Italy all the way...

The next leg of our trip included Rome, Pisa, and Vatican City over two days. The Trevi fountain in Rome, which has been featured in movies like ‘Three Coins in a Fountain’ was our first stop. Our guide told us what we already knew – that if we dropped a coin into the Trevi fountain, we would come back to Italy –or at least that’s how the story goes. He also said if we dropped two coins, we would find a good spouse. I had a sneaking suspicion he was just kidding, but a lot of people got more generous with their purse strings when they heard that!

We then went to the Colosseum, which stirred up scenes from the Gladiator and other films that have portrayed its bloody and violent history. My mom, in particular, was simply fascinated by the Colosseum.

The next day, we went to Pisa. It was a cool, rainy morning and umbrellas were being sold for five euros everywhere. We saw the famous leaning tower, which is one of the wonders of the world. We posed for pictures and some tourists were taking the customary picture where they pretended to push the leaning tower with a finger.

When we went to the Vatican city that afternoon, we were entering the smallest independent state in the world both by area and population. We saw from afar the place where the Pope lives. The art housed in the Vatican literally took our breath away! Just my luck that my camera didn’t work very well inside the rather dark rooms, and I missed out on a lot of beautiful pictures. My co-passengers were very sweet and shared the pictures taken on their fancy cameras with me :)

This brought us to the end of our tour of Italy and although we visited a lot of scenic places in Europe, Italy will always remain my favorite.

Venice and Florence

We awoke early the next day, showered , had breakfast and headed out to St. Marks’s square in Venice. With the tall church with intricate church art in front of a large square courtyard, St. Marks’s square is so magical that you can spend hours doing nothing but observe its beauty. We did precisely that, but for about 45 minutes. St. Marks’s square is also famous for its pigeons that live there. I watched a little girl with blond curls chase after the pigeons and felt deeply relaxed.

We had the option of going for a gondola ride, but we chose to sit and take in the beauty of the square. This square has been featured in Hindi movies such as ‘The Great Gambler’ when Zeenat Aman and Amitabh Bachchan take a ride in the gondola; ‘Bachna Ae Haseeno’ during the ‘Khuda Jaane’ song in where Deepika Padukone and Ranbir Kapoor wander in and out of the square; English movies such as ‘Just Married’ when Brittany Murphy and Ashton Kutcher visit Italy during their honeymoon, and more recently in ‘The Tourist’ starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. ‘The Tourist’ is one movie that captures the beauty of Venice almost in its entirety.

Some of the other passengers went on the gondola ride. Mr. Z, our tour manager then took us to the glass factory where we saw how the craftsmen deftly fashioned beautiful glass figurines from molten glass. They made it look so easy! We then headed to the liner that would take us on a cruise on the Adriatic Sea. This was almost a life-altering experience, coz I’d never felt that good to be out on the sea as I did then. Mr. Z told us a few facts about the places that we saw and after lunch, we headed for Florence.

Florence is one of the most artistically alive places in Europe. Every street corner has a caricaturist, guitar player or some other artiste exhibiting his or her talent. We went to another square in Florence and spent some time admiring the statues and soaking up the culture. We also walked by the Arno river and watched the sunset. This more than made up for our rather unsteady start the previous day and Mr. Z was clearly making a huge effort to ensure that our holiday was back on track and we had no complaints whatsoever.

Destination Venice

As I handed over my project at work to another writer on Thursday, September 11, and tied up other loose ends, I felt an overwhelming sense of exhaustion. I couldn’t believe that in a few hours from then (at the stroke of midnight, actually), I would be at the airport with my mom waiting to head off on a whirlwind tour of Europe for 11 days.

I battled sleep at the Chennai airport watching the other travellers and killing time. Our flight was scheduled for departure at the ungodly hour of 4.15 am. Numerous caffeine fixes later, I heard the announcement, “All passengers boarding flight ___ for Dubai, your flight has been delayed”. Damn. Double Damn. This didn’t seem like a very good start.

I kept wandering around. My mom chose to remain seated and observe the people around, trying to locate other passengers who might be travelling with us on the package tour. We had been informed by our travel agent that there were 4 other passengers from Chennai and that we might be able to identify them by the bags they carried: The complimentary hand baggage provided by the tour operators. Of the four, one was a mother-daughter duo and the other was a lady and a young man, we were told.

