Lee Min Ho

Considering I was already doing all sorts of crazy fan things from scouring random websites to watching and re-watching videos I don’t even understand (language barrier, you guys. Hangul is really difficult to learn, I am talking from experience :P), I decided that it’s high time I dedicated a blog post to him.

I have already mentioned in certain previous blog posts that the last three odd months have been trying times. Last month, on a day on which I had reached depths of despair, I decided to go check out ‘Boys of Flowers’ and the famed ‘Gu Jun Pyo’ that everybody was raving about in a bid to distract myself and retain some semblance of sanity. It took me some time to warm up to the drama and probably even more time to warm up to Gu Jun Pyo. The weird fangirling for Lee Min Ho’s intense portrayal of a spoilt and often very unlikeable but undeniably passionate rich boy started mid way through the series so much so that I went on to finish it and watch ‘Personal Taste’ and ‘The Heirs’ in quick succession.

In the last few weeks, the world that Min Ho creates in these dramas, being as far apart from my world as they are, has been my refuge. They say that the mark of a good actor is that he keeps the audience engaged as an actor and the mark of a brilliant one is that he makes the audience forget that what they are watching is make belief. In the hours that I spend watching these Korean shows, I live along with the characters Min Ho portrays, an invisible bystander to a world that is not mine, a world that has undeniable problems that are not mine, a world where there are heartbreaks galore but they are not mine and a world where there is ultimate triumph but it is not mine. And this is probably the process that helps me sustain and probably, heal.

It’s weird, isn’t it, for a 21 year old Indian to say that a Korean actor who acts exclusively in Korean serials and probably knows no word of English (It would be damn weird if he knew Indian languages, but that’s beside the point :P) creates worlds that help her retain sanity during what can probably be called a life crises? Immature, ridiculous and downright laughable? Maybe. But then, that is probably, the strength of acting and movies, you guys. Like they say that a good book can be your window to the world, a good movie/drama can be your window out of your world, for however short a time. And everyone needs that once in a while.

Haven’t you always wished that you had some way of contacting your favourite stars; people who not only provide us with entertainment but also often lead lives that have a lot to inspire? I don’t know if he has lead such a life and how much of his persona is acting and the successful imposition of a facade of his PR team and how much of it is real. But, for me, it is not his life that inspires, it is his acting and the stories he conveys and the worlds he creates (Is there any difference between the two, you ask? I really don’t know.) But whatever it is, something about what he does with his life has acted as a thread for me to hold on to in this tumultuous phase in life and for that, I am grateful. As whimsical and pointless this post is in the large ocean of fan websites  and news articles and general adoration that you receive, thank you for just being, Lee Min Ho.

Life with disillusionment

It's been a long long couple of months. It's strange how you often have an image of how your life is going to be like and it crumbles into bits, isn't it? Or how you spend a considerable amount of time feeling extremely contented and happy in life and then, poof! It's as if someone has upended you, or the world around you, or both. Of course, it's very easy to feel happy and contented with life when it is going your way, as easy it is for everything to go haywire.

When I was younger, my mum's favourite adage was that whatever goes up comes down, that things always moved in a circle of favourable and unfavourable, that life is a great equaliser. Happiness will be followed by sadness and sadness will be followed by happiness. In this vortex of emotions is how we shall and do (and always have) exist. Of course, this is probably what everybody's mum probably said. I wonder why it was so much easier to believe it than it is now. 

We've read in novels of fanciful protagonists who had committed the folly of thinking that life is always going to be a walk down a rose garden. We've also read of protagonists who were so steeped in the romantic notions of tragedy that they would imagine every aspect of life to be one. And both are ridiculed as unrealistic notions of how life really is. But isn't life mostly about going from one to the other? When things are going your way, it is very easy to believe that things are always going to remain that way. And when things aren't going your way, it is again very easy to think that they never will. Both are ridiculous, you say? But then what is not? What would you say if one spent their happy days waiting for something to go wrong because that's how things work, right? If you're happy for too long, then something is going wrong. Similarly, what would you say when you feel a perverse monstrous sense of relief when things do go wrong because then at least, you are not waiting in anticipation of it happening? Depressive or realistic?

