Gingerbread man to Rumpelstiltskin

I wanted to write about Shrek because that is what I just saw this gone Friday and then I went back on it as I have wanted to write about this other film I saw recently called The Road. But then I came back to Shrek because The Road is a much more thought provoking subject in the manner of its treatment and presentation. So I will leave The Road for my next time of writing. I hope with Robinhood, Kites, Sex and the City coming up I can still take out time for The Road.

I simply refuse to compare my recent expedition in the world of Shrek to the first three parts of it and most definitely not to the first one, which continues to be my favorite (I should not have said that). This final part in the brilliantly created character of Shrek is funny in parts, imaginative in others, foolishly repeated in several places and has its charm overall.

This was the first time that I wasn't expectant of Shrek as much as I had been for the last three doses of it. This one just happened to me. More so I hadn't even planned to go and watch it, I just happened to be at the movies and there he was waiting to entertain. The story follows the next trajectory in Shrek's life, with the regular family drama that happens (or will happen) in all our lives. The world of Shrek is routine, repetitive and all he needs is change. He goes out looking for change and the moral of the story is that we never value what we have, till we have lost it.

The many highlights of this Shrek episode was the new breed of fairy tale characters that they dished out. I was so sure that they had exhausted all the fairy tale stories and characters that they could not bring any new to this last one. There comes Rumpelstiltskin. He has been one of my favorite evil characters throughout fairy tale history. His use in this part of Shrek is quite amusing and fits like a pea in a pod. From his wigs to the witches, his contracts and hidden 'exit clauses' was just out of a law book. Everything was hilarious and pushed the boundaries of my fairy tale imagination. Kudos to the writer!!!

The surprise for me was the Pide Pipper of Hamelin. This was the most unexpected of characters that I had completely forgotten about and he came from nowhere, did his bit for the story and left. This is what I call optimal use of a character.

As usual this piece of cinema said so much to me. The essential thread that carried this tale forward and made it endearing in the end was the focus on not fighting for things to happen. Things happen in their own time, we must effort, we must try our best, but in the end there is only as much we can do. The fact that Shrek brought this realization to me and helped me philosophize one of my favorite animations was quite touching.

Shrek has a special place in my heart for being the first animated feature that introduced me to the fascinating and breathtaking world of animation and animated characters. Shrek and I have known each other for many years and have brought lots of joy to each other. I am somewhat sad that he will not take another story and come to me, but I do think that Shrek will have to go now, he has lived his part. Any new attempt to bring him back will not carry the freshness and the subtle little hidden stories that made it such an unforgettable piece of cinema.

To donkey, puss, fiona, duke farquaad, dragon, donkey's little dragon/donkey mutant children, Shrek and fiona's children, all the fairy tale characters, gingerbread man, magic mirror and the rest of them...thank you for your decade of wonderful cinema.

Relished the way it is - Cinema

There is nothing more surprising and challenging than the limits of human creativity. Personally, whenever I interact or come across something that is uniquely delightful, something that makes me go ‘wow’ at the brilliance of its imagination, how the extent of human experience has been portrayed, narrated either through the arts or any other form of representation. I have never understood how life never seems to surprise me, how the world that I live in, am a part of, is constantly changing and moving at a pace I can never keep up with.

The human mind, our ability to think, to imagine and just create the most wondrous things that we see, or not see around us is the most unique of our various gifts. I don’t think we can really compare the various things we have been blessed with, but the extent or the limitless range of the human mind is what makes our lives, our living so uniquely enriching.

Just yesterday I came across an excerpt from the various speeches of Socrates. He spoke about the union of the minds and how that form of union is the only coming together that is of relevance. On so many levels that made so much sense to me, can there be any other form of union, coming together of talents and just extreme levels of brilliance? Can we even imagine if the mind became the only place, only level of union for all living organisms? Socrates even goes to the extent of attributing all activities, including sex to be mere social acts, just biological actions and not relevant to society other than their basic functions. I think the importance Socrates gives to the human mind is what is so fascinating and just a given. Can there be anything more fascinating. Not to say that everything that has been created around us, by us, for us, is not equally inspiring, not equally beautiful, it is. Just that on a personal level, I have found the human mind to be just extraordinary in its abilities.

I would like to evaluate and somewhat analyze our ‘head’ through two prisms, one through the remarkable positive that it can create, and the second dark, negative aspect of its existence. I don't think this is a unique analysis, I am aware that this sort of dichotomy has been evaluated before. There is only the positive and the negative side of things, so what is unique in what I am trying to do. To begin with, I simply don't understand the human need to create something unique all the time. There is a definate identification, a definate desire to be unique, however such uniqueness is not always possible. People should be allowed to create things which are not out of the ordinary and just run of the mill, I should be allowed to go ahead and indulge in the same critique that has done the rounds for many many years.