Our flight was to stop over at Dubai and then proceed to Milan. I did notice a short lady with frizzy hair and a harried expression who had the aforementioned bag, but she was heading for Kenya. Not Milan.

After a LOT of time later, we found that our flight was only delayed by half hour. I felt waves of relief wash over me. I’d been seriously worried since we had a connecting flight from Dubai to Milan to board and if our first flight were to be too delayed, we might end up missing the connecting flight and that would throw our plans out of gear.

Once we boarded the flight, I used the warm wet towel that the air hostess handed us and tried to wipe the fatigue off my face. I dozed fitfully. Once we landed in Dubai, we literally ran through the airport so as not to miss our connecting flight. Luckily, for us, we didn’t.

A 6.5-hour flight later, we landed in Milan. While I had found the Dubai airport sterile, cold, and almost clinical, the airport at Milano seemed warm and welcoming. After all the formalities were over, we made our way to Exit 7. A board saying “Uscita” marked the exit. My mom and I struggled with all our baggage and stood at the exit.

I was just about to call up the tour manager and give him a piece of my mind when a genial man with a big smile on his face approached us. Seeing that he was Indian, I jumped to the wrong conclusion that he was our tour manager. It turned out to be a co-passenger on our trip. He had been waiting at Milan for the past 4 hours. Alarmed that the rest of the trip was going to continue in the same vein with delays and halts everywhere, I shared my apprehension with aforesaid genial man, Ganesh.

It turned out that the driver of our tour bus was present at the airport and was blissfully seated inside the bus, happily unaware of all the stressed-out passengers searching for the bus. And since he couldn’t speak a word of English, communication was a moot point.

We called up the tour manager and found out the exact number of passengers who had to board the bus and consequently the number of people we had to wait for. After what seemed like an eternity, the rest of the passengers made their way to the bus and we started off.

However, our streak of bad luck was determined to follow us for a bit longer. The bus broke down not once but twice, until we changed buses and reached our hotel in Venice sometime at nightfall. We found that the tour manager had left our dinner in our rooms and gone to sleep! This irked one of our co-passengers Padu, who woke up the manager and blasted him. My mom and I were too tired to take part in this heated exchange and we went to our room only to collapse on the bed.

The obsession to be heard: Social Media—Geek paradise?

Tarzan could only pound on his chest and make his characteristic howl. But modern men (and women) in the digital age have a variety of tools at their disposal to make themselves heard. And none of them involve standing on the rooftop or swinging from a tree and screaming for attention. Yes, we have evolved. We flaunt our wit (or lack thereof) to cut through digital garbage and make an impact. Most of us are addicted to social networking sites and use them for a variety of reasons—showcasing our accomplishments, taking IQ tests that proclaim us to be on par with Einstein, ranting and occasionally posting something totally random, which means absolutely nothing to anybody but ourselves.

Does your daily routine sound like this?
• Wake up.
• Brush teeth.
• Log in.
• Check Facebook account; post status message; interact with friends from all over the globe by commenting on their pictures; click the Like button on someone’s status update; etc. etc. log out.
• Sign into twitter, which in all likelihood has been configured to update the tweet on Facebook. And post away?
• Followed by regular daily activities

If yes, then you are an addict, indeed. Maybe you think you need to go to social media rehab! Maybe, you’ve even posted THAT as your status message and got feedback from fellow addicts. No doubt, they’ve all told you it’s totally normal and that they do it, too!

Did it make you feel better? I’ll bet it did. And there lies the key to social media addiction — the need for feedback, approbation, and interaction.

Maslow’s needs hierarchy states that every human being is motivated by needs. Once the “lower order” needs are satisfied, we strive for “higher order” needs.

The needs in order of importance according to his theory:

1. Biological and Physiological needs - air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sleep, etc.
2. Safety needs - protection from elements, security, order, law, limits, stability, etc.
3. Belongingness and Love needs - work group, family, affection, relationships, etc.
4. Esteem needs - self-esteem, achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, prestige, managerial responsibility, etc.
5. Self-Actualization needs - realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.

Engaging in social media would satisfy Need#3 in Maslow’s hierarchy.
Twitter and Facebook help us engage with people and interact with them. They help build bonds and make it easy for introverts who are not comfortable with face-to-face interactions to actually communicate their thoughts to an ever-growing audience. Social media is geek paradise! A wallflower in real life suddenly finds the spotlight on him/her and finds a way to enjoy this attention while still managing to remain behind a computer.I think this is what motivates people to update their status on Facebook.

