Indeed, the dawn is beautiful…

I was sitting at Kovalam Beach in Kerala, looking at the ‘red’ setting sun. I had a troubled heart that day. I was feeling very low. But was not able to figure out why I was feeling so low. Generally, I used to enjoy the sunset, but that day, something was bothering me too much. Didn’t know, what it was.

I walked to my hostel room with heavy heart. I wanted to just cuddle myself in bed and close my eyes. But my friends were waiting in my room for me. We had to rehearse for a play which we were supposed to present as part of our college festival. I got busy with my friends, but found very difficult to concentrate. We rehearsed for three hours and then asked my friends to continue with the practice, and I just took solace in my bed. I was having tremendous pain in my heart, as if, something was going away from me.

The night seemed to be longer. Somehow I fell asleep. In my dream, there was the person in front of me, whom I loved most on this earth – my Papa. Oh God, I was wondering, what happened to him? His body was covered in bandage. He walked towards me, sat on my bed beside me. He had lot of pain in his eyes. He kept his hand on my head. I could feel his warmth of love and affection. He hugged me tight and kissed me on my forehead and whispered in my ears: “Pokatte Mole. Take care” (May I go daughter, Take care). I asked: “Where are you going Papa”. He just hugged me more tightly and kissed once again and said: “I love you a lot, don’t want to go, but have to go.” I held his hands tightly so as to stop him from going. But in vain, he had to go.

Telephone rang in my room. My eyes opened. It was my mumma’s call from a different part of the country, miles apart. My Papa had gone to a different world, victim of a fire accident.

My eyes were dry. I could not cry at all. I just didn’t want to believe the news. But it was true. I was amazed at the love of Papa, who couldn’t go without giving me good bye kiss. I felt, as if, my world was over. I had no idea, how to bid good bye to Papa.  

Today after 23 years, I am again sitting at Kovalam beach looking at the sunrise. Papa is still there around me. He ensures that I get up after every fall in my life, he ensures that I face every challenge of life efficiently. I don’t worry about anything now, since I trust and believe that he is sitting up there close to god and protecting me. I still feel the warmth of the last kiss of you Papa on my forehead. I love you Papa, you taught me not to get disheartened with the losses, but face life boldly, since the darkest hour of the night is just before the dawn.

This post was written for Indispire at www.indiblogger.in for the topic – “The darkest hour of the night is just before the dawn.”

Review of Rahasya

Rahasya, a film inspired from the murder of Aarushi Talwar which stormed the headlines of print as well as digital media. Only some premises have been set similar to Aarushi’s case, but otherwise, the film has been treated absolutely differently.

Aarushi murder case was closely followed by the whole country. In 2013, her parents Rajesh and Nupur Talwar have been convicted of her murder and in jail for their life imprisonment. Though the movie does solve the murder mystery, in spite of Rajesh and Nupur’s getting sentenced, that murder mystery still stays as a Rahasya in many people’s minds.

The movie begins with the death of Aayesha Mahajan, twin daughter of Ashish Vidyarthi (Sachin Mahajan) and Tisca Chopra. Sachin is arrested as a prime suspect and even is sent for remand. To go to the depth of the Rahasya, Kay Kay Menon as CBI official enters into the scene.

The movie is all about how Kay Kay Menon connects the various clues, and reaches to the actual murderer out of those people who were suspects: Sachin’s family friend couple, the maid servant Rimi Fernandez etc.

The pace of the movie is moderate. Also, Tisca, otherwise a very talented actress, doesn’t seem to be at her best towards the end of the movie. Kay Kay Menon is good as CBI official.

Rahasya does unfold the Rahasya of the murder in a subtle manner.

Review of Hawaizaada

Hawaizaada is a film based on the life of Shivkar Bapuji Talpade, Mumbai inventor of 19^th century. It was great to understand that he was supposed to have constructed and flown an airplane in 1895. Talpade’s airplane was named Marutsakha (wind-friend). It is said that Wright brothers came up with their first aircraft in 1903 in North Carolina, eight years after Shivkar achieved this feat. Kesari newspaper of Pune had covered this event where a curious audience headed by the famous Indian Judge/ Nationalist / Mahadeva Givin-da Ranade and HH Sayaji Rao Gaekwad Talpade had the good fortune to see Marutsakha take off, fly to a height of 1500 feet and then fall down to earth.

Ayushman as Shivi has definitely given a great performance. The movie projects him as a failure in academics (not sure, whether this is the creative liberty taken by the film maker or the truth), but brilliant otherwise. He is being ridiculed by his father and brother for his poor academic performance. Mithun Chakraborthy, Vedic Scholar Shastry recognizes the brilliance in Shivi and involves him in project of making the Vimana. Shivi’s nephew Narayan (Naman Jain) also joins them in this project. They always faced major threat from British Government.

Ayushman’s love interest Sitara is played by Pallavi Sharda. This love story in the background did slow down the pace and deviated from the core of the movie a bit.

Though lot of fictional elements have been added to the script, it is amazing to see how Shastry decoded Vedas for his research. He used to predict even the favourable time when air would have supported the airplane to be flown.

The story revolves around the central character Shivi and how he takes forward Shastry’s research further, and how he utilized the ancient knowledge of the Vedas, Sanskrit texts, to fly an aircraft, eight years before his foreign counterparts.

Mithun is very good. But the show-stealer is Naman Jain who played Narayan. He effortlessly plays his shots.

The movie does project the financial challenges faced by Shivi. If that could not have been the case, probably India would have had Shivkar Bapuji Talpade completing his research and come up with the successful aircraft.

Hawaizaada, a story of Shivkar Bapuji Talpade, gives us lot of moments of pride.

Revised from to 4.5, based on popular feedback

Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Soulmate may not be life mate but definitely emotional anchor

This is a very interesting question. That is why, I chose to respond to this and created a special tab in my blog (which is absolutely a movie blog) – Miscellaneous Topics, under which I thought I can atleast express my views.

I happened to read a few books by Dr. Brian Weiss’ : ‘Same Soul, Many Bodies’, ‘Many Lives, Many Masters’, ‘Only Love is Real’. I was personally touched by the whole concept of “Souls move in families”. Dr. Brian Weiss says that our soulmate may not be necessarily our life mate. But in our life, we do come across our soul mates, some of us recognize them and some of us don’t. It also happens that by the time I realize that a particular person is my soul mate, I would have delayed the whole process since by that time, the other person might have got married and settled down in his life with family and kids.

Let me now come to what I feel about this. I do believe that every soul born on this earth has a soulmate. Some of us are lucky who have recognized the soulmate and have settled down with the soulmates. But, otherwise also, there is no need of any despair. Our soulmate is near us, related to us in some way or the other. He / she could be our best friend, or the person upon whom we depend emotionally a lot. May be, situations would not be favorable for being life-mates, but certainly, there would be strong connect with the concerned. We would definitely cross paths with our soulmates in our lives at some point or the other.

Soulmate may not be my life mate, but he / she could be great emotional anchor of my life.

Review of Baby

A film dedicated to the heroes of our country, who actually don’t die for the country but live for the country so that no one can harm our country. It is Neeraj Pandey’s film (Wednesday fame). Though the name of the movie is ‘baby’ it is not at all a child’s game. Another brilliant movie from Neeraj Pandey.

Danny (Feroze Ali Khan) heads a special operations wing of commandoes, which is running in its trial period of 5 years with the name Baby. They had picked up 12 people from paramilitary forces. They could avert lots of terrorist attacks. Baby is the story of their last operation.

The movie begins with Danny’s narration. Akshay (Ajay) is in a foreign land trying to get one of his peers saved from the anti-social elements. On knowing that another peer had betrayed them, he extracts confessions from him and averts a terrorist attack at DLF Promenade mall in Delhi. Then the effort starts to reach to the master mind behind ‘all the Diwali’ planned. There enters into the scene Kay Kay Menon, who is in the jail as a suspect in one of the bomb blast, but manages to flee with the support of his people. It is interesting to see, how Akshay with his team under the command of Danny reaches the master-mind. Tapasee is part of his team for part of the project. The second half of the movie is more intriguing than the first half where Anupam Kher (Shuklaji) and Rana Dagubatti join Akshay for the sequences shot in the desert escapades of Abudhabi.

It is so painful to see the uncertainty in the life of such officers involved in the covert operations. Madhurima plays the role of Akshay’s wife. As per the protocol, Akshay can’t even share hois job profile with his family, and so cooks up some conference stories everytime when he is back after some operation. Madhurima tells him only one thing: Bas marna mat.

Mikall Zulfiqar who played the role of Ashfaq and an associate of Akshay in Abudhabi has done a wonderful and noticeable performance.

A special mention to the background music, especially in the Abudhabi scenes, was just superb, added lot of suspense to the climax.

Neeraj Pandey has taken a very non-biased and non-judgmental approach towards handling this movie. Although, certain scenes are there which raised a question mark in me, whether it is possible to conduct secret operations to this extent where these secret agents enter into another country, extract confessions and leads from suspects etc. May be, secret agents get the right to work in such fashion also. I am not making a comment on it, just trying to highlight the same.

There are certain other scenes which need a special mention and highlight is: Danny tells a senior minister in the beginning of the film that the government ought to win the confidence of Muslim community is India, for Pakistan is taking advantage of the community’s sense of alienation within India. In another scene, Akshay during his interrogation of an ISI agent Taufeek, Taufeek says that he writes ‘MUSALMAN’ in all caps in religion column. Responding to that Akshay tells him his story of defending a Muslim family during Gujarat Riots and why he puts ‘INDIAN’ in the religion column in all the forms that he fills. Neeraj Pandey has definitely communicated this loud and clear that terrorists don’t have a religion and no particular community ought to be associated with terrorism.

