Chalte chalte

Life gives us so many moments to laugh….. sometimes on ourselves, sometimes on friends, and at times people we don’t even know. Sharing one such incident happened recently.

Two weeks back, my friend and I went to a liquor shop on Saturday evening to pick some beer. This shop is on the busiest road in my area and is generally very crowded on weekends. The shop has a fashion college in close proximity and is quite natural to find the students hanging out on this road or buying liquor from this shop. So as we reached the shop looking at the huge crowd I choose to wait outside- on bike as I was driving - and asked my friend to bring beer. When returned, he was all smiling shamelessly. I followed suit when I got to know what just happened inside the shop. In his words,

There was so much of rush that he couldn’t reach till counter to place his order. Before him in the queue, there were two pretty girls, mostly from the same fashion college, mulling over wine bottles of different brands. They seemed confused on what to pick. To us seeing girls picking liquor is quite common site but these two just couldn’t decide what they wanted. Then one of them called her boyfriend to seek help about the brand selection. She probably didn’t quite catch the name and handed over the cell to the man at counter and asked “bhaiya, ye cell pe jo maang rahe hai wahi de do hame”. The man took the cell, listened and then returned to the girl with a mischievous smile. He said “wo to kiss maang rahe hai”. With this, all nearby faces turned toward the girl whose face was pink by embarrassment. Though the girls took control of the situation immediately and placed an order, the moment was really hilarious.

We laughed out loud. It was such a funny incident that I couldn’t hold myself to share this. Hope you could imagine what that boyfriend would have got to deal with later.

Saturday afternoon and PRICELESS

Saturday afternoon…I am at home, had my lunch quite late, then off to my usual 30 min flip through session of TV channels – just to see what to not watch. That’s right; I am one of those people who pick up remote to never settle on a particular channel unless I am really convinced that something worth is there to hold on to; for few minutes or may be few hours sometimes. Bizarre it may sound, but I am not an anxious freak; it’s just a habit or if you can trust on my intuitive logic- “ It’s a constant desire to find the best channel, or in other words to find THE ONE ”. But that’s not the point I wanted to bring up here. Generally, my hunger for a suitable matinee channel ends 30 minutes post lunch as I obey my sleep goddess and follow her without any conflict after that.
However, today was a little different and I got two good movies to watch one after another. A rare treat you can get from your idiot box when it is occasionally permitted to speak. First one was on HBO, a typical “Bourne” action thriller type movie, which I always enjoy; second one, I stopped by accidentally. Accidentally, because HBO and star movies are two of my resting points on remote and it was on none of them. As I was flipping through channels again- right after the first movie, I find this French channel showing a movie with English subtitle. Oh…btw, I haven’t mentioned that I used to watch a lot of movies in different languages with English subtitles. In-fact some of the Korean movies are all time favorite romantic movies and I know their stories have been copied in our Bollywood movies too.
So, intrigued by my instinct and past experience I stayed on this particular French channel. Nevertheless to say I wasn’t disappointed at the end.
The movie name was PRICELESS (released in 2006). The story was about Irène and Jean and their life changing moments in luxury hotels of France. Irène first meets Jean in a hotel where he works as a bartender. When her white-haired sugar daddy falls asleep in their suite the night of her birthday, she steals down to the bar where Jean is napping and mistakes him for a rich playboy. Jean, once awakened, gets instantly smitten tries to pretend the fake identity; they get drunk together and spend a night in the hotel’s conveniently unoccupied royal suite.
Irene later finds out about Jean's reality and dumps him. Jean follows her to apologize, convinces her a lot but she bankrupts him on a shopping spree to take revenge. Just when Jean was to be handed over to police for not able to clear the bills, a wealthy older widow who eyes him in the hotel lobby earlier, rescues him and keeps him as her lover cum assistant.
Eventually Irène realizes that she and Jean are playing the same game - trading sexual favours for gifts. While Irene does it for living, Jean was forced to do this, because of the circumstances Irene created. Jean manages to stay in same hotel where Irene is staying. Irene sees him. This makes Irene feel happy that Jean too is in the same condition.
While Irene was materialistic by choice, Jean was doing all of it just to have few moments with her, In the hope that one day she will forgive him and would love him. Instead of what turn life has taken after meeting Irene, Jean’s only motive was to see her happy. At last Irene realizes what she wants is a prince by heart, not by wealth. Jean's selfish and pure love wins her over.
Though romantic, it was a bit different from usual Hollywood romantic genre movies. The script was quite unique and bold. Probably, that’s the reason it is rated PG-13. I was a bit apprehensive in the beginning but hanged in for a while and loved it. To sum it up- a romantic movie with effervescence, new and experimental storyline, near real portrayal of the extravagant lifestyles in plush hotels of France and good performances.

Nirvana of thoughts

"Nothing good happens after 2 am". This was the theme for an episode of one of my favourite(recent) television show HIMYM(How I met your mother). Where all the events in that particular episode were giving a clear indication that nothing can go right after 2 am and that you should be better off to bed by this time to avoid letting something bad happen to you.

Well … practically it makes sense. Firstly it’s not safe to hangout till late. Secondly, the fear of reaching office late next day, plus it’s against the human biological clock….and lastly, most of the times you end up fighting with your girlfriend. But there is another side of it as well.         

Recently I went to Hyderabad to meet one of my friends. I really enjoyed the journey and the stay for the kind of a different experience this trip gave me that I have been thinking of writing a travelogue on it. Weeks passed by, yet I haven’t materialized my plan. A major hindrance has been patience (a rare commodity in our generation) to recollect the memories and jot them down. Then the lack of will - to stay technically alive after 1 am to write something sensible when your body is in sustained denial state. I believe, like every comfort phase of life - this is the time which really takes you in a different world. Try winning the game of fighting with your physical barriers sometime, and you will see what you have explored. And trust me, most of the time we do clear this transition physically when we are watching a late night movie or gossiping with friends etc…but we actually send our intellect into hibernation way before that.

 Now on the other side, when you thinking or pondering about something seriously and you reach a stage when you , yourself don’t realize where you have reached, you just tend to leave your preoccupied thoughts and a sudden flow of new thoughts starts crossing over your mind with fast pace.

Now there are no hard and fast rules that these thoughts will be only good but you gotta catch them. They will be pepping in for a few split seconds, knock your very conscious mind and make you run after so many of them. But there is one thing which is quite true…if you could hold on to atleast one of them, and just follow your instinct, you will thank yourself next day for feeding your intellectual self. It would be like nirvana of thoughts where there is no limit of creativity or weirdness. You might not be able to justify it to others but wouldn’t want that either. When you know what you experienced is something can’t be described in word but rather be left to self exploration, you wouldn’t bother explaining it all.

Take for instance, I thought of writing the travelogue today, sat down, but again started worrying about problems I have in life these days. Kept thinking for long and once I traversed past my comfort zone I really saw a lot of positive lights, a lot new ideas, and creative thoughts… weird, strange thoughts. But I am also impressed, more from the fact that it gave me enough patience to write about these weird thoughts, which, I myself, might not have patience to just read in day light…..forget about writing, and that too,  when I am fully aware that my aim tonight was to finish my travelogue. But, I would write that just at any other time when I don’t have the luxury of being in a nirvana of thoughts.

Signing off….Amit @ 5:05 am.