoe; he wanted to know if the gravel was wet underneath, and it was.

He had taught his staff that thinking doesn’t necessarily result in right decision, or any decision at all, can make a decision so complicated and difficult that it can paralyze decision making. Thinking requires time, deciding requires courage, that’s what he used to say, and he knew that what he lacked now was not the time to think but the courage to decide. He also knew that life keeps an account of both the decisions we don’t make and those we do.

Catmandu

डुब्दै छ आजको घाम

The city does not need me but I need it. There are thousands like me who swarm its streets. Some are protesting, some are scurrying to their workplace and some are wandering like me. It’s different to wander in a natural landscape. It’s different to wander in the heartland of a burgeoning city. It’s different to stare in to a row of never ending vehicles and search for nothing. It’s perhaps not unusual to search for your mobile and pretend to talk in oblivion.