There are fewer things more difficult than being faced with one's mediocrity. How it feels to make one's peace with it is something I am not yet equipped to write about though. That's an accomplishment that still eludes me. All our lives, our parents, friends and well wishers assure us that we are special, that there is something about us that sets us apart from others, that we are meant to accomplish great things, that at the end of our lives we'll leave behind a legacy which at least a few people will have the occasion of remembering. And we let ourselves believe it. After all, who would want to live with acute consciousness of their mediocrity? Who would want to be continuously aware of the fact that their life is going to be the same as that of a billion other people, that their biggest accomplishment will be the fact that they managed to lead an unremarkable quiet life till they faded into oblivion, till the only people who remembered them were childhood friends who had at that point believed that they had been cut out for great things? Who would want to admit the fact that not everybody is meant to do great things and that the biggest service they could do to themselves and the world is to leave brilliance to brilliant people.

Low Expectations

No, this is not an ill fated attempt at a parody on Charles Dickens' classic "Great Expectations". It's just a phrase that has been twirling in my head in the past few days. Yes, twirling. I can practically see it dancing its way into the deepest recesses of my brain. I can't decide between keeping the tone of this post light bordering on ridiculous or just go all out with some cynicism and depress the hell out of ya folks. 

Let's start with what acted as the final impetus for this rant. I read yet another of those "Date a girl who does thingumajiggyblahblah" articles. Now, this is a trend that had started off considerably well. "Date a girl who reads", "Date a girl who writes", "Date a girl who travels" etc and very quickly descended in a downward spiral to "Date a girl who loves biryani", "Date a girl who shaves her legs" blah blah. You get the drift. Not only do all these articles weirdly fetishize one aspect of a person's character, they are more often than not patently ridiculous. She should dream all the time, she should live like every day is her last day, everything in life should be an adventure, she should be happy all the time, she should love puppies and babies and flowers, she should be your passport to adulthood by being a kind, nurturing, forgiving, source of endless support signifying everything that either doesn't exist or if it does casts extremely unforgiving standards on women. Grow up. Your girlfriend (or boyfriend, for there are counterparts to these articles fetishizing men) are going to be real life people with real life worries and anxieties and obligations and cannot possibly live up to the exacting standards that these articles harp on. I can't bring myself to believe that people actually consider this nonsense seriously but then there is no other explanation to the regularity with which such articles turn up in the internet.

Of course, if I were a scholar, I would argue that this trend ties in with a very well researched and oft perceived fault with my generation which brings me to the second part of my post. A lot has been written on the perpetual state of unhappiness that plagues us millennials (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but-why/generation-y-unhappy_b_3930620.html?ir=India&adsSiteOverride=in) for there is always something or the other that's wrong or doesn't meet our exacting standards. I can vouch for this personally, being one myself as as from my keen observation of my friends and acquaintances. If one thing is going our way, there are many others which just submit to our desires. For, you see, our desires are many. We have been taught since our early days here that we can have it all- Money (with a capital M), Friends, Family, Love, Leisure, Passion, Conviction, Career-and hold each of these dear to our hearts while compromising on nothing. We are special, you see, more educated, with more opportunities, longer life spans, more discerning tastes- we are the embodiment of perfection itself. So it's only natural when this glasshouse of impossible ambitions comes tumbling down when we actually try doing these things all at once and realise that, after all, we can't have it all. 

Low expectations. These two words spin a rather negative woeful tale, don't they? We are always taught to aim high, to expect lots for how are we to achieve great heights when confined within narrow circumferences. But what about knowing ones limits, learning how to be happy with our present state of being, not mourning the loss of possible future accomplishments while sitting on a veritable stockpile of past and present ones? Low expectations doesn't necessarily mean complacency, a lack of desire to succeed or for that matter a lack of ability to do so. Maybe it just is an acknowledgment of how one can't have it all at one point in time, of how if one desires to accomplish something in particular, than another thing, another desire must give way to it. Maybe, it is the key to a life where lack of constant achievement doesn't equal failure, where it is not all or none, where one knows how to be happy by just being. Maybe, just maybe.

Summer Girl-Part IV

Kabir

Silence greeted my confession. I was painfully aware of Paridhi sitting on the other side of the door. They years had been kind to Paridhi. The aloof, slightly haughty preteen had turned out to be surprisingly empathetic. In spite of his harsh monosyllabic reply to her frantic questions, he could still feel her sitting on the other side of the door awaiting an explanation.

Explanation. Did he have it in himself to put words to his thoughts? Thoughts that have been plaguing him for years now.

