83: Good Movie But a Missed Opportunity

 

I read in news that the movie 83 was not doing good in terms of revenues as audiences were not flocking to the theatres. Hence, I took the risk and booked ticket for next day and watched it in a theater. This was my first movie in a theater since last year’s pandemic. Like most boys born in 1980s, I had grownup being a Kapil Dev fan and for the first time a movie about him was made, so I wanted it to do it well commercially too. And I am a big Ranveer Singh fan, so there were two compelling reasons to take the risk.

Now, about the movie. Having watched its promos and songs, I went into the theater expecting it to be a Kapil Dev ‘biopic’. But it turned out to be a historical drama only about World Cup Cricket 1983. It was difficult to digest this fact which we start noticing after spending some time through the movie. Whenever Ranveer Singh comes on the screen, he leaves in a few minutes and we are left wishing for his more screen-time. It happens again and again and till the movie ends. It feels like director Kabir Khan or the movie makers took sadistic pleasures in disappointing the fans of both Kapil Dev and Ranveer Singh. Ranveer Singh looked totally transformed physically. His physic, body language, speech, everything was totally changed for this movie. He did so much work to transform himself for this movie, but the movie does nothing to match the content with his intent.

The movie tried to give us a wholesome drama around the WC 1983. How our players were poor, struggling, not famous and how they did the “David kills Goliath” by defeating West Indies and winning the World Cup. Fine, but this could have been covered in last 60 minutes of the movie. Now, I can also understand that the movie tried to do justice with each of the 11 players who were in the WC team and this is really commendable. But, we did not go to the theater to know the story of each of those 11 players. We are fine with 50% of screen-time given to others, but remaining 50% should be about Kapil Dev. But it seemed as if the movie makers were really bent on giving a “fair chance” to each team member. And this killed the magic that this movie could have given to us by making the movie a bit more about Kapil Dev than about World Cup. I think other viewers would agree with me on this.

Apart from Ranveer Singh, Pankaj Tripathi as Manager, PR Man Singh, has done a great job. It was in fact Pankaj Tripathi who made us glued all through the movie and not Ranveer Singh. Then I really liked Tahir Raj Bhasin as Sunil Gavaskar; as he has done a really great job. Apart from Ranveer Singh, I felt only Tahir who tried to reflect some of the aura of the great Cricket star he was playing. Fourth place comes to Krishnamachari Srikkanth who has been given tremendous footage in the movie, for creating comic scenes. And Jatin Sarna as Yashpal Sharma was also very good. In fact I liked Yashpal Sharma after watching this movie, while earlier I did not know much about him.

Boman Irani as Farokh Engineer was an unnecessary character. Use of Indira Gandhi’s character and the way it was shown that she used Cricket as a trick for communal peace looked like a “cheap trick”. I wonder how the movie makers wasted screen time on such unnecessary characters. If they had given even 20 more minutes to Kapil Dev’s character, the movie won’t have to struggle at the box office to begin with and I won’t need to risk my life to support commercial cinema.

All said and done, I would categorize 83 as a “near-miss” and will expect some other movie maker to do true justice to Kapil Dev’s character. Use Ranveer Singh again, if possible. I remember earlier once movies about famous personalities like Bhagat Singh used to be made, 3-4 movie makers would compete with each other to make their movie on the same subject. But this time, no one else is seen and Kabir Khan was the sole flag-bearer who did well to disappoint Kapil Dev fans. I shall long to wait for a proper movie to be made on Kapil Dev.

Origins of Superstition

While arranging household items, I came across many old pictures of gods and a statue of Hanuman ji which was broken at one place but glued back in home. I had to immerse (visarjan) Diwali’s Lakshmi ji Ganesh ji idols too, so I thought about immersing the above old items in the river too. I knew that it was not auspicious to keep broken idols at home, so I found courage to identify and pack such items in a cartoon.

Now a day, government does not allow people to throw puja items directly in rivers, and we have to keep such things in trash bins kept near river-banks. Although we suspect that municipal workers must be finally dumping such items in God knows what places; but what options do we have? I naturally hesitated in immersing such religious items, convincing myself that there is no harm in keeping these in some corner at home. But I remembered that these are lying idle for many years, and “how long” do I plan to keep these? Until these become fossils? So, somehow I gathered courage and collected all such items in a cartoon and kept it in a bag, and planned to go to the river bank next morning to immerse those.

But, seems God had other plans. Next morning, it was raining. I thought I would go in the evening, but it kept raining whole day. I thought I would go next day, but even it was raining next whole day! After 2 days, the rains stopped, but the roads were wet and hence I decided not to go until weather is dry again. After a few weeks, once again I gathered courage and picked up the cartoon and went to the riverbank on foot (since it is only about 2 kilometers from home). To my surprise, there were no trash bins to be found! Municipality guys were cleaning and painting the whole area and hence they would have removed the trash bins made for puja items. I noticed that no one else had dumped any puja items anywhere. Disappointed, I returned home with everything I had taken with me to submerge.

