Doing Nothing

It’s finally July, about two months since the beginning of summer holidays in May. Most of my friends have been complaining lately that the holidays had been pretty long and boring and they were simply vetti (meaning jobless in tamil). I find it them all amusing.

Many of my friends have put their orkut and gtalk status as “doing nothing”. Thoughts flow. How can you possibly do nothing? And what does nothing in fact mean? It could mean nothing more than, well, nothing!

When doing nothing, meaning sitting idle without doing anything productive, the body is idle, not the mind and soul. Your mind might be rumbling with random thoughts.  It’s difficult for the mind to remain blank/idle. You might feel that you are blank, washed out and thinking nothing, but the truth is you are not. You feel blank and thoughtless, when there is a sudden rush of creativity, imagination, ideas and thoughts through your mind. That’s what I believe. The volume of thoughts is so large that you just can’t remember what you have been thinking!

It’s like dreaming. Some remember the dreams they watch, while others find it difficult to recollect them. I remember hearing this dialogue in a Malayalam movie.

The human brain has answers to every question born out of human curiosity, that can satisfy our lust for knowledge. It is hidden from the conscious, beyond the sub-conscious, in the unconsious mind.

Idle mind is the devil’s workshop

True. I picture devil’s workshop as a place were everyone is doing something or the other. Making a plan or executing it. That means an idle mind and the devil’s workshop are two contradicting situations. The human mind can never be idle. It’s a truth, an unproven truth probably.

I came across a post that gives you tips on how to do nothing! But after reading it I thought that, instead of doing nothing you are actually doing something, something that could result in a brainstorm, topic for late night chat or even a new blog post.

So the next time you accuse yourself for feeling bored and doing nothing, relax, because you are doing something called nothing.

Dasavataram: Questions in my Mind.

Saw Dasavataram.

Writing yet another review will be meaningless, there are many reviews floating in the internet. These are the aftermaths after sitting through the movie. I was fascinated by the Kamal’s 10 faces, but a few did not express the human emotions, especially Kamal’s emotions and expressions. Because those faces were masks, and made me feel as though I was looking at dolls.

Some thoughts questioning the occurrences in the movie. You shall understand, if you have seen the film.

Gyms – Private or Public

The New Indian Express’s Indulge Supplement newspaper dated 4, July 2008, carried this article titled “Home is where the gym is“. My question is should it be so? Or is it worth the moolah ? There are potential differences between working out at a private gym and a personal gym.

When it comes to personal gym, you have the comfort of deciding the time to workout, the space, the exercise and the privacy. You might of course have to burn some holes in your pockets, but it’s just the initial cost that matters, the running cost is low. Whereas, working out at a public gym, puts limitations on your time and real estate. Also you have to wait for your turn, and it becomes real hectic if the gym is crowded. Moreover you need to spend cash to keep your gym membership valid.

All this said, which is better? In my opinion, working out at a public gym scores over home gym. Why? The first reason is comfort. Home gym gives you the comfort of doing exercise when you want to, while private gyms do not. So what? You may ask. You are endangering your ability to manage time. We are better equipped at managing time when the timing of certain events are not in our hands.

Then comes motivation. The “big brothers” working out around us, serve a great source in motivating you towards your goals. Extremely effective in keeping up your tempo. That’s not the condition in Home gyms. You tend to lose your tempo and steam, sooner or later. The remedy given in the daily is of having a trainer. That adds more holes to your pocket!

The only minus about public gyms is the amount you need to spend every month for a membership, but weighing it against the environment and the positive vibrations you get, you find a balance, a perfect one.

Human beings like to socialize, meet people, make friends and share. Working out at a nearby gym, provides you the opportunity to meet people with similar interests, new exercise tips and techniques and discuss various other topics that interest you. You will find yourself fitter and witter everyday.

I believe that this practice benifits you by instilling values like patience, time management, sharing, socializing that are all essential by-products of fittness.

Faith and Trust

I felt struck with awe when I saw through early time movies that, people then had enough security to keep the doors of their houses open during the day. It seemed to me that cases of daylight robbery was never heard of then. With time, there has been a significant change, that every one of you must be aware of unless, you are someone from the past.

Today, we fear to trust and have faith on acquaintance and friends. The reason is insecurity and the fear of being tricked into dangerous waters. It has become essential to doubt every action of anyone around you, calculating if it could in any way cause havoc to you.

In such a world, I am surprised to see the milkman who supplies milk to our house. Never have I seen him brawling over the cash given to him every month and never has he given as the opportunity to complaint about the quantity and quality of milk provided. Every month he just pockets the money we give and leaves, not even waiting to stay and count how much was given! He has immence faith on his customers and he expects it in return of course!

How nice if it would have been if it was so simple that no one liked to cheat and anyone could believe anyone. Crime will reduce, complaints will reduce, job for the cops and the lawyers will reduce. The jurisdiction and the judge can take a day off.

Well guess that’s just not possible. Why not? Next post, where I try to explain what I feel is needed for the balance of the system we survive.

Whose story is it, anyway?

Metro Plus, The Hindu’s supplement dated June 30, 2008 carried this article on the lose of originality in Tamil movies. Some of our recent Tamil hits seems to be Hollywood spin-offs, or is it? There are details about many Tamil movies which have scripts lifted from Hollywood hits. A paragraph from this front page article.

If everyone thought Anniyan made by highly acclaimed director Shankar was brilliant, here comes the shocker – the story was lifted from the Sidney Sheldon bestseller Tell me your dreams.

I had seen Anniyan and had indeed liked the movie. Was indeed shocked to know it’s story was lifted from the book and no reference to the book was mentioned. Or was it true? I had not laid hands on that book and hence to know the plot within Sidney’s bestseller, I logged on to Wikipedia and searched for Tell me your dreams. After going through the plot summary, I doubt the veracity of the article by Swarupa Pillai(the one who wrote the article in Metro Plus).

There is indeed one similarity between the book and the movie, that being – The Multiple Personality Disorder. But that just is a factual possibility around which the plot of the book and movie are woven. And these plots I personally believe are much less similar to each other. The circumstances in which the multiple personalities are born, their impact on the central character’s mental status and the message the two carry are all dissimilar. It is wrong to say that Anniyan’s story was “lifted” from Tell me your dreams.

The first appearence of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) in Indian movies was in Mohanlal starrer Manichitratazhu, released in 1993 it was remade into Chandramukhi in Tamil and Bhool Bhulaiya in Hindi. All these movies had plots built around the same fact – The central character suffers from MPD. I am not sure, if any movie based on MPD was released before 1993.

Very few Tamil films are original and worth talking about, and I believe Anniyan is surely one among them.

P.S. Believe I am stating something wrong? I have not read Tell Me Your Dreams and hence am not sure if the movie and the book have the same plot. I believe otherwise, and hence have expressed it via this post.