A tribute to a teacher.

Hi there! (I'm going to pretend I forgot about the Oath of Friday Posts) Here's an article I wrote for a newspaper for Teacher's Day. Unfortunately, it never got posted but hey, never a bad idea to share it with a couple of friends is it? Behold, for I present to you this annoyingly-under-worded ('strictly stick to the word limit of 200,' said the ad. *sigh*) article about a teacher I felt truly blessed learning from: Ms Pranaya!

William Arthur Ward once said “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” Such great teachers are hard to come by, and call it serendipity perhaps, when I had the honour to learn from one great teacher, Ms. Pranaya. All of a sudden, English went from a 'good' subject of mine to an fascinating one. Magic, you say? No, it is the power of inspiration. 

To say I have learnt from her would be an understatement; rather, she gave me the capacity to learn. She taught me to be open-minded to all subjects, and take a trifle more effort to learn the world and its ways. She told me that to excel in English, you need to be passionate about it and yet think of it clinically. I also learnt that the ever-expanding universe is never the limit, that no matter how much you succeed in life, there is always something yonder to follow. However, one of the most cardinal maxims she taught me, one that is still deeply embedded in my mind, is how 'Brevity is the soul of wit.' A simple message, scrawled in red at the end of an unnecessary ten-page long analysis. However, to this very day, I've kept to that as if it were the Holy Book.

The Pursuit of Happyness

Well, it's 'Happiness Happens' month and what more to write about than happiness? Behold everyone, for Gabriele Muccino brings to the big screen an Oscar-worthy Hollywood heartwarmer that guarantees buckets of tears and painful arrows at your heart during the pursuit of something so treasured, so foraged for and few ever manage to get – happiness. Starring Will Smith, Thandie Newton and Jaden Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) is sure to get everyone looking down in the dumps.

San Francisco, 1981: Chris Gardner is a salesman selling bone density scanners, which are marginally better than the current technology for double the price. Gifted with an amazing intelligence, persistence and diligence and an innate talent for selling, Gardner strives for a better career path and finally gets selected for an internship program at a prestigious brokerage firm that, however, provides no salary and will select only one of the twenty interns. Meanwhile, his financial situation grows weaker:  his wife leaves him, he is evicted from his apartment for not paying rent, loses the money in his bank account to the tax collector and is finally forced into the streets with his 5-year-old son, Christopher, and a broken bone density scanner (which could get them food for a month) and winds up sleeping in a subway restroom. How Gardner survives the ranks of the homeless (if not the hopeless) with his 5-year-old while competing with Ivy Leaguers for a position in an esteemed brokerage firm with nothing but dignity, resolve, faith, love, independence and a lighthouse of an optimism carves the rest of the story.

The Pursuit of Happyness deals with the constitutional right to ‘pursue’ happiness rather than the right to be happy. This time, Will Smith took on a new look in this movie: energetic, sincere, optimistic and loving as opposed to his action-flicks or slapstick comedy. He was exceptionally expressive – throughout the movie, he fervently maintained an optimistic, resolving, undefeated attitude that in one scene, when he can’t stand it anymore and breaks down, you truly feel anguished. And Jaden Smith (Will’s own son) was so endearing, he charmed Will Smith off the screen. His acting was perfect, especially after considering how contrary it is to Jaden Smith’s own life. The bond between Chris Gardner and Christopher comes very naturally, probably because it is real too. The climactic scene was very powerful, I felt, with absolutely truthful lines and flawless acting by Will Smith as he quivers with delight and content, a storm of happiness raging his face towards the end. Thandie Newton also put on a convincing act and effectively made me loathe her. Will Smith pestering a cleaner to correct the spelling of ‘happyness’ (hence the movie’s name) outside his child’s day-care centre, a homeless man assuming one of the bone density scanners to be a time machine, Will Smith running during most parts of the movie to retrieve a stolen scanner and Christopher’s adorable knock-knock jokes certainly adds some chuckles to an otherwise gut-wrenching movie. Unexpectedly, the movie wasn’t too cheesy and the technical aspects of the movie were just seamless: from the clothes to the lighting to the guitar-playing hippies.

On the contrary, there were a few downsides to the film – I found the story a bit clichéd and the ending quite predictable – all movies end favouring the protagonist of course. An ostensible amount of time was spent seeing Will Smith chasing thieves who stole the scanners. The movie wasn’t captivating plot-wise too, which is why the actors were needed to add some colour to an otherwise unadorned, transparent movie of raw emotion and truth. Chris Gardner’s pursuit for happiness seems to be tightly interwoven with the pursuit for money – he did not only want a simple home to start with; he wanted luxurious mansions and sports cars too. I could see that Chris Gardner was too short-sighted: he assumes that only riches bring you happiness, forgetting that his own son does more than that. At one point, he thinks, “They [the stock brokerage employees] all looked so happy. Why couldn’t I look like that?”