I’m guilty of frequent Facebook updates. I certainly am not a geek, but I’m more comfortable with the written word than the spoken. So it works like a charm for me. Plus, my friends are scattered all over the globe and I get to know what’s happening in their lives just by logging into Facebook.

Do you update your status regularly? If yes, I would love to know what motivates you to do it. I welcome your feedback by way of comments to this post. To quote Kelsey Grammer (yes, he spells it that way, not Grammar) who plays the lead role in “Frasier” (the sitcom) — “I’m listening!”

“Insects are just like you and me except some of them have wings”.

“Insects are just like you and me except some of them have wings”. With a title like that, one can expect the book to be quirky. And quirky it is. Also original, strange, funny, imaginative, and sometimes just bizarre!

But this book by Kuzhali Manickavel actually reminded me of the work of the very talented Woody Allen and Roald Dahl.

There are 35 short stories and by short, I mean that some of them are just a page long. There might not strictly be a beginning, middle, and end to every story. In fact, most of them do not conform to that structure. But what you will find is a convergence of poetry and prose.

Writer Miranda July has endorsed the book on a blurb saying “Not merely lyrical and strange, but also deadpan funny. I can’t shake the feeling that I know this woman, personally – like we hung out at a party or something. But I don’t, and we didn’t. She’s just that good.”

While I might not have hung out with the author, I have seen her around in college since we both went to the same college and were in the same batch, although different majors. In fact, the curiosity factor prompted me to read this book. And I’ve not been disappointed. At all!

In the opening paragraph of one of her short stories, “A Bottle of Wings and Other Things.”, a spider dies, “There was no extravagance in its death; just a gentle curl, a folding which no one had seen or heard.”

Kuzhali Manickavel is highly skilled at figurative language, so nothing just falls into the road. Instead “postcards fell from the window in soft jagged pieces, scattering onto the road like flowers on a dirty river.” And pieces of paper fly, “fluttering onto the hot, sticky tar like a flock of dying birds.” She doesn’t seem to be flaunting her unique way of describing things just because she can. They often serve to communicate emotional states effectively.

The numerous diagrams of insects that are featured in the book add another unique touch and tie the stories together with the insect theme.

Here’s one complete story from this volume available at: http://www.percontra.net/9manickavel.htm

Happy reading!

3 Hindi films I liked
The last couple of years were a total washout for me in terms of the Hindi films I watched. I seemed to watch the worst films ever made like Heyy Baby, Welcome, etc.…shudder.

Recently, I watched “Wake up Sid” , “Bachna Ae Haseeno”, and “New York” that made me realize that a lot of good Hindi films are made that one shouldn’t miss out on. I enjoyed watching all three movies, which some of you might have watched ages back.

“Wake up Sid” got good reviews in every newspaper I saw. I watched it in Satyam cinemas, the multiplex theatre here in Chennai. The film had a fresh, young, breezy feel to it that I simply loved. Sid, played by Ranbir Kapoor, is a typical pampered boy who has a rich daddy to take care of his every need. When he flunks his college finals and is rude to his mom, his life sees a turning point. He walks out of his house and lives with Konkana Sen, an older friend who works with a magazine. His talents in photography get him a job with the same magazine and he pulls his life together with a little help from his friends. He also finds love although it is more appropriate to say love finds him. Sid being the clueless guy he is doesn’t understand he is in love until after the girl realizes it. Anyway, all’s well that ends well.

“Bachna Ae Haseeno” has Ranvir Kapoor playing a Casanova who breaks hearts and moves on. The first girl in his life, Minissha Lamba is disillusioned after she meets him and changes from being a romantic, dreamy girl to someone who routinely carries out her duties. Bipasha who lived in with Ranvir in the movie for a year and a half is left heartbroken when he thoughtlessly leaves for Australia, ditching her at the altar. She gets embittered and becomes a cynical, overbearing woman, albeit an extremely successful model that has it all. Only when he falls in love for the first time with Deepika Padukone ( in the film) and she rejects his proposal of marriage, does he realize that he, too, has hurt other people. He flies to India to redress his wrongs. The locations for the song “Khuda Jaane” are simply awesome. St. Marks Square in Venice, Greece, the island of Capri are all shown in their glorious splendour. Once he reaches out to his ex-girlfriends to apologize to them for hurting them, he feels he has become a better person and when he goes back to Australia he has a pleasant surprise in store for him.

