[Experiences] A Step into Thirty

Thanks for the condolences and appreciation of my honesty! :-)

Tomorrow, I step into the next half of my life and feels like there's so much to begin afresh. A quaint, joint Bday celebration with my friend's daughter. She, being the Hiroshima and me, the Nagasaki of August. A beautiful butterfly shaped cake on the table, with just a 3 on it! Wrapped in the warmth of friends and a young-again feeling of sharing it with the next gen.

A walk with college friends and their spouses, recollecting, laughing and most of all, me wondering, how did I manage to complete this education, of which I remember not a single thing, even vaguely! Although words spoken, emotions discovered and lessons of life learnt beat fresh in my heart as though I am living it, right now. Maybe that's the wisdom I've got in this grand old age, that life is mostly about the moments and hardly the facts.

Walking through a flood of memories, as I look up, the leaves elegantly adorn the sky and the rain falls softly on my face. A moment to feel truly happy to be alive.

A lovely evening, and here I am, savoring the minute minutes of the 20s.

[Movies] Gurushetram / Tamil 2010

Drugs. Movies with this background, was way down on my list, only a notch above horror movies, which is a complete no-no for me. Such was my aversion to these movies, that anything with this background gave me the jitters, goose-bumps and what-not. By the way, I would attribute it to some skull faces and skeleton men when TV was first introduced at an impressionable young age of 8. Well, this long and slightly uninteresting autobiography is to say, "For a very long time, we go on with hard-wired notions that we definitely wouldn't like something and then we are jolted out of it by an exceptional piece of work!" The exceptional work, in this case, is 'Gurushetram'.

They speak the same language, maybe with a light intonation and a different accent. Not any more diverse than Kovai and Madras Tamil. But here is a whole new culture and perspective. The quaint feeling of watching a foreign language movie in your mother-tongue. As my understanding of the Singaporean Tamil culture, at the cost of sounding politically incorrect, they seem more Tamil than the Tamil Tamils! This has led me to believe that it is the far-flung seeds that guard the roots vehemently.

A tight packed screen play, that has something to hide and reveal until the last moment. Perfectly etched characters, with distinct and consistent identities. Theme, handled with maturity and clarity. The one song in the movie, that blends aptly, with the flow. Lead performances, that bowl you over with their perfect rendition. Emotion in certain scenes, that becomes a character by itself. Most of all, the confluence of all these elements makes the experience much, much greater than the sum of it's parts.

A fine way to know your own in another land!

[Random] On Metaphors

A budding village in ruins. A few, scattered well-built houses in disrepair; Bricks laid lay abandoned. Cobwebs, dust and broken rods eclipse what could have been.

An opportunity; A possibility - To build a town, a nation, why even start a new civilization! So much scope for growth, for creating self- sustaining systems, for changing the way this world moves.

Why get down and clean it all? Why change things now? Why not be in the comfort zone, delighting in what was? Why spend so much energy on what could be, on what glorious-could-be?!

But doesn't it beckon you, with arms outstretched like your loving child? Doesn't it pull your heart strings with passion? Doesn't it electrify the mind and fill the nerves with zing?

And... what is this about? A blog, home, society, nation, life or something else entirely? The scene and the seen lies in the seeing!