Favorite Pisces celebs

Just for fun: a names-dropping post, for a change. Here's naming some of the famous celeb personalities - alive - who happen to be my favorites. I may or may not follow them on social media, but I do follow their work and achievements, for which I admire them (not necessarily worship them as a fanboi.... hahaha). 

Aamir Khan 

Rihanna 

Daniel Craig 

Glenn Close 

Javier Bardem 

Drew Barrymore 

Bruce Willis 

Shreya Ghoshal 

Sharon Stone 

Queen Latifah 

Rob Lowe 

Ansel Elgort 

Jensen Ackles 

Adam Levine 

Miles Teller 

David Thewlis 

Oscar Isaac 

William H. Macy 

Josh Gad 

Kesha 

Jon Bon Jovi 

Lily Collins 

Lupita Nyong'o 

Dakota Fanning 

Alia Bhatt 

Eva Mendes 

Elliot Page 

Kumail Nanjiani 

Shahid Kapoor 

Tiger Shroff

Justin Bieber 

Laura Prepon 

Emily Blunt 

Alexander Koch 

David Mazouz 

Why write? Why not?

Why write?

Well, I had stopped writing for a while. For a long while. Here. I had been going through a lot of conflicts. Internally. Not that I've stopped having them. But I thought it might not be wise to let them be known. To the world. After all, who cares? To whom would it matter? Whether I write or don't. Facebook and Twitter had become close substitutes to Blogs. Microblogging seemed to be the need of the hour. Maybe I had been flogging a dead horse for quite sometime. Vlogs had replaced Blogs. The surviving and thriving Blogs were a different ballgame altogether. From what I had grown used to, since I had become a blogger. 

Well, changes are natural. Evolution is necessary. Whether it suits me or not. Then why stay in the game? Why not quit?

Why; why not?

Here lies the answer. Maybe I can carry on. Doing what I did. Because I'm still alive and kicking. More importantly, because my quest for ego-boost is minimal. After all, isn't self-expression rewarding in itself? Why think about competition? Why look at it as a race? I've never really bothered about validation or adulation or acceptance. Call me 'too old-fashioned' if you want. I cannot afford to be driven by appreciation or understanding, and that too here (of all places). So there. I'm hanging on to my solitary beat. 

Battling the deadly surge

When did grief become a luxury? 

When did sorrow become an awkward inconvenience? 

When did rage become an interruption? 

When did lament become a dismissible indulgence? 

When we decided that we cannot afford to pause and emote. 

The world is trying to grapple with a pandemic of mammoth proportions. Coronavirus - Covid-19 - reared its ugly head in the latter half of 2019..... almost all through 2020 it wreaked havoc; but, as the world had been hoping for a respite, finally, in 2021, our country is witnessing the worst ramifications of recklessness combined with ill-planned attempts to tackle the crisis. As the every-day situation becomes more and more horrifying, the projections for the near future aren't any less alarming. It's the worst kind of cautionary tale for the world that can ever be, say the experts. Prayers and real-time support are sought for my country, for my fellow citizens. We await a miracle maybe, to bend the curve of India's catastrophic second wave of the disease.

The Lonely Wife

'Charulata' (1964), the film by Satyajit Ray, based on a short story by Rabindranath Tagore, was called in 'The Lonely Wife' in English. I noted this when I was too young to understand the complex and mature facets of the tale, the ten year old boy that I was, and possibly the loneliness of Charu, the 19th Century Bengali middle-class housewife in the film (played by Madhabi Mukherjee) was something I could understand. I even told an adult family member, sometime after watching the film on television, that it was my favorite film and got rebuked, maybe the person dismissed it as something entirely precocious. How could a young boy understand a woman's experiencing of an emotional and psychological void? And what about the simmering sexual tension? I didn't, of course. But I did find the projection of my own loneliness, my longing, that I could not put a finger upon, that I could never articulate. I even tried reading the original short story by Tagore, stealthily, soon after, and this time it seemed hard to fathom, the literary expressions. Now, after so many years, looking back, it's crystal clear why. Ray's sublime visual storytelling had worked its magic upon the impressionable kid. 'Charulata' is thus hailed by many as Ray's best film, as the moving images - along with the brilliant musical score composed by Ray - conveys the entire gamut of emotions. Cinema is, after all, the art of visual storytelling, and it reaches even the most innocent and immature viewer in ways that are not much explored. It resonates deep, and makes strange inroads to our psyche. Today marks the 100th anniversary of the maestro; the cinema of Satyajit Ray shall be celebrated for as long as cinema survives.

We Can Be Heroes

Films are usually supposed to tell stories. But, then, there are films where the narrative isn't just a narrative, the intricacies of plotting take a backseat and the characters and the setting assume a life of their own. 'Futuro Bay' (2014) is one such film. In it, the visuals are too powerful, they - along with the minimal dialogues and the music - convey a lot. The song, with the powerful vocal of David Bowie, 'We Can Be Heroes', itself packs a solid punch. 

'Futuro Beach' (Praia do Futuro) is a Brazilian film, essentially in Portuguese (with a bit of German dialogues too), directed by Karim Aïnouz, who seems to be one of the most powerful filmmakers right now. It stars Wagner Moura, Clemens Schick, and Jesuíta Barbosa. It's not an easy film, no matter how easy on the eyes its gorgeous visuals are, it's an elliptical gay romance. The metaphors, the nuances, the references are profound. It's a triptych of a film, neatly divided into three chapters. Being a bold film, it's not meant for all. However, for the empathetic viewer, it can be really rewarding, since it's a film about displacement and identity, love and its costs. Needless to emphasize, I loved the film.