After these two failed attempts to submerge religious items, a thought lingered in my mind that may be God does not want me to submerge those items. Any of those items, pictures or idols might have a spiritual power and it does not want to “leave” my home. I even felt ashamed of trying to get rid of those items.

Therefore, I have finally made up my mind and kept the cartoon with all these items somewhere near the home temple. I know it is ‘superstition’, and while I try to be rational and not superstitious most of the time, after two failed attempts, I do not have courage to take those out to submerge again. May God forgives me for trying to do something without His consent.

- Rahul Tiwary

The Restaurant Revisited

 

Earlier, I had written about a restaurant and its owner who was struggling to cope up with plummeted sales due to Covid crisis. I was touched and had offered optimism that things would change after Diwali. That indeed came true as customers flocked to his restaurant after Diwali.

I visited the restaurant a couple of times recently. The place was totally packed, and the restaurant owner was on his toes both times. It was difficult to get a vacant table now. And when I got my order, I was shocked to find that both quality and quantity had reduced drastically!

When a restaurant is overcrowded, it is expected that the service quality would reduce. But in this case, he had hired a new guy to cater to increased customer footfalls and hence service quality had become better. The new waiter was giving menu cards to customers, which no one did earlier. The restaurant owner was now giving receipts to people and also serving home delivery orders. But the food quantity had reduced for the same price. And even food was prepared in a rushed manner and was not enjoyable like before. It seemed as if the restaurant owner was now trying to cover all the losses he had made in past months by reducing the quality and quantity both. Since customers were flocking to his restaurant, sales was no longer a challenge and hence he could afford to cut a few corners this way to make some extra bucks.

The other day I saw a guy coming up to talk to the cook directly; and the restaurant owner asked him not to approach the cook directly. The guy took offense and simply walked out. Perhaps he had got used to seeing vacant restaurant and hence had developed a habit of directly talking to the cook. Now that the restaurant was packed, his extra movements looked wrong and hence the restaurant owner would have objected to his ways, even at the cost of losing the customer.

Due to the problem with food, I could not feel as happy about the complete turnaround of the restaurant as I would have felt otherwise. I remembered the old times till a few months ago when the restaurant was almost vacant and hence it felt good to sit and enjoy the food in a quite environment. The food was also better since the cooks were not in a rush. I could also have a chat with the restaurant owner, or observe things around the restaurant, because things were at a slow pace. 

Now that the restaurant was minting money, my whole customer experience became a run through the crowd and hence I have been avoiding visiting the restaurant in the recent past. And that is unfortunate because I really liked the restaurant.

And today, when I looked at the restaurant owner and smiled, he did not even acknowledge me. Perhaps he did not notice me; or perhaps in the changed scenario, I had become just a part of the crowd for him. And that was like life making a full circle, and tragic in its own insignificant way. 

- Rahul Tiwary

Why I deleted Netflix App

 

There are times when you know something would happen a certain way; you still do it; and it does happen exactly that way. I am reminded of this phenomenon with regard to my Netflix experience.

I had got Netflix access free of cost due to my mobile plan. I was not using it for many months fearing I would get addicted to watching movies that way and would waste lots of time. I love watching movies and before Netflix, I used to watch one movie in the evening on TV, if a good movie was on air. I feared that unrestricted 24/7 access to movies would spoil me. After a few months, I happened to install the App to watch something. And then, the binge began. I often watched 2-3 movies daily and it felt like a paradise. I justified all the time spent by saying to myself that it was only temporary. I knew I had fallen into the movie addition trap, exactly what I had feared in the beginning. In the end, one fine day a week back, I uninstalled Netflix. I also uninstalled Hotstar because I never watched anything on it except IPL which is long over.

A week without Netflix felt just as fine. Now I wonder how I was able to take 4-5 hours a day out of my daily schedule just for Netflix. I wonder how I am so naturally able to adopt to life without Netflix or spending days without movies, since I have not yet subscribed to movie channels on TV too. How can humans be so flexible. Addition is expected to want us to go back, but after one year of complete binge-watching movies, and abruptly ending it, it seems I didn’t mind it at all!

Although I am still not able to believe how I ended Netflix so easily, I am happy to get rid of it. I had stopped reading books and newspapers and quitting movies must be good for my eyes too. Life without Netflix appears as good or bad. And I also feel I was right in the beginning about not starting Netflix, because in last one year I must have wasted a few months of time in hypothetