Don't divide by 3

J's grandmother had given him a real-life math problem. She had hired help for one of the many family parties she used to host. Help consisted of a family of three maid servants, with the eldest, K as their leader and money handler. The problem was simple. J's grandmother had promised K a remuneration of Rupees 20 per month for each pair of hands she hired. Grandmother's parties were usually revered events and all her daughters along with their husbands and children would visit from out of town. As was the norm, arrangements were made for them to stay for more than a couple of weeks. However, this particular event took only 10 days, at the end of which everybody was instructed for the next planned visit and then bid a fond farewell.

Grandmother then asked J to calculate the amount she owed to K. It was not as if she couldn't perform this simpleton task on her own, for she was known to grapple with tougher puzzles with a mathematician's finesse. Only J had recently learned how to divide and multiply with integers, and it would appear that she wanted him to use the knowledge. Needless to say, she pretended that she couldn't do it and it was J's newly acquired skills that would rescue her grandmother from a colossal predicament, such as it was. Even more superfluous would be to mention that J was delighted to oblige. Grandmother was not as gullible and unenlightened as she had led people to believe. When necessary, she would demonstrate an acumen not shy of an engineer and then would successfully return to a life of pretension - a skill J later realized that he was not devoid of.

So began J on his adventure to find the answer. As determined as he was to not let her dear grandmother down, it was not easy for him to give her an answer that could not be verified in the list of answers at the end of a book. He told her that K deserves a sum of Rupees 19.99, but to be kind she should make it twenty. And without a glitch, she did so. Only she could not let the act of kindness go unnoticed by a supposedly illiterate maid. The maid was told in no subtle tones that she was getting more than she earned and the magnanimity of the household should better be remembered during the next family party. The knowledge, that whether K was indeed aware of the fact that she had earned the full sum of Rupees twenty or not, lies in God's territory; but she did take the condescension in a bad taste. The result was an uproar from the family of three maids. Such uproars were not uncommon and grandmother was perfectly proficient in sorting those out.

But luck has its own god who wanted it differently. K's appeals of injustice were heard by J's mother; whether this was deliberate on K's part or plain old-fashioned fortuity has yet to be determined. J's mother, unlike his grandmother, was a celebrated wizard at mathematics, both at home and at her office. And until the children of the family reached their teens, she was the fastest number cruncher in the family - a prized position and she prided herself on it. Quite obviously, when she came to learn of such a mathematical gaucherie at the hands of her son, she was outraged. Thus began a continuous heated debate among J's mother, father, grandfather and numerous uncles and aunts on a sequence of topics ranging from quality of education in schools to J's aptitude for mathematics to a suitable career choice for J given his handicap with numbers.

To add to the imbroglio, it was found that J's brother L, who was evidently a year younger, had solved the problem flawlessly and in considerably less time. J was annoyed that no one had even bothered to ascertain whether L was indeed capable of solving the unfortunate problem or L had only demonstrated his skills in reverse engineering. Of course, J was never bothered to provide an explanation nor was he apprised of his mistake. And J would have liked nothing better - he desperately wanted the storm to abate. And, it did abate. Those who were in it for gossip found greener grounds to prattle. Family members occupied their minds with work. Eventually all that was left was an anecdote which J hoped no one would remember.

But J was still thinking about it. His small age and stature belied his ego and tenacity. He could deduce the one-paise-error in his work, but did not know why. Too proud to ask any breathing life form, he pored over his books in solitude. His school books on mathematics seemed far too easy to present an exposition on the wretched conundrum. It was only after a week did he find an example which relieved him of his pursuit. And from then on, he remembered to not divide by 3.

Love Aaj Kal

As is usually the case with a contemporary Hindi movie, you lower your expectations and buy the tickets. This trick doesn't seem to work for Love Aaj Kal because you just cannot lower them enough. Movie jump-starts with a simultaneous beginning of love story (which is shown in fast-forward) and a definite sense of impending doom. The dialogues are utterly disconnected and there seems to be no effort to develop characters. You will require neither genius nor time to discover that the actresses are acting-impaired. Unknown characters will pop up left and right making the storyline unnaturally difficult to believe in. Extreme jerkiness is an artistic liberty that has been profusely used through out the movie. The director does not go easy on clichés either.

You would soon realize that the movie's aim is to show that love transcends pragmatism and rationality and that the director has forsaken both of these for the purposes of movie-making. From time to time, you hope against your better judgement that this unbelievably superficial grief acted out by the characters would make one of them a psychopathic killer, and that somehow it would be you who is the victim of a horrendous crime. Hope all you want, 'cos that just ain't gonna happen. There will be times when you would see the movie taking a turn towards the finish line and just when you've started to believe that the end is near, the director plays a cruel trick on you. At such a point, the coincident vocal expletives from the audience would remind you that you're not alone. Hopelessly incurable romantics could choose to ignore these, of course. So I sat in the dark through 2 hours, 40 minutes of pure awkwardness, all the time imagining how dumb did the director expect you to be in order to appreciate this movie. Songs were neither melodious nor memorable; but enriched with techno sound effects, they were definitely a relief from the dialogues at which, of course, a ten-year-old could do a better job.

Needless to say that sitting through it till the end to recover my hard-earned $10 was a lost cause. And after a lot of soul searching, I reckon it was probably guilt of doing something terribly awful which made me sit through the entire thing. I would say go watch the movie, especially if you believe in karma, because you will have to pay less for your sins after you've been through this version of hell.

One Last Time

J had left the place never to return back. The room was cleaned of any remaining vestiges of value and then with one quick glance of a sweeping look he had closed the door and locked it in one fluid motion. He was full of excitement, the feeling was the first of such feelings to come and he could hardly contain them. M could detect a sense of victory in J, who was the first one to leave. Brimming with it, J did not realize that this was the one last time he'd be able to lock his door here, and that once he did, it was now no longer his room. Somebody he may or may not know will come by the end of holidays to live here. Everybody else had begun to think, albeit unconsciously, of the so many hours of countless days they had spent in this room, discussing things, debating over sundry seemingly undebatable issues, disproving P's absurd contentions and then bursting into roaring laughter interspersed with taunts most of which would continue (much to P's not-so-well-hidden displeasure) to live on for weeks as dinner time anecdotes to recall, and, most importantly looking for that big, blue jug of water that J had always kept full and usually poorly hidden. Rubbing their eyes, they carried the luggage to the gate of the hostel where they waited for the cab to show up. The night was windy and it was three in the morning. The cab arrived shortly and parked itself near the gate. A few of them pulled the luggage up to the cab and J shoved them inside, as M perched himself up on a ledge.

Every year, M was always the first one to leave the place for holidays. He seemed to think that he did not belong there, but so did a lot of people. M would always be the one waving goodbyes to his friends who came to see him off till the hostel gate. The anticipation of a long journey finally taking him home had always been mesmerizing. And even after all so many of such trips, the charm never seemed to wear off. But this time was different. Having never been at the receiving end of those farewell waves, he had never realized that it was a sort of bereavement. Even though, he knew he'd be going soon too, this thought did not seem to hold well against the grief that was getting stronger by the minute. The closely knit group, which had stood together through the thicks and thins of a student life for four years, had broken with a definite finality. The cab shuddered with ignition and they saw their friend slowly speeding away. And, with smiles on their faces they returned to their rooms discussing yet another one of J's quirks.

Kill Bill

This movie is not for the weak-hearted, and by weak-hearted I do not mean those who can not stand to watch blood and gore alone but all those who with a soft heart and a weak will. Those, who in their lifetime have not had the opportunity to experience the enormous power of revenge and those who have but did not have the stomach to follow through. Kill Bill portrays Beatrix Kiddo (Uma Thurman) as a personification of vengeance. It is about a not-so righteous woman who is wronged beyond all contemplateable forms of brutality, and her iron-willed resolve to avenge herself. The movie in two volumes emulates in a very requisite detail this woman's satiating odyssey from comatose to restitution. It may outwardly appear that the movie lacks a certain corporeal reality but what it lacks in tangibility, it more than makes up for in a magnificent delineation of a single emotion - vengeance.

It will not take a genius to foresee that this movie may not make it to the all-time favourites list of the romantics, and with all due respect, it will be nothing less than sheer iniquity to attach even a shred of credibility to a critique of this movie coming from those idealizing love or forgiveness. This said, it is surmised that a substantiation of the above is in order. These views are not the outpourings of an embittered heart or soul nor are written in fits of anger. Nevertheless these do belong to a mind prejudiced towards the superiority of anger and revenge over all other faculties of human feelings. And to honour parity, it will be equally unfair to consider the views of the author of this review on movies portraying love and forgiveness on a equal or more powerful standing. It is, by this exposition, not hoped that those who have detested the movie because of its theme shall begin to appreciate it. And even though, the sole aim of this review could be construed as a one-sided appreciation for a gory movie further ensanguined with revenge, it is heartily expected that those who have at least once wielded the weapon of vengeance shall find it an exhilarating (though vicarious) experience.

Contender

J met M with the regular congenial smile he had for every first acquaintance, with a ever so ordinary handshake. Nothing or rather no one in the present company of his, did J find exceptional and as for the stranger he just met, J expected nothing extraordinary as well. J keenly observed behavior of the third person with them solely to acquire and then assess any information on M. While it is only human to compare oneself with others, but for J it was the primordial task.