As far back as he could remember, he had been slightly envious of Paridhi. She has always seemed so self sufficient in her own little world. Even though Anushka, Paridhi and he spent the majority of their childhoods with each other, it had always been him and Anushka glued together and Paridhi lurking in the sidelines. One would have thought that that would have been a chip on his and Anushka's shoulders. After all, children often have the propensity to be cruel and exclusionary. And it was to a certain extent. However, it did not stop at that. He and Anushka, within their own little clique had been surprisingly unkind to Paridhi. He had always suspected that while his own feelings towards Paridhi had consistently been that of mild envy coupled with substantial fascination, Anushka had been outright jealous. Paridhi did not help her case either. Whenever the trio had spent time together, he and Anushka engrossed in some make believe world of their own, Paridhi had sat at a distance with her nose buried in a book eying them with mild contempt if not outright disdain.

In retrospect, he could see now that there was also a lot of childish longing that had suffused her features then. But he and Anushka had been blind to any such possibility then. 

And so it had happened that cheerful, garrulous, beautiful, popular Anushka ably assisted by a more than willing Kabir had made it her life's mission to be spiteful towards Paridhi. It was spite that was not easily discoverable, spite that was never at the forefront, spite that was doused in layers of sugary sweet pretension, spite that coloured all their interactions with Paridhi so much so that there came a point when even looking at Paridhi became a cause for discomfort for him.

Paridhi had always known the dynamics of the group and had mastered the art of making herself scarce while always being ostensibly present as a part of the group. It would have been much easier for her to completely dissociate herself from them in order to seek more accepting playmates, but, even then Paridhi had been as tenacious as she is now. For, you see, Paridhi was still sitting on the other side of the door waiting for him to speak.

The Pursuit of Happiness

[This is one big horrid rant. The last few weeks and the months preceding that have probably been the toughest in my 20 year old life and the end is nowhere in sight. Crippled by a completely inability to right, I have not posted anything on this blog for months. Today, even though all I have managed is a rant, I am eternally thankful for the universe for allowing me to put together more than two sentences.]

One of the most common adages about happiness is that it is a choice. And maybe it is. Why, then, do we so often make decisions which seem right but do not end in happiness? Decisions are supposed to be an end in themselves-you evaluate available options and opt for the one that seems the most suitable, right? Why then does dealing with decisions taken often becomes more difficult than the decision itself? To make things worse, the age in which one needs to take big life altering decisions seems to be becoming younger and younger. My parents made that choice at 24, I am making it at 20. Same difference? Not really. Imagine how you were at 16 as compared to 20. Vastly different, right?

Psychologists say that my generation is about as unhappy as one can be. Extremely high expectations of oneself as well as of the world coupled with the belief that all of us are special and hence deserve special things to happen to us are supposedly to blame. The new parenting hack seems to be the ability to convey to one's child that while they made be great and capable and should aspire for good things in life, they are NOT special. Good things are not going to happen to them always. Heck, good things happening in life is probably a rarity. Life is not meant to be easy and will never be. But must it be always so hard?

The ability to take tough decisions in life is something that has been venerated by society since times immemorial. But taking a decision is only the tip of the iceberg, and that is where I am standing right now. Decisions. Decisions. A decision that I have taken to supposedly prevent unhappiness later in life is making me about as miserable as I can be in the present thus begging the question, is it really worth it? Is it worth pledging the present to stave of unhappiness in the future? As kids, we are often taught that the future is more important than the present, that the future is something that one needs to continuously plan for. But is it worth sacrificing the present for? 

I am not a big fan of the concept of living everyday like it is the last day of one's life, myself, for the simple reason that I don't think it is possible if you reasonably belief that the prospect of existence of tomorrow is a certainty. But the thought that haunts me day and night these days is that one day the promise of a future might be taken away from  me and then I will have nothing to show for myself.

Clingy

(Before you read on, you should know that this is a rant not aimed at anyone in particular. This is something that I feel strongly about and has often been on my mind. It is only today that I have finally managed to convince my lazy self to put it down in words. Further, I am using the word 'clingy' in a very loose sense and the same is not to be confused with any kind of co-dependency where the a person is not able to function without the other. A good example for this would probably be the one time a thing you requested for in all earnestness and good faith turned out to be a one too many and earned you the famed moniker. :P )

Clingy. As a word, 'clingy' is very popular in pop culture terms. The pure and utter horror that this word elicits in books, movies, and chai (or alcohol, if that is your thing) fuelled conversations when used in the context of a friend (ahem!), a plausible better half, an actual better (worse?) half or an existing-but-soon-to-be gone better half is consistent in its staunch disapproval of a hapless individual who is not perceptive enough to not know that he/she is not wanted in that specific situation or is perhaps way too invested in a person/thing than is 'appropriate'(ahem!). 

