Thought Shots

"For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something", said Steve Jobs.  Well, today is the 31st of December which is neither the last day of your nor my life but is certainly the last day of the year 2013. And how stubbornly we are bent on celebrating it? The people I came across in the streets of Delhi today looked more cheerful than they ever have. They were doing things that really mattered. Spending time with family, friends, having that 'me' time and so forth. I think that's what the knowledge of the last day does to people. It sort of liberates them from the urgent to the important, helps them to get a bigger vision on things instead of getting caught up in the thick of thin things. They seemed to have let go of all the t

Some stories never get old. I think that Martin's Day , a film directed by Alan Gibson, is one such story. It's about a captive named Martin Steckart (played by Richard Harris) who escapes out of prison and abducts a boy also named Martin (played by Justin Henry) to keep the police away. The two Martins form an unlikely friendship as they get away from their respective prisons (the old Martin's freedom from the police cell and the young Martin's freedom from the prison of his uncaring mom and inattentive step-dad). In a scene from the film, the lieutenant in charge of catching Martin Steckart dead or alive, asks Dr. Mennen, "How come they are having such a great time and we are not?" And the doctor (played by Lindsay Wagner) answers, "Because it's our job to put them back in (the prison)." And out of the prison the two Martins are! In their stay away from a rule based world, they rob a service station, hold a toy truck in transit, hijack a t

I have just finished reading The Beauty Diet by Shonali Sabherwal. The philosophy behind the book is that though diet provides nutrition, it can also make one look good by "helping weight-loss, getting a proportionate body, making your skin glow and your hair and eyes shine". And who wouldn't want that, right? So, I am writing this one to share with you some of Shonali's tips that I have found helpful and easily applicable. First up, Shonali talks about going local. So when we go veggie shopping, the thing that we all can be blamed for (most of all me) is buying easily available packaged stuffs from your neighboring Safal outlet or the SuperMarket. Shonali says that one should rather go for buying from the sellers of veggies on rickety carts or the Sabji stalls where the veggies are all fresh and certainly far fresher than the packaged stuff that may have travelled far and wide struggling with death and disease just to reach our hands. Secondly, go traditional.

Ok so it is Sunday morning and I have nothing better to do right now than catch a movie. Thankfully, the one I caught just now was a Karan Johar produced and Kareena Kapoor starrer, and that is Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu. A romedy from the beginning to end. The film was fun to watch and yes...I will admit, disappointing in its climax. The film is about friendship, love and all that u can expect in a bollywood potboiler. You won't find yourself losing a smile from your face as you watch this. So the experience was not all that bad. I liked the concept the film had. It was about how an uptight architect Rahul (who has lost his job) meets a quick-witted hair stylist Riana in LA and after a night of drinks and debauchery ends up marrying her. They decide to annul the marriage, of course. But since Riana is not doing too well either in her career. She fails to pay her rents and is forced to come and live with Rahul. Their staying together makes them know each other better. And Rahul develop

Since the time of its release in 2006, Jab We Met is one film that I have been recommended to watch time and again. I have tried catching it too. But never could in totality and had to stop short somewhere in the middle of the film or towards its climax. Thus missing the fun of seeing how the film in its entirety was. Well, it is a Sunday morning and while I was surfing the channels I couldn't help but stop to watch the film (or at least try watching it) once and all over again. Thankfully, today I did go through the entire film and not just in bits and pieces. Mainly courtesy the newfound admiration I have developed for Kareena Kapoor having watched her latest film Gori Tere Pyaar Mein where she has given the performance of a lifetime. But it is for Jab We Met that she has received most applause from the public and the critics alike. So I just wanted to see if her performance in the film really outwits what she has done in GTPM. I don't know about that but the film itself was

Today's blog is about a character that I have simply fallen in love with. The character is a girl named Diya from Karan Johar's latest flick 'Gori Tere Pyaar Mein' (Translation: My Fair Lady, In Your Love). Diya is a diehard social activist who wants to change the world whatever the cost. Opposite her is a shallow little man called Sriram who couldn't care less just about anything important: be it relationships, life, family, friend or the country. He is anything but like Diya. But before I get into the chemistry of their relationship, let me tell you something about what makes Diya one most lovable character. Firstly, we need more like her especially in a country like ours. Someone who can come up with unique ideas to fight the grind this bloody system we work under puts us in. So, you see Diya getting rid of the traffic jam caused by a soon to arrive chief minister on the road by acting pregnant having borrowed Sriram's jacket (which is how they meet the firs