“New York” is set against the backdrop of terrorism post 9/11. It concentrates on how the US government tortured innocent Indians just because they had Muslim names, ironically turning peace-loving happy individuals into terrorists. Katrina Kaif is convincing with her natural anglicized accented Hindi. Neil Nitin Mukesh comes across convincingly as an innocent chap who is asked by the FBI to carry out a secret mission, and John Abraham suits the role he plays as well.

Natural Born Killers (Made in 1994)

When I asked Eric, who I borrowed this movie from how it was, his answer was, “I’ve never seen a film like it”.

And when I was done with the movie, I had to agree. The director’s (Oliver Stone) vision for this film is conveyed through disturbing visuals that tend to stick with you long after the film is over. You could interpret every shot or you could watch the whole movie and get the general gist, but either way, it’s not a film you are ever likely to forget.

The script was written by Quentin Tarantino, known for his movies that glorify violence and lust. These threads are woven into the entire tapestry of the film.

The closest I can get to comparisons is that this film is a cross between “Bonnie and Clyde” and “A Clockwork Orange”. The former is about a couple who goes on a robbing spree to meet a bloody end, while the latter is about a youth gang that enjoys violence and goes about robbing, raping, and otherwise gratifying their every impulse at the expense of innocents. In “A Clockwork Orange”, the anti-hero is caught and put in prison but allowed to make a choice to take part in a revolutionary new “treatment”, which if he participates in, will allow his release back in society. Without considering the consequences, he agrees, but finds that due to “conditioning”, his natural impulses like lust and greed are met with excruciating physical pain. When he does get back into society, his past actions catch up with him and he briefly pays for his sins. However, the political system and the media highlight his loss of “free will” and his treatment is reversed. In the end, he is back to being his original self.

“Natural Born Killers” is about a young girl, Mallory, abused by her father, leading a miserable life, who finds love in the hands of a delivery boy, Mickey. Together, they kill her parents and go on a murderous spree on Route 666(a not-so-subtle reference to the forces of evil), killing fifty-two people in three weeks. They are revered as youth icons by misguided youth who think they are “cool” since the couple indulges in violence for the fun of it—not for money or revenge. They both have demons in their past, which have led them to glorify violence. She often has disturbing dreams about her abuse, and he thinks about his miserable childhood, too.

They almost reach a turning point in their lives when they stop at an Indian’s house for a brief rest. The Indian tells them a tale about how his wife had rescued a snake, but the snake bit her anyway. She then asked the snake on her deathbed why it had been so ungrateful, to which the snake replied that it was just following its natural instinct. (Must add here, that the actual dialogue was a little less discreet and involved a couple of expletives that I do not want to mention here! :D)

The anti-hero wants to give up his life of murder and mayhem, but in his semi-awake drugged state shoots the Indian inadvertently. Here, we see the similarity between the snake and the couple: Both free of remorse; both killing by instinct.

Both Mickey and Mallory are then bitten by rattlesnakes and make their way to a drugstore, but are apprehended by cops. The cop who apprehends them is shown murdering a prostitute in the previous scene, revealing to us that no one is free of sin.

After a year in prison, where they are kept apart in two different cells, a famous TV journalist wants to interview Mickey for a show on killers. This interview takes place in the prison. During the interview, Mickey reveals that all human beings are sinners and no one deserves to live, and that murder gives him a sense of freedom that nothing else has given; he calls himself a “natural born killer” and ends up instigating the prisoners who are watching the live recording.

A riot breaks out in the prison and Mickey and Mallory escape holding the TV journalist hostage. The TV journalist has skeletons of his own in his closet. Apart from being completely self-obsessed with stardom, he is also having an extra-marital affair: Point driven home that no one is guilt-free or blameless.

Mickey and Mallory escape much to the warden’s chagrin and after getting the journalist to film their escape, they kill him and go on to lead their lives. Their dream of being reunited with each other and having a family is fulfilled. This is in stark contrast to “Bonnie and Clyde” where the couple pays for their sins with death. The concept of karma does not apply to “the natural born killers”. They kill because it’s what they believe they were born to do. It’s their natural instinct. Society be damned.