Hapless, indeed! What kind of person doesn't realise when he/she is unwanted in a certain social situation?! Or for that matter in someone's life? I mean, have you, dear reader, ever been in that situation? No, right? Which self respecting person would do that to himself, right? You have to look around with your eyes and ears open, constantly be on the guard for a particular situation where your actions might put off your friend (Riiiiight) or your better half to such an ungodly extent that you will earn the oft sought after moniker- "Clingy". After all, how else do you nurture relationships? You can't ask too little of somebody, right? Heaven forbid that you appear disinterested. But then, don't you dare cross the line from cool-person-who-always-is-perfect to clingy territory, for that dear reader is a path of no return. CLINGY! There! You have been put in a cast, moulded, branded! You, after all, have committed the biggest faux pas of all faux pas. And you deserve to be punished. Yes! You deserve to feel humiliated when the pop culture connotations of the word wash over you inch-by-inch till you want to bury yourself in shame and never come back up again, even if it is for a little bit of air. 

Why India needs to celebrate valentines day before it celebrates women's day...

(This is very different than what I usually write about but it's been playing in my mind for quite some time. So here it is! I haven't had time to proofread the piece. So please bear with the typing mistakes, if any.)

A day or two before the eighth of March, the media frenzy in India about the banning of the documentary 'India's Daughter' by the Indian government started. It continued to rage on till it died a natural death with fresh news items occupying centre stage. After all, the business of news is not charitable, it has to follow the overwhelming national sentiments and as Women’s day had come and gone, celebrating womanhood and condemning crimes against women could safely be put into the backburner till either another incident similar to the brutal Delhi gang rape happened to shock the conspicuously shallow conscience of the Indian society or the next Women’s day, whichever came before.

International Women’s Day is a concept that has been relatively easy for the 21st Century Indian society to accept. Rich or poor, old or young, educated or not, conservative or liberal, the large majority of Indians have taken to celebrating 'womanhood', crediting the women in their lives with the hugely important roles they play, both on a personal level and as members of society, with marked enthusiasm. After all, it is the one day that is especially reserved for women, right? If we celebrate that one day with pomp and show, make the women of our lives and those in the periphery of it feel valued, we can get by the rest 364 days in peace having fulfilled our civic and humanitarian duty. Hell, even politicians, those elusive men and women to uphold the lofty ideals of the greatest democracy of the world participate!

Less than a month before millions of Indians 'honour' and 'respect' the women in their lives, on the fourteenth of February every year, falls Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s day, the day of love and romance, dreams and happiness, right? Right? Wrong. In India, the greatest democracy of the world where the lengthiest written Constitution of the world upholds the 'rule of law', fourteenth of February is pretty close to being anarchic. Self proclaimed protectors of 'Indian culture' patrol the roads for hapless couples who brave being forced into wedlock to venture out in the open, the roads fill with catcalls about roses and kisses every time a woman walks out on her own, the police in a troubling departure from their plethora of duties exults in assaulting couples who have somehow escaped the clutches of the aforementioned moral police and the media broadcasts all of this, almost akin to a gleeful voyeur. Members of the 21st Century Indian society, rich or poor, old or young, educated or not, conservative or liberal, sit back in the luxury of their homes and offices and roadside tea shops and watch the spectacle unfold. The days following Valentine’s day do not witness any protests. Civil society is quiet, the politicians are quiet. Valentine’s day and the ensuing chaos is too inconsequential for the Indians as a people to engage themselves with. After all, this whole narrative surrounding Valentine’s day is a corporate gimmick to increase sales of soft toys and chocolates and, God forbid, condoms! Right? What does it have to woman empowerment?! Why should the upholders of the society's collective conscience waste its precious time and resources protecting those delinquent few who cannot keep it in their pants? Why indeed? After all, Indians don't fall in love, Indian women don't roam around with men who have not been duly chosen and vetted by their families, Indians don't engage in public display of affection, never hold hands and never ever have sex. No. And definitely not Indian women. No. Indian women do not do anything outside wedlock. And even within a marriage, the personal life of the couple (read as their sex life) is clearly beyond discussion. Sssh. Indians do not have sex. Or do anything sexual. Especially Indian women. It is against Indian culture, you see. 