You know that moment when you see something that gives you a fresh perspective and a new take on things? I had that moment in the morning when I saw the David Fincher directed Fight Club . Now, the film has a lot of violence, fighting and bloodshed but it also has something serious to tell us about the lives we lead or at least think we lead. The movie has this unnamed narrator who befriends a soap salesman named Tyler Durden on a flight. They later start a fight club where people come to fight recreationally. I was fascinated by Tyler's take on life and things. What was remarkable was just how relevant his outlook is to the contemporary world we live in. A world where we have all become simply consumers. A target for companies to buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like. And yes, the line originates from this movie only. So why a fight club? The director says, "We're designed to be hunters and we're in a society of shopping. There's noth

It was about a year before that I had thought of writing this blog but I couldn't get around to it. The blog is about the Vaishno Devi trip that I made last year with my family. Throughout the trip I couldn't help but feel that I was searching for the Goddess that was said to be residing in the middle of the mountains that could only be climbed after a painstaking journey (if of course, you chose to walk on foot which by the way, we did). I was with my mother, brother and a family friend called Navjot Singh Sidhu (a very young acquaintance, not to be confused with the hyperbolic indian commentator). The trip took about four days to complete. We braved an exhausting train journey, a bumpy bus ride across the foothills, strange monkey gazes coming from what were real monkeys (no racism intended), smell of horse-dung and she horse-dung and most remarkable of all a walk up and down the mountains (thinking of Sissyphus here...) that lasted for no less than about fourteen hours. I

Let me start by telling you something about an American President who is slightly less known than the others who have occupied the same position: President Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge had many beliefs. One of them was that whenever he spoke, he got in trouble. He said, "I realized that no difficulty comes if one does not speak". Once having been surrounded by the media, he gave only one response to whatever he was asked, "No comments". After getting out of the crowd and chaos, he turned around the journalists and said, "Whatever I said is between you and me and please don't disseminate the same outside." This he said even though he had not really said anything. At a ballroom party once, he was challenged by a lady that she would make him speak at least three words during the party and Coolidge answered, "You lose". Osho says, "People mostly say what they never intended to. Which is very strange, of course, saying things that you neve

This post is about that eternal war that has been raged in the mind of every man and woman. Simply put, it's the war between the irrational and the rational, the mind versus the heart, the reasonable versus the unreasonable. A couple of thoughts flashed across my mind while I thought about this piece. I recalled Einstein who said, "Never let your mind interfere in the matters of your heart." Or that scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where the young Charlie tells a cynical boy, "Candies don't have to make sense. That's why they are candy." George Bernard Shaw who said, " The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." A pretty close thought on the same line is from the movie 'The Departed' where Frank Costello tells his take on life, "I don't want to be a product of environment. I want my

I came across an article on Forbes the other day about how successful people spend (or should be spending) their weekends by Jacquelyn Smith. The article cited the example of Spencer Rascoff who only at the age of 37 has  co-founded Hotwire.com and served as a VP for  Expedia ; he held the roles of CFO, vice president of marketing and COO at  Zillow ; and in 2008, Rascoff was promoted to chief executive of the popular real estate information site. The secret behind Rascoff's ability to achieve so much and so quickly is explained thus by him, “My weekends are an important time to unplug from the day-to-day and get a chance to think more deeply about my company and my industry,” Rascoff says. “Even when I’m technically not working, I’m always processing in the background and thinking about the company. Weekends are a great chance to reflect and be more introspective about bigger issues.”  In this tough and competitive world, it has become crucial to make the most of every minute