Bon so here goes.

Often times pain and death have been shown to represent the darkest realms of human thought. It seems that pain, suffering and death is attributed to the negative that exists in the world. I would think that this is so because of the emotions that these feelings bring out in people. I don't know if human emotion can be the judge or the benchmark for any of our beliefs or the parameters that we set, however they definately can be indicators of how we tend to interact with a given set of circumstances. So on this side if we have the negative, then the positive should be the same. When emotions like love, happiness, joy and delight result, that would imply that there is a lot of positivity that surrounds, there are good things that happened. We need to be congizant though, through all this analysis we are discounting the role of social and historical conditioning towards both the concepts of good and bad, and the emotional reactions to positives and negatives. None of our interactions or results therefrom are seperate or independent of history and society.

But imagine that while we continue to look for ways to perpetuate the positive, we struggle to continue on the path of little understood goodness, its the negative that actually is worth anything. Why do I sound such an extremist, simply because the mere existence of any good in the world is because of the bad, the positive is seen as such because of its contradictory foe that exists. Nothing very enlightening, I agree, not in the least, yet the human thought known for its rather unending abilities at innovation doesn't seem to wrap itself around this simple reality.

I too contributed to the neverending compliments to the undefined and unlimited ability of the human mind, yet its the essentially rudimentary understanding the mind has of life, of good and bad, that torments me, surprises me. So while on one side we have its brilliance, on the other its complete stupidity. It continues to repeat, to no end, its cycle of desire to keep the bad away, try and have the rivers of positivity flowing. Or so we think. For if there was no intention to have negativity in the world, how would it exist? How would it manifest itself and take shape the way it does? I don't know. At the risk of making very fundamental and existential deductions, I would think that there is as much a desire to live in the dark as there is to in the light. The extent of the human mind, the never ending and far stretching realms of who we are makes room for all sorts of things to exist and flourish. We consciously choose to distance ourselves from them, atleast one aspect, however there is nothing that makes it a complete whole other than the existence of both darkness and light.

When I look at the wonderous imagination of what I call the human mind, I imagine and marvel at everything. I marvel how death is glorified, used to petrify, darkness and its representations all instilling fear in our deepest cores. While the flowers of spring, the rain that signals the onset of the greenest times in the year, while the birds and the skylarks and the sun and everything that makes us feel alive, makes us want to be alive, all exists simultaneously and not independent of the other.

What is to say that the world wasn't meant to be the way we see it unfold in front of us. Well, alright not the entire picture, there are a few errants I would like removed, but in its entirety, its beauty is worth just admiring the way it is, without question. The beauty that gave rise to its existence, the endless journey of the mind is to be relished the way it is. No?

Dear Mr. President - Society

Dear Mr. President,

I very recently returned from a trip to a city in your country. I was in San Francisco for close to one week and had a very interesting time there. My visit perhaps was the trigger, and for the first time in the past two years that I have known of you, I wanted to write to you.

Before I venture into the purpose of this letter, I would like to say that I followed your campaign for two years and like many other non-Americans, who did not have any direct role in your election, did feel very proud that you were elected to the office of the President. Many congratulations.

I am a filmmaker and lawyer who now lives and works in Canada. I was born in India and spent a bulk of my life there. I have grown up around poverty and the process of social development (or lack thereof) that comes with it. I make special reference to poverty because my experience in San Francisco is defined by this social and economic menace. I would at the outset request that you not view this note as a judgment or critique of the city or the people of San Francisco, nor is this an attempt to tell you or your administration what is right or wrong with the city I recently visited. This is merely an attempt to share some of my observations and perceptions, which perhaps will provide you with a different view of how poverty and social apathy plays out on the streets of San Francisco.

You and I don't need to get into the politics or the history of poverty. We have been part of a world which inherited the institutions of colonization. We are now watching before us an evolution of society which is deeply rooted in capitalist norms and continues to work for the few while the majority struggles to survive. If the obvious happenings don't teach us anything, then I don't really know what else can. I ventured out into the streets of San Francisco and saw people wandering around, crying out loud, talking to themselves, directionless, inhabiting a meaningless existence. Begging was more a conditioned response, than a need based activity. Social engagement included the desperate need to take, to better ones dilapidated economic state. When on a beautiful morning I walked out of my hotel wanting to go for a run, and half a mile on the state of a neighborhood halted my step and made me want to just observe and ask why? If the poverty, extreme and deliberate sense of it, in the exorbitant plenty that surrounds the people, is not a problem that seems to be taken to task, I wonder why we are? I don't want to claim here that anything I saw on the streets, anything I witnessed happening in the city space that I inhabited for a week was different from what I have witnessed or experienced in other parts of the world. But I did felt a lack of hope, an absence of it also. I did not feel that people around me were joyous or even have the glimmer of hope in their eyes that this would change. The state of poverty and the lack of mental coherence that has existed there is now what that city, what that community of people are identified with, as.

I walked on the Golden Gate Bridge, looking into the expanse of the water that washes the city peninsula. The deception was so stark. On the one hand I was mesmerized at the enormous achievement that the construction of the bridge represented, while on the other the city that was spread in front of my eyes, the people who lived in those streets, whom I had encountered, I had spoken to, I had walked among, I just couldn't ignore them. I couldn't marvel at this landscape for it did not give me hope.

At the risk of sermonizing to you, I do think that the only measure of anything being done in and for our societies is when there is some tangible, visible progress. Even if one or half a step is taken forward in our lives, in the lives of our communities, that is progress, that is the continuation of our human evolution. But the absence of it is just disappointing.

I don't know if you will find a few minutes to read what I have written to you. I do not wish you to respond to me. I do however hope that you will "today" task someone, a group of researchers from the sprawling campuses of the universities across the US, a public policy professional, a social worker, anyone who has the skills and the commitment, and send them to the streets of San Francisco, make them begin working right now on a model, a mechanism that will begin the process of poverty eradication on the streets. That will make services available to people with mental disorders. We can't wait today, we can't wait another day for it to be done. For the problem has to be taken to task.

In the end I want to share a very difficult sentiment I had to deal with. I have never once in my life felt out of place. The richest and the poorest, the coldest and the warmest have always made me feel welcome. I have felt one with humanity throughout my journey through life. I have never been in a situation where I had to feel or say to myself, that this is not my country, this is not my world, for it is, all of the countries of the world, this humanity is my community for I inhabit this world with everyone. For the first time in my life I felt out of place, I couldn't identify with anything, I couldn't feel one with a single aspect of the life that I encountered in the city. For the first time I had to say, thank god I am not an American, thank god I don't live in this country, thank god I have a home to go back to. This emotion pained me beyond belief. I have had great experiences in your country. Americans have welcomed me wherever I have traveled, and never once have I agreed with the negativity that surrounds the image of what America is. But this time it was different. It was disappointing.

As the President of your country I hope that over the next months and years when you sign an executive order, one of them would be setting up a task force that is designed to combat the menace of hopelessness that lives on the streets of San Francisco. You represent change, however the absence of hope makes change a distant distant distant reality.

Thank you for your patience Mr. President.

best wishes to you and your country,

Hold on to humanity - Cinema

I have such an interesting relationship with life. I say things and it talks back to me constantly. I know this is not just a figment of my imagination. This is how it actually is. I love this reality of my being more than any other. I have constant questions and it has answers for me.

This post is about us as humans, our humanity. I ventured out to catch a movie which I had already seen. A friend asked me to come with her, so I decided to watch it again. It was a compelling and impacting story so I wasn't bothered about the re-run. However, owing to a few suggestions (very unconscious) from me and other discussions of the day (which I shall not elaborate on) I found myself watching a completely different movie. An experience which was bound to have me smiling away at life. It decided to pamper me again, like it always does.

Defiance, that is what the movie was supposed to say to us. The director intended an act of defiance to mean something. More than the act, the idea of defiance and how the human spirit treats itself to defiance to assert its existence. How it knows no other way to say out loud that it is alive, very alive. It is breathing and the only respect there is for it, is the right to live, to survive as a human being. As life intended it to be. In all of this, there is the inherent element of struggle. This is so for the simple reason that if fighting for ones survival becomes the bed rock of ones effort in the world, there is a denial of that freedom to do so. There is a lack of that environment which would allow the free evolution of human beings. And thus the struggle. The constant effort to find that dignity not for anything, or anyone, just the mere basic right to survive.

In the movie I saw sequences from a very important chapter of twentieth century human history. I was reflecting on that specific event just previously today with another friend. I looked at the events that were a mere glimpse of what had really gone on. I didn't find it in the least bit different from how we have existed as people for thousands of years. Even today, that military strength is the essence of development. Our existence and our status in the twenty first century of being a developing, progressing community of people, exists with a complete lack of faith, trust. There is little humanity to show for. Why do we need boundaries, why do we need armies and billions of dollars worth of arms? Why is it that we don't seem to move on with our so called progress? What has changed in our hatred of each other, distrust of the other that hasn't existed in the hundreds of years that have gone by? Nothing. Its the same. The names have changed, the places and faces have changed. But we as a community of people seem to be the same. We hate each other, have walls between each other and still call ourselves a community of people. I don't know where do we find the defiance to live, to exist and to even think that there is hope? Our actions suggest the complete opposite.

