Do you remember that movie?

(This is for my sister, Motiya, and at her own suggestion too…:-))

When we were small, there was no easy way to refer or search for information about the movies, actors, musicians, directors or lyricists. There was no easy way to get the lyrics of the songs you liked. It was almost impossible to listen to your favorite songs as and when you liked. The only radio stations that played movie songs were Vividh Bharati and Radio Ceylon.  We tried and listened to Vividh Bharati as much as we could. And when it played a song we loved, we wrote down the lyrics!! And if there were 2 of you writing the lyrics together, then it was better – then you could get most of the lyrics down in one go!!

So many times we wrote down the lyrics, but didn’t quite remember which movie the song was from. And many times we knew all the songs from a movie, but didn’t know who were the lead actors in that movie or the situation in the movie a particular song was for.

And the avenues to watch movies were very few.  There was only one TV channel, Door Darshan and there was only one movie shown on TV every week. So, on Sunday evening we watched the movie on TV, if and when we weren’t doing anything else like playing outside with friends or made to do something else by parents like study, especially when exams were approaching. And if the movie was not “censored” by the parents. Oh AND if we had electricity at the time of the movie!!
We went to movie hall to watch a movie very few times.We would go to the movie hall hardly ever when school session was on and just once or twice in holidays. I remember in one summer vacation I had felt really privileged because we had watched all of THREE movies in the movie hall.

Going beyond all these restrictions when we were able to watch a movie, we weren’t too choosy. We were happy to watch whatever movie was on the TV any given Sunday. And we mostly went for whatever movies my parents let us go to or took us along with them. (Well, of course except for a phase when I just HATED all the movies, and didn't want to go watch any movie!! ).

We told stories of the movies that we watched. And this story telling could go on for hours – because you had to explain things in detail – like the kind of saree the heroine was wearing for a particular scene or the jacket the hero wore, the facial expressions of the comedian – oh and the “adda” or den of the bad guy, which had all sorts of mind boggling instruments and contraption for torturing the "good people".  And we also had to tell our understanding of why characters were acting in a particular way. Many times this was not explained in the movies – it was our interpretation and COMPLETELY off the mark. When you watch the same movies after many years, you very strikingly realize this.

Then sometimes, when you were trying to remember a movie, you asked each other “What was that movie in which blah blah blah happens?”  And if your sister or mother or friend could not place the movie, you gave more hints – like who was the hero or a song from the movie you remembered or a little bit of the plot….

My sister, had a unique “gift” shall we say, in this game of “Do you remember that movie”. Here is how the dialog with her will go on –

Motiya:   What movie is that, do you remember?
Me:         Which one?
Motiya:   You know in which the hero is very poor and his mother is always smiling?

Now that described more than half the movies shown on Door Darshan in that period! Most times the Hero was poor and struggling and his mother was unusually “nice”, always smiling, even in hard times.

Me:        What else?
Motiya:   And his mother makes “Gajar ka halwa” for him, because he loves it?!

Again, every poor hero liked “Gajar ka halwa” and his wonderful mom always managed to make that for her beloved son even in dire poverty!!

Me:        Who is the hero?
Motiya:   Don’t remember. It could be Dilip Kumar or Rajesh Khanna oh, or maybe Kishore Kumar?!

Now this was really going across generations of heroes, and different types of movies!! And of course there was a very good chance that the actual hero was someone else altogether!!
But we still continue our efforts to figure out…

Me:        Who is the heroine?
Motiya:   She was someone, I don’t know at all…

Now that really helps, right??

Me:         So what else do you remember?
Motiya:   Well, towards the end, the hero drives a car on a mountain road, very fast!!
Me:         And?
Motiya:   Then there is a fight at the villain’s den!!

Right!!

Me:         Do you remember any songs?
Motiya:   Yes!! There is a song sung by Asha Bhosale! Or maybe it is Lata Mangeshakar.

In those days, I think about 95% songs for women actors were sung by one of these 2 sisters. It was like there was no other female singer around!!

Me:         Do you remember the song?
Motiya:    I don’t remember the words, but it is something about “pyaar” and “duniya”… But I remember the tune!!!

Now "remembering a tune" and being able to reproduce it correctly are two different things!!

Thinking that she was humming the tune currectly, my sistent then started to hum the “tune”.  And that really  sounded like a mosquito’s humming to me!!! “Hmmmm hmmm hm hmm hmmmmmmm hm hm hm”

I just gave up all the effort to figure out the movie, at this point!!!!
And anyway, by the time we reached this point, we both were really angry with each other.

One outcome of this was that we didn’t talk to each other for quite a while. Which I am sure, my parents thought was a blessing!!!

Of course, needless to say, we would repeat this game again and again every few days!!! And everytime it would go like this with exact same results!!! :-)

Now I really miss those days......

Indian Traffic & Life

Travellers from outside India, when talking about their first impressions about India, will tell you that they were completely shocked by the traffic. That when they were being driven around in cars, they were extremely scared. Indians who have lived in countries in Europe or the US, even for just a few years, come back and find it difficult to understand the traffic here. When people have lived outside India for sometime, they are really scared to drive here... EVEN people who have never gone anywhere outside India find the traffic really horrible most of the time.

And of course there are many factors that make it what it is. The two main categories are -

• Infrastructure & authorities
• The condition of the roads
• The way the constructions /repairs are being done on the roads
• The amount of traffic compared to the size of the roads
• Insufficient & sometimes careless authorities (even people responsible many times do not know what is right and what is wrong)
• BAD drivers
• People who drive on the wrong side
• People who do not follow the traffic lights
• Many, many people who drive without knowing the rules

I get very annoyed while driving mostly because of the bad drivers. We all travel on the same roads, so the infrastructure factor is common for all of us. But the second factor, bad drivers, make it even worse. And they make it especially bad for the drivers who follow the rules.

