Friends Without Benefits (?)

After my post about smart television programming ("I Feel Smart After Watching"), I was confident about watching more TV. Well, let's just say I was being too optimistic in my post.

Now, I am an intelligent person. I've cleared my school and graduation with good enough scores and even flirted with being one of the toppers in class. But I've never been selfish enough to want the first to tenth places in class. I always gave these posts to people who needed it more than me :) I'm such a kind person.

Recently, Sony Pix showed the rom-com "Friends with Benefits". And I have to say that I felt fit to join a nunnery after watching it. I know! A movie about casual sex that makes me pious in my dirty, old mind? The world is coming to an end! APOCALYPSE NOW!

First off, let me tell you what the movie showed. Girl brings guy to town for new job, they become friends, she helps him fall in love with New York (blah blah!), they get drunk one night and make a deal to have sex with no emotions. And this is where the movie started with the actual story. But just as soon as they make this pact, the next scene shows them apologising to each other about the weirdness in their friendship because of the sex.

Wait a  mintue. WHAT? TWO seconds after they make the pact, they've had sex and are apologetic about it? My first thought, who the hell has sex so fast? Even with cinema's exaggeration of time, two seconds of sex is just a bit TOO fast.

And to add more confusion to the viewer, after the apologising scene, the next scene is of the girl's mother talking to a Justin Timberlake in briefs. Mila Kunis comes into the room in a bathrobe, hair in disarray. And the mother starts throwing dirty looks but gives her approval of her daughter's casual sex life.

Wait another firggin' minute! Weren't they just apologising to each other about their awkward sex (which the Indian audience only could imagine had happened), and saying that they won't do it again? Then how come Timberlake was half-naked in her house again? When did they agree to start having sex again? And how much time did it take them? Talk about a quick rebound!

You know how the movie "When Harry Met Sally" had this question about how men and women can't be friends? If you're an Indian watching English entertainment channels on cable or DTH, you better believe it.

You are taught to believe that men and women should be friends till they're forced to marry each other, create a sexual partnership within days of getting married, and squirt out babies! Aarghh! I know my parents, teachers, religion, and society teach me that sex is a sin and pleasure is bad but COME ON! Let me at least watch my movies in peace!

Now, I don't watch porn because I choose not to. It turns me off! When "The Reader" came out, I was curious by the press it was creating about Kate Winslet's Oscar nomination and all, and thought I should see it. However, those who'd seen it said that I'd have to download it as Indian screens would take aeons to release it. (Fact: The movie came out in 2008 but it still hasn't released in India.)

           

Sad to say, apart from the parts where Ralph Fiennes meets her in jail, the courtroom sessions the kid attends, and Kate Winslet's acting when she was wearing clothes; I did not find anything in the movie that was worth the hype and the Oscar. But "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"? Now that was a movie for which both Jim Carrey and Winslet should have been awarded! Brilliant acting, a story that blows your mind, and a message for the weary soul in us that gave up on love after a bad break-up. "Eternal Sunshine..." still haunts me in an absolutely beautiful way, and reassures me that being human is about being human.

The summary of what I started to say in this blogpost is that my morality is my own to monitor. Why should someone impose it on me? Sony Pix should not have screened "Friends with Benefits" at all if it were to remove all the "benefits" parts. Screen more Christian-themed movies, you moralists, and I shall revoke my subscription. Screen animated movies like "The Smurfs", "The Muppets", etc., so that everyone subscribes to the idea of enforced morality endorsed by a handful of religious fanatics!

And give me freedom to download movies, serials, books, documentaries which you don't have the balls to screen in this beautiful country of mine! Don't ban Piratebay, Vimeo, and others. They provide us with avenues of independent, and different thought that few filmmakers in India take on. I can't go back to college to get a taste of parallel or "banned" cinema! I have a job to do in the morning, and my weekends to appreciate the good cinema in the world. Don't force me to criticise your idotic policymaking in my free time! But don't worry, I will still take time to do it :)

Some Questions I Seek Answers For...

Have you ever tried to help people? If you have, have you ever had tomatoes thrown at you by the same people who wanted help? If not, can you tell me how you help people out because my methods clearly don't work!

Me trying to help is often like being alone at sea. Calm for a while, roaring waters later on.

 Time and again, one distraught friend after another has asked me for advise simply because I was the only one present. As an individual, I usually stay away from conflict creation but inevitably find myself at the heart of conflict resolution. Even after wishing to not be in a situation, I end up being in one.

Though this isn't a comment about all my attempts at relationships with boys, this is a view of how terribly I need to learn how to be a more diplomatic person rather than a caregiver.

I have mentioned before that I have made attempts at mending relations between friends who had love troubles, friends who needed an ear to relieve their problems, parents who needed to vent, and teachers who tried hard to change me. As a result of being a confidante for many friends and family, I have all these jumbled up stories in my memory palace. I'm not a fan of gossip in the way Kim Kardashian is dating Kanye now. Nor do I like tales of who's sleeping with whom and how many times. But I do get to hear such stories against my will.

And this is why I need to learn how to develop it the other way round.

I want to tell a friend that she's making a terrible mistake by dating a guy who cheats on her. I want to be able to smack this guy's face, leave a print of my palm on his bony face, and make her realize that he is not the one she's been told to believe is the Mr. Right. She needs to know and understand that I don't want her to waste her time on a futile romance when it holds no future and is based on the idea of "settling down because there's no one else right now."

I also want to tell a hopeless romantic friend that her day will come. Till then she needs to be strong and face all oppositions. Most importantly, she needs to stand strong. She needs to believe in fate and stars if she wants to. She needs to believe in God or a higher power, if that gives her solace. There is someone out there for her is the advise she gets. However, what I want her to believe in instead is that she is a one-of-a-kind gem. I'd love to make her realize that I'm proud of having her as a friend and that all that's happened is in the past. (No amount of cyber-stalking will help her cause.) Till her day comes, I want her to know that she'll have friends like me to support her in any way. And that I love her.

To two of the first people I ever met, I want to tell them that they're together for more than just two reasons: my brother and I. I wish I could make them realise that I would love them more if they made an attempt to understand each other instead of giving in to traditional roles and expectations. Every time a situation arises, I wish they'd talk to each other instead of letting feelings and thoughts fester inside them. In this case though, sometimes I think I need "Age" more than the acquired "Wisdom" to settle them down.

I want to tell someone that I don't love them and have never done so. What happened was idiotic and a mistake. How could I correct it? I don't have a time machine and even that we know doesn't work. (The Time Machine and Big Bang Theory tell us so.) How do I tell this person that I don't require their attention? That I have a life I love which doesn't include them. How do I let this person down easy? How do I prevent them from not being sad?

Looking for answers...

I'd like to tell the world that I need to meet more like-minded people. Why won't you send such people my way? Why do I have to deal with people who don't understand my jokes, who can't help me increase my knowledge, who let me down by being too normal? Why are people I enjoy spending time with so far and away, scattered across the globe? Being one in a crowd is not so fun if you have to stoop down to the level of others. And attempts at making them rise above themselves is always met with derision. Why aren't there any songs about this? I guess if there were songs for this, they wouldn't understand.

These are some of the questions I wanted to get out of the way and into the universe. Universe, now it's your turn to handle them. Of course I need answers. Answers that don't require me going to a remote monastery in the Himalayan mountains and meditating for days. Answers that can be worked upon together, that is, if I don't piss off the people above.

Of Photographs and Memories...

I've always wanted to do a photo essay and have looked at various themes and photos, trying to piece them together into a tale. I found that this is a very time-consuming and painstaking exercise and I need time for it. And since I'm a procrastinator by genetics, I present to you my first closest attempt at a photo essay.

All of these pictures are of Kerala, my home state. While I have many more beautiful pictures and fond memories of the places in Kerala, I thought I'd start with these pictures. They're of my most recent visit (last year). 

Hope you enjoy these as much I enjoyed taking them.

Sunset in Nellambur, Kerala. This was outside the home of a cousin of mine. Nestled between the mountains, Nellambur is an absolute paradise.

This is similar to a lot of roads in Kerala. I just wanted one to remind myself of how country roads compare to city roads. 

If I had to have a house in the lap of nature, I want it to be exactly like this one. Small, beautiful and homely.

Believe it or not, Photoshop brought my grandparents closer after their deaths. They don't have a pic together when they were alive.

Sunset again. I really love sunsets!

Roses planted by my mom.

My nephew Alvin. He's an Australian now.

My niece who's a semi-Kuwaiti.

The veins and branches spread outwards from this more than a century-old tree and provide shade to many a weary soul.

A decorated altar, common to many orthodox churches in Kerala.

One from the flock.

And this is the century-old tree in multicolour.

A church in Manarcad, Kerala

My mother is a nature buff and always wants to pose next to plants or flowers.