Fourteenth of February is the day Indian society reclaims its women, firmly binds their sexuality in the garb of culture and keeps them at home. It tells them on fourteenth February that they can go about their lives and jobs only if they are good girls who listen to their parents. It tells them that they are free to do anything but cannot be independent with respect to their sexualities. It keeps them firmly under the lock to let them out for a day on the eighth of March. It lets them have a day to themselves, it celebrates its triumph over them, it casts them into roles of mothers and daughters and sisters. And then it puts them back into the little black room of culture and propriety.

Don't get me wrong. Women’s day is important. It is very important. It is important to celebrate the great advances that women have made over the last couple of centuries, it is necessary to cherish the stories of extraordinary women who have fought against all odds to make it big in life. However, it is important to remember that a narrative surrounding achievements of great women will be only partly successful in empowering the millions of common women of the country. For the narrative surrounding Women’s day to succeed, the narrative surrounding Valentine’s day and all that it represents has to be broken. India needs to celebrate Valentine’s day, make Valentine’s day its own, much before it can even scratch the surface of women empowerment.

Sepia tinged memories

Don't you have those memories, which though distinct, have this inherently blurry character to them? Dusty, memories that are characterized by the fact that they aren't thought of often. But then, one day, they come flooding back with an almost childlike glee, all consuming. And then you are rendered powerless to the intensity with which you feel those memories, those emotions suspended in a moment in time but felt as keenly as any other. Memories that are like sepia tinged photographs. Sepia tinged memories.

The human mind is a strange strange place, rife with memories, emotions, fears, hopes and aspirations. One of the greatest follies of the human mind is to think that its experiences are unique. Good or bad, whatever happens is happening for the first time to them, that nobody in the world has felt the same, that nobody in the world has done the same things, that nobody in the world will feel the same and nobody in the world will do the same things. Even then, a human mind in love is especially foolish. Prone to all the aforementioned follies, it also makes the mistake of taking for granted that what it has with its beloved is, again, one of a kind. It doesn't stop at thinking that nobody else in the world has ever experienced what it is experiencing. No. It goes a step forward. It's beyond the conception of a human mind addled with love to envisage a situation where its beloved himself or herself has experienced the very same things, possibly with the exact same intensity if not more, with another person. But realization of how fallacious it is to think so inevitably hits home. Years later when you think back to it, it is a sepia tinged memory.

A peal of laughter. A long winding verandah. Rains lashing outside. A bookcase kept in a forgotten corner. A child running, stumbling into the book case. Books crashing to the floor, falling open. A flower falls out. Long forgotten. Whose was it to begin with? Who gave it to whom? What was the story behind it? Sifting through the treasure trove of memories that the human mind is, this is a sepia tinged memory.

You are walking on a path that had witnessed heartbreak once upon a time, a path that was intensely personal and yet inevitably aloof. It had been a year since you'd stood there picking up the pieces of what once was. And yet you were there, again, picking up pieces, like parts of a jigsaw puzzle, of what you then were. A college dance. A group of people dancing. You are standing in a corner, in the shadows, alone. Always alone. A boy and girl come close, twirling, laughing. You stare at them, almost as if in a reverie. Happy. So happy. But you couldn't even feel nostalgic at the moment, could you? Because you were never them. And never would be. And it was okay and you acknowledged the fact that it indeed was okay. Somewhere in that group of people was another boy with another girl. Blissfully unaware of your presence, too immersed in his bubble to notice the changing patterns of the shadows, for when there are twinkling fairy lights adorning the world, who stares at the shadows? Neither he nor you envisage that your paths will cross in life. You, consumed by the shadows, do not consider the possibility of falling in love again. He, in the arms of another girl, does not think about falling in love again. But you do. You do meet in the future and you do fall in love. But standing there in the shadows, as you were, on a balmy may evening watching people dance under twinkling fairy lights is a sepia tinged memory.

Stars change sides

When the world is dark and the tide is high,

When lips are sealed and eyes shut tight,

The winds fill voids that are beyond sight,

And the heart is numb with broken pride.

But stars change sides, tis true,

And mountains bow to accommodate you,

All that's needed is to forge on,

To let time heal that which was undone,

The moon will shine and illuminate you,

And the eyes will sparkle with affection new,

For fates go round and come back to you,

To shower you with dreams anew.