I ask, why is it not possible that a community of human beings is brought into existence in the real sense? There is little that can be done of the days that are past. There is little that can be changed, but for the future should there be no hope? Any text on the state of humanity and us as people is seen as wasteful sentimentality. We see people who indulge in this as some sort of intellectuals, or even poets or artists who are affected by the 'state of man'. And these sentiments seem to do nothing to the larger thought process in all of us. There is little movement to suggest that freedom and community living will exist in the true sense.

My utter sense of apathy and possible pessimism stems from one and only one facet of human beings. The resiliance we show in surmounting all odds, all difficult situations. There is never a thing that is not overcome through constant human effort. No wonder we continue to survive after so many centuries on centuries of distrust and hatred for each other. This resilance to get through and emerge stronger. This spirit of oneness in times of need is what inspires yet suffocates, when the opposite nature of complete selfishness confronts me in my face. Where does the spirit of overcoming all difficulties get lost when we decide to hold guns to each other's faces? When one or a few men tell us to just harbor hatred and nothing else in our hearts and minds, do we stop to think what we are doing? Do we not look at ourselves in the mirror and ask who we are and why we are?

There are questions and there a few answers, but in all the commotion that surrounds us there is one underlying thread that connects us all. It is our humanity. Some call it defiance. Some call it a struggle to survive, to just be able to breathe. I term it our humanity. I don't see it as defiance, for we are meant to live. We are meant to weather the storms that we encounter and continue. That is what connects us, our strength as human beings. Our humanity is our greatest strength.

We must hold on to that humanity and not let anything stop us, or snatch that away from us. Whenever we think of anything outside the scope of that humanity our struggle should be directed to get back to that humanity. We must cling to it, hold on to it as if it were the last straw that could keep us alive, prevent us from extinction. If we look at ourselves through that prism the only shining thing we have about us, our humanity, will shine through.

We get used to lying - Cinema

I don’t know how to define what the truth is. Is the truth the same for everyone? I guess it is not. For if it was then we would all have the same beliefs, even the same foundations to the way we think and interpret things. But because there is no one truth, and no one sense of what is right for all, I don’t know how to interpret truth and compare it with falsity. If there is no one truth, then how do we know when someone is lying? How do we brand something as this big fat lie that someone just said? Surprisingly, when we interact socially we always find that truth stands out as this beacon of light for everyone to follow. Everyone claims and stands by the ‘spirit’ of things and so the binary of truth and falsity sprouts and bears fruit.

Now let me try and analyze both truths and lies in the perspective of complete objectivity. The absence of subjective evolution and individual perception should perhaps make truth and lies possible, and even applicable to more than one individual at one time. Firstly, do we need universal truths, do we need these benchmarks of evaluation to be able to survive in this world. What is this need to continue to want to be told that you are in the right and when there is the right on one side, there will have to be a corresponding wrong. That wrong, that lie makes it possible for the truth sayers to take pride and tell themselves that they are just that, right. So in essence does truth stem from a need to satisfy your ego? Doesn’t it feel like we need truths for ourselves to be able to live and tell ourselves that we are on the right side of the spectrum? But did the first falsity come from the truth, did we make it up to side step something. I ask this, because I always attribute human emotion to the distinction between falsity and truth. When someone feels strongly about something, when there is a passion that drives a feeling that for majority of us is a dominant sign of truth, or at least claimed truth. And then the problem of truth being claimed by a few in opposition to others. If one set of people don’t disagree with other on a certain aspect of what is truth and what is not, there would be no debate and everyone would be in agreement. At the complete risk of going onto another tangent, I sometimes even attribute truth or any sense thereof to the human need to disagree or make everyone agree to what one thinks. There is an essential need that is served when people agree with us, there is a boost to the ego, self esteem of who we identify as people when someone or just people in general tend to be in agreement with us. We find that we feel good about ourselves by being made to feel that what we think is acceptable to many others outside the scope of just our thinking.

Now we move to the contradictory emotion to truth. Why is it that we feel that falsity is the easy way out, do we not give people enough credit even if that means they will disagree with us? Do we not judge wrongly if we think that people may disagree, yet understand our point of view? More so given that truth is such a figment of an individual’s imagination, we would be ok to have that challenged by the figment of someone else’s imagination, which is just not what we hold, yet rooted in similar emotions and justifications. So every lie finds similarity with truth in more ways than we can imagine.

When I hear someone say that people lie all the time, I want to say people don’t tell lies at all, there is very little distinction between lies and truths that it is close to impossible to distinguish between the two and we are stuck with not being able to distinguish and stay with what we feel comfortable in. We never usually worry about consequences of either the lie or the truth and thus stick with what we think. Once we stop distinguishing between the two, there is little possibility of being able to find truth, say the truth and Not get used to lying.