Reelity

When you have cousins flying over from Canada and Australia and everybody catches up, you tend to do stuff together. We went bowling and watched Musafir on Sunday.  The movie is worth watching just for Sanjay Dutt! He’s amazing.  My favorite dialogue of the movie is (in Hindi) "Taqdeer teri chutti pe. Maut teri sar pe. Lekin baatein aisi karta hai jaise zindagi teri bistar pe." … the songs are straight beats and dance stuff but well made. No pretenses are made. The movie is fast and the songs are fast. A bit of warning though, its definitely not a family movie ;)

I watched Swades today. Very well made and inspiring movie. There are no special scenes or jhatka matka songs. Just pure patriotism. Not the in-your-face over-the-top kind but a simple and meaningful way that you and I can relate to. If that’s not your cup of tea, then don’t watch it. Otherwise, the movie just totally appeals to you. It did to me. No matter what you do, no matter how comfortable you are, there’s nothing like home. One of the reasons I don’t really look forward to going to ‘amreeka’ as most people I see around fancy about. If the opportunity came, I might go. If not, I don’t really care. I like it here. Am I crazy to say that?

On a related note, the movie just reminds me of Abdul Kalam’s vision of using technology to improve life in my country India. I hope one day I would be able to contribute to such a vision.

If this post seems like a bolt from the blue to you, don’t be surprised. I’ve had these things in my mind since a long time. It’s just that I didn’t blog about it till now. I can’t help it, I’m a very idealistic person and this movie just brought out that side in me :)

Update
It seems that Swades is a rip-off of the Kannada film ‘Chigurida Kanasu’ based on the novel of the same name by Shivaram Karanth. I am trying to look for details on this.