choose the correct answer

1. Which is worse?
a. Nothing to tell,
b. No one to tell.

2. Which is more vicarious?
a. Living through books,
b. Living through Gtalk

3. What is life?
a. roulette,
b.Russian roulette

4. What is history?
a. You beat someones record.
b. someone beats your record.

5. What is big lie?
a. There is a correct answer
a. There exists truth

It's a lie!!! (nitpick)

I shall thank to my 5 year old niece to open my eye to the lie with which we started our country. I was talking to her over phone. She was starting to school and asked me about my office. I said for me it is night. She could not understand. She was wondering how could be such a bright sun exists and I can say night. That was the moment it dawned me what a lie i have read, re-read hundreds of times , quoted hundreds of times, has been accoladed for reciting out with a vociferousness more than that of the person who said it first time: “when the world sleeps, India will awake to life”. does ever whole world sleeps at same time?

உனக்காக மறிக்கச் சொல்,
நொடியில் செய்வேன்,
உனக்காக வாழ சொல்லாதே-
நான் தோற்று போகிவிடுவேன்.

Sunday mid night I am in deep sleep. It seems my phone has ringed and My room mate gave it to me saying you got a call and and it was over before i picked, It seems you have message. I read : “Bond died”. I was shocked. It was just few days I was chatting to him in gtalk , about his plan to go to kolkata. He was beaming that with that he would have gone to all metros...typical of him. He speaks speaks speaks for hours, elaborating on things...He will tell the story of a 3 hours movie for 3 hours.

I still remember the day i met him. I had joined company from campus and was looking for a house. I took room with Thiru who joined with me in the company. He said two of his college mates will join with us. I was moving to that house on night and bond was there. He told me his name is Vinoth and people call him bond. He started to speak as if he knew me for years. No one called him Vinoth. For all he is bond, even to the lady who came to cook food for us....

I think it was on Saturday or Sunday, I saw him in gtalk , but as I spoke to him just few days back I didn't ping him. I thought i can ping him later. Later , that's how we take things in life. We take things for granted. We take our things will exist and by a crude stroke by a moment its gone. Sometimes life is so cruel , it never gives a second chance. It throws us just questions, questions any single answer we find throws open hundreds of question and all of a sudden in fraction of moment it wipes us out. All this for what purpose? What greater good? what end ?

தப்பித்தல்

சிறை பட்டு,
தரை பார்த்து,
உறை பனியாய் கிடக்கும் நாட்களில்
கரைந்து போகாமல்,
கரை கடப்பது எப்போது?

System

There are four coins in the table I have an option to chose one. I chose one on my free will. So were all millions of people before and after me. Based on what every one chose surely there would have been a probability of what I might have chosen. As billions and billions people had chosen the probability would be damn accurate with an negligible error percent. If what I chose could have been predicted without ‘me’ does that not mean I have no free will? Didn’t I choose what I shall have chosen?

No. Because the probability is from the perspective of the system. If the system has predicted I might chose coin A and if I chose coin B then it is only a negligible error for the system for which I am one among the sample space of billions. I am no longer an error, only a noise. The fundamental premise of the system is the common denominator of a huge population, which is called the social behavior. It is not something that existed. It is something that has evolved just because more people decided to choose a coin over the other three. But the system conveniently can forget it and project on collective consciousness as it will make the system more reliable and simple. If a system has to be reliable it has to be simple enough for more people to believe and not simple enough to understand.

Do I change anything in system by choosing otherwise? No I can’t change the system. It’s not even my intention. My intention is my own ends. If my choice is in line with system prediction it embraces it. If not throws out me as noise.

The bicycle thieves

Films are essentially about what it creates in you when you watch. But still context matters, more, older the film is. For the films which don't belong to our times, the one about which we read so many times, which we want to see because everyone you awe, awed about it. If we don't know the context, we may miss the beat. We may fail to understand why it was so pulsating then(though not now). The bicycle thieves also needs one such context. If we don't remember (to be exact force ourselves to remember), once cycle itself a luxury, we can ask what the heck, its a cycle.

The movie is more like a short story. It's during great depression times in Italy. The hero gets a job, when everyone struggles to get it. His job is to post flyers. He needs cycle for it. He talks to his wife about his rotten luck of having job and not to go. His wife takes the bed spreads which came as a present for her marriage,(which will explain why she is soar when she takes it to pawn shop) to pawn shop. With the pledged money he retrieves the cycle he pledged long time back. The whole country is running through pawn shops. It is one of the beautifully shot scene in the film. He goes to next counter in the same shop to redeem his cycle. At that time a person carries the bed spreads to store it. He enters a room which is filled with nothing but pledged bedspreads, as if the whole countries bed spreads just lie there.

While in work bunch of guys steal his cycle. The remaining movie is his search for it. During the process he even goes and meet an evangelist , whom he ridicules when his wife go to pay her for prediction that her husband will get job. He becomes a believer, he walk through all roads with his son for cycle. At last when he realizes he can't get the cycle, he decides to steal one. He steals and get caught. People beat him , and all this happens before his son. He walks back with his son. No longer its just a cycle that he lost.

The film still has relevance: you can replace a cycle with something. What makes a person to commit his first crime? The little push that starts the free fall of human character. Human character- that’s the word we use to define a man .Man who is actually what he is made of ,all those virtues he wrapped himself which might be of no value, they can't protect him if the things turns out to be too vicious to not break up. As the movie closes he walks back towards home, wiping his face with kerchief and his son holds his hand and his face is filled with tear, it can break anytime.

Its a neorealist film, the earliest of films that used real people and not actors in movie. But not those 'first of time' that makes this movie stand against winds of time. Its relevance, the concept it speaks about and the way it speaks. The way it follows a man's search for his cycle, his only source of hope to a normal life in a dying country. How far he goes to get it back, how much he puts in stake to get it, how much he will take before he gets broke. A movie more than just worth to watch for.....

Note: I thought of the interesting movies I watched last 2 weeks in a single post but will post others later