Imran Khan put it best when he said that Tendulkar was too proud a cricketer to hang around if he was not meeting the high standards he had set himself over these last two decades. Tendulkar has been the closest thing to perfection in the country since he began playing for the Indian team in 1989. I was going through the thoughts expressed by his teammates and cricketing legends from around the world on his retirement. When a person leaves a field that he has for so long dominated, you expect a volley of praise from different quarters but only in this case whatever words of admiration were used seemed unable to describe the colossus of a cricket phenomenon that Sachin is. Dhoni writes that he was always in awe of the man and at times couldn't make eye contact with him. In the initial days, it was Sachin who was nice enough to break the ice in the slip and initiate a conversation with him. He remembers, " As luck would have it, I benefitted from Tendulkar's presence a

To begin with, let me describe a scene from the film, A Beautiful Mind . John Nash, a Harvard maths scholar and a later to-be Nobel Laureate, is begging his dean for giving him more time to work on his idea of Governing Dynamics. His dean reminds him that his fellows at Harvard have attended classes and actually managed to get their work published. He tells John that his efforts at his so-called original idea may be clever but they are hardly good enough. John pleads, "Please consider another review. Professor. I have repeated asked you for that, sir. My revisions are almost done." The dean stops him short as they enter the University cafeteria and shows him an elderly man accepting pens as tokens of appreciation from the men around at his table. The dean asks, "Do you see what they are doing in there?" John looks on. The dean continues, "It's the pens. Deserved for the member of a department who makes the achievement of a lifetime. And what do you see, J

I have just revisited Stephen. R. Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and as always the book's message made me hold my breath for some time. In the chapter Inside-Out Covey talks about the power of perceptions. How the way we see governs the way we behave. And how our perceptions are formed by the years of conditioning we have been put through by the world around us. For any effective change to take place, Covey says, we must first change our perceptions. He also says that we cannot go very far in changing our seeing without simultaneously changing our being and vice versa. What we do will have have to also change to change the way we see things. Covey talks about two ways of seeing, the way things are (the realities) and the way things should be (the values). When we describe something, we are actually describing ourselves. That is not the reality. And when someone disagrees, it is difficult to accept that they might be right. Covey says that we will have to be

This post is about what is currently taking place in the volatile region of Tunisia. They say that there are tremors felt after a banyan tree falls across the land. After the revolution, Tunisia has seen disorder in the way authorities function. The credibility of the police department and the govt. administration to solve people's problems has seriously taken a hit. But amidst this chaos, one group that people turn to for solving their problems is emerging. This is a group led by a man called Abdessalam. A group that calls themselves Salafists. Not everyone agrees with their mindset but the thing that makes this lot of people remarkable is that they are effective problem-solvers. People come to meet Abdessalam to relate their concerns. They come with the surest hope that the man will take care of the same. So we see a woman coming to him to describe how miserable her life has become due to her husband's debauchery of letting an alien woman in her home and keeping away with he

I have followed the Dark Knight Trilogy by Christopher Nolan most curiously. It is after all one of the best superhero movie sagas of our time. When you think about Batman or Bruce Wayne, what are the qualities that strike you? His ability to seem unheroic for a more heroic cause, his desire to clean up the city whose richest man he is or simply how cool he can be with all his fancy moves and state-of-the-art gadgets and so forth? Although I like it all about him, there is one particular trait that I admire. That is how he handles his love. His love interest Rachael Dawes is constantly drawn towards other men. That would ideally cause jealousy in a man who loves her. But as Bruce says to his butler and confidant Alfred, "Who Rachael hangs out with is none of my concern". Wayne recognizes that though he loves her, she doesn't necessarily have to return the favor. And he respects that liberty the girl has. When you think about love, I think that this is one of the m

My post today is about Shah Rukh Khan. I have always admired this man for his straightforwardness and charisma. His latest flick Chennai Express is out and naturally we see him getting aired everywhere. I was thus able to catch a couple of his interviews on the indian media. One on NDTV with Pronnoy Roy and the other one with Rajat Sharma on India TV. And on both the talk shows, SRK shone with his famous and sometimes controversial wit and humor. I will discuss here just the highlights. Am sure that you can watch the full video of the two on Youtube. Something interesting that SRK advised his young audience on the NDTV talk show was that they should not believe in the nonsense they get to hear about hating materialism. He said that the effort should be to make one's life as comfortable and cosy as possible both for yourself and your loved one. So ignore all those who recommend the quest of peace on some remote mountain in the Himalayas etc...ignore those who tell you to conc