Having said that, recently it has struck me that Indian traffic is really like Life!! :-) The traffic in US, for most part is very orderly. No body's life can be like that. And if it was like that it would probably be extremely boring.
In Indian traffic we start with an idea of getting some place by certain time, but will we get there in that time, no one can be sure. That's so much like what happens in life!! Also, in Indian traffic people, carts, cycles, two wheelers or cars, basically many different things keep coming at you from any direction at any speed - that's how life is! In life too, things keep coming at you at different speeds and from various directions. In Indian traffic, we see many people getting ahead of us who we know don't deserve it or we feel are getting there with wrong means. That too is so much like life!!

And sometimes you are taken completely by surprised and you have a wonderful experience with people being fair, following rules not being too pushy and you managing to get someplace ahead of time. Is this about (Indian) traffic or life??? In my opinion, both!!

Earlier travelogues

So, earlier I have written a little about my travels. And that time I put it up on MSN Live spaces (because I was on messenger, and had the ID and it was so easy you know....)

Anyway, now it all has been migrated to wordpress. So that is where some of my earlier travelogues are. You can read about my trek in Kanchanjunga National Park,Sikkim (June 2006), my trip to Hampi (Nov 2006) and trip to Germany & Austria (May 2008), on wordpress at http://sonaligogate.wordpress.com/.

Imagination - what can it do?

It happens many times. When we expect too much out of something, we get disappointed with the actual thing. Be it a movie that our friends praised a lot and told us that it is a “must see” or a dish that was said to be “to die for” at a restaurant. Or even a car that was supposed to be the “dream machine”. I have myself felt this on many occasions and of course I have heard this from many people. So when we expect a lot, what we get in reality does not meet the expectation and we are disappointed. And that is because we use our rich imagination when someone describes something as “too good”. Imagination wins over reality every time.

Similarly, when you get into something with no expectations or really low expectations, you are many times very pleasantly surprised to find that you actually don’t dislike it as you expected. In fact sometimes you actually like it – it may even become your favorite.  This is because you have either used your imagination to expect something really bad or not thought about it, not used your imagination at all.

So does this mean its better not use one’s imagination? No, I don’t think so! No, of course not! How can one advocate not using one’s imagination?  Imagination has given us so much.

Imagination of many great men has been the cause for many scientific discoveries and inventions; imagination of other great people has made them create beautiful paintings, wonderful sculptures and amazing melodies that would sooth our soles. Even capturing those melodies in tapes, records or CDs has been possible only because some scientist, some technician first imagined capturing them and preserving them. And if not for the imagination, what would we have in name of literature?

Actually, anything and everything that is good and is of any meaning has its origin in someone’s imagination. Of course, we can’t deny that imagination can also be cause for hatred and actions based on hatred. Imagination can also be cause for overindulgence sometimes and for ravaging of nature.

So obviously imagination itself is not enough to decide whether a person will be good or bad. And just imagining things will not do anything for a person. Just imagining things is called day-dreaming, living in a dream world. On a daily basis all of us are imagining something, about something we want to do, something we wish to see, something we want to happen, someone we would like to meet or something we want to eat. And of course it can be very enjoyable to just sit around and imagine things. But as we all know, just imagining does not do anything for our progress or growth. It does not do anything for our own good, forget someone else’s good or progress.

Imagination gives us wings – it gives us our dreams. Not only the dreams which we dream in our sleep, for those too come from our imagination, but the dreams you dream in wakeful awareness. The dreams that make one want to become a scientist or an artist. But to turn this dream into something real and meaningful, you need to firstly apply your thinking to the imagination. While the imagination itself is one type of “thinking”, one needs to apply a different type of thinking, a more logical thinking which takes into account ground realities and can define what your “aim” has to be for your dream to come true, can break it down in smaller steps if required and can come up with a sort of an equation of how to start with what you have and how to reach your goal.

Murphy’s Laws & Serendipity:

I have seen my life is fond of following Murphy’s laws. Laws, corollaries everything!!

I invest in a particular stock and it goes down. I buy gold and its price drops. 

Even on day to day basis – the day I decide to go home early, there is heavy traffic on roads when I leave the office earlier than usual and I end up reaching home later than a usual day. When I drive to work (and this happens practically every day), the lane I am in is the slowest.

If I change lanes, then the earlier lane starts moving faster. Of course, if I don’t change the lane, it keeps being the slowest.

If I decide to sleep early, either I get a phone call late in the night or there is a movie of the TV that I have been meaning to watch for a very long time!

When I decide to start exercising regularly, either I get stuck in something or better still, I get sick!!

I had missed my connecting flight from Washington DC to Seattle, the first time I traveled to US. I have missed Mumbai - Bangalore flight because the taxi came late. And I once got stuck in London for 2 days while flying from Seattle to Mumbai since there was a security scare at the Heathrow airport. They grounded all the flights and put us all through a lot of trouble.

You see, Murphy's laws are followed all the time!!

However, I have also seen Serendipity playing a part in my life – on a regular basis.

I end up meeting the right people at the right time, by chance. I find the information I need, by chance. Sometimes I get some information and find that I need to put it to use soon afterwards. I end up seeing the right kind of programs on TV even though I do not watch a whole lot of TV and don’t watch anything particular at any particular time.

So, I wonder if, even when the life seems to be following Murphy’s laws, it is actually serendipity at play in some form. And maybe I am not able to see it as such because I am looking only for obvious outcomes or for specific outcome I am looking for….