This movie is a very moving, poignant portrayal of hard times, when all there is left is to smile, hope and have a when-life-gives-you-lemons-make-lemonade attitude. I would say this rags-to-riches tale is truly worth a watch. “When people can’t do something themselves, they’re going to tell you that you can’t do it,” says Will Smith, which is, beyond any doubt, the blatant truth.

The Mourning Bird.

It's when the birds take flight of the day,
back to their nests for an early respite
when I take flight from my daily cage,
to the terrace, to see the dying light.

Carrying a troubled mind of sums and equations,
every step of mine resonating with quotations.
Desperate to channel spasms of anger,
desperate to rekindle the old sense of academic ardor.

The vast blue expanse above is festooned with purple and gold,
the fraying clouds blotched with the hues of red, pink and orange,
little bits of cotton candy glide towards the sun,
who is showering the world with his last rays of glory.

Demure at heart,
fascination in my eyes,
at the sheer magnificence,
of the dying sunlight.

The silent mourning,
for the end that is about to arrive,
when the wind can no longer play me and I, with the wind,
Another long, sighing, night of captivity, of plight.

The herald bears news!

Hello everyone! It's been a long, long time since I've blogged and I'm extremely sorry(with extra cheese fudge and cream cheese and a cherry on top)! In the aims of posting consistently, I hereby take this oath: 'I solemnly swear I'll post every Friday, despite my workload and extremely messed up sleep schedule.' I'll be putting up random content: poems, rants, quotes, books, reviews or simply descriptions of the sick lemons my life is giving me. I'd love it if you guys would suggest what to post about too!

I can't wait to tell you one more piece of great news!!! *DRUM ROLLS* I'm going to start a new page, titled 'Solemn Soliloquies'! In this page, I'll  be putting up poems about the little things I treasure, like the rich coat of an apple, the way dewdrops glisten when the early rays of the sun shine down on Earth and even the warm petrichor after rain. These are poems I have a deep, visceral, inexplicable connection to, and may be about issues I feel strongly about. I simply can't wait to start posting!

Bye!

Winter's calling

Photo courtesy: Me!

While still water reflects the grey expanse above,

And all but the autumn’s leaves have fallen,

when the hibiscus has bled its colour out,

you know winter has found its calling.

"Don't think or judge, just listen"

                                                                                       -Sarah Dessen, Just Listen

Just Listen, by Sarah Dessen

Yellow guys! A couple of weeks back, I read a book called Just Listen, by Sarah Dessen ( it rhymes, I know!) and I assure you, it is one of those life-changing books. 

The plot circles around Annabel Greene, a 16-year-old model or has everything - model looks, a great social life, a popular best friend, clothes, a house with a glass facade. Or rather had everything. Last summer, she had shunned everyone, and as a new school year starts, she is ostracized by the entire school. Her anorexic sister, Whitney, is sinking the whole family into depression and the not-so-cold war between Whitney and another sister, Kirsten, weakens the fragile bonds between the family. Soon, she meets Owen (while throwing up), an intense, music-obsessed classmate who listens to the bizarre music: Mayan chants, cricket sounds and so much more. Back from Anger Management classes, Owen is determined to tell the truth and introduces Annabel to a new world of music, introducing music as something so powerful that it can being back a million memories as if music is nothing but frozen time. Most importantly, he teaches Annabel to be true - both to herself and the world and to swim upwards from her sea of 'I'm fine' lies. The rest of the plot narrates why Annabel's life is so, and how everything is as not as it seems, that even though glass facades can be beautiful, it mustn't be forgotten that they are fragile too.

My most favourite character in this book was Whitney Greene, for her thoughts and words were very similar to mine, and would be if I were in her shoes. Whitney's the most beautiful of the three Greene sisters, and also the most broken. At one point, when Annabel sees Whitney purging in secret after being force-fed, Whitney's shoulder's are described as being thin, angular and bird-like. However normal the description seemed, comparing Whitney's bony shoulder to a bird did affected me viscerally - creating a hollowness within me that seemed wholly irreparable for I often associate birds with freedom. For these reasons and a million inexpressible more, I connected with Whitney the most.