Another scene: Before every covert operations, Danny keeps telling the senior minister in front of Akshay that if something goes unfavourable, Akshay knows that India will disown him. So, once the minister asks Danny (not in front of Akshay), how would this impact Akshay. Danny says: Mil jate hain sar aise kuch officers, jo desh ke liye marna nahi chahte, but jinda rahna chahte hain taki desh ka koi kuch bigaad na sake.

Baby, a balanced take, has no dull moments. Grand Salute to the unsung heroes of our country.

Rating: 4/5(Very Good)

Khamoshiyan: A Quick Review

Another movie of horror genre from Bhatt camp. Although the title song “Khamoshiyan”, one of the top chartbuster and the trailer of the movie had generated interest in it, but it had too much of silence to be appreciated.

It started in a very slow tone. Ali Fazal, a one-time wonder writer, after break-up, decides to restart writing and travels to a place (a hotel) managed by depressed and mysterious Sapna Pabbi (Serial 24 fame). Gurmeet plays the role of Sapna’s husband. Ali wants to understand what secret Sapna is not revealing. Khamoshiyan is the journey of the writer Ali to look for a story, but later becomes part of that story. Having left many projects of his life midway, he decides this time to stick to his commitment to his own self to complete the project this time in spite of creaky doors, spooky apparitions and mysterious situations happening in and around. But hardly any horror in the movie.

Ali, Sapna and Gurmeet are talented actors, but are absolutely wasted in this movie. The script lacks the pace. Songs are definitely very good.

Khamoshiyan has lot of khamoshiyan.

Rating: 2/5(Average)

PK : A Quick Review

PK, another fine movie from Rajkumar Hirani. Heavy message presented in a light manner. So many messages are conveyed symbolically, and so many are conveyed directly. Every dialogue hit me hard. The movie leads to lot of introspection.

Aamir Khan (PK) plays an alien who is on earth (Rajasthan) to research about the human beings. The moment he lands on earth, all naked, with a child like curiosity, his ‘remote’ to send signals to his planet is being snatched by a person. The scene shifts to a foreign land where Anushka (Jaggu) is seen to be negotiating for a ticket to witness the show of Amitabh Bachchan reciting Big Bachchan. Anushka falls in love with Sushant (Sarfaraz), a Pakistani boy. Later Anoushka is shown working for a TV news channel.

The encounter between Jaggu and PK is interesting, where PK is distributing the pamphlets in Metro Rail (New Delhi) for ‘Missing Gods’. The scenes are hilarious as well as interesting.

Digs are taken on so many subjects. The desperation of a news channel to even make a depressive dog’s story as breaking news is shown. PK’s role forces one to think. He comes up with so much of innocence, who has altogether a different outlook towards things and life. He shares his journey of learning on earth to Jaggu, which has so many elements. He collects dress for himself from the ‘Dancing Car’. He slowly understands that all the human beings have the same type of skin but their dressing, style makes them look different. His amusement on the diversity is also beautifully depicted. He also feels that people on his planet are so truth-loving and non-complicated, but on earth, things are just not in order. On his planet, people don’t talk, they just touch the other person and get to know what is on that person’s mind. But on earth, PK feels that people even after communicating directly don’t understand one another. PK gets confused at the usage of a single word for expressing different feelings.

PK’s efforts to buy carrots with Mahatma Gandhi’s photograph in newspaper, book cover etc. and later with the currency forces us to think – is actually Mahatma Gandhi alive only on currencies?

He gets amused by seeing God’s houses in every street and that too with so much of diversity. In PK’s language, God has managers who are running different companies (different religions) and have different set of rules for running the company. There is a scene, where PK goes desperately from God to God, temple to church to mosque to gurudwara, so that he is able to get back his lost remote. When he understands the diversities of the religion, he tries to check, whether God stamped children as Hindu-Muslim-Christian- Sikh. A great insight. Absolute delight to watch these scenes.

PK talks of two Gods: One is the God who made us and another one is the God whom we made. PK doesn’t question the belief in God but he definitely questions the blind faith upon God-like people for whom it is another way of money-making business.

At one point of time, PK is seen wearing all sorts of religious chains like, Rudraksh, Cross etc. which he later throws off saying that there is only one God who does not put any conditions on the mankind.

Aamir’s goblin-ears, wide eyes and his running with arms straight by his side and palms stuck out are very much noticeable. Anushka is effortless, Sushant, Saurabh Shukla, Sanjay Dutt and Boman Irani are also good in the movie.

PK is hilarious, leaves you in a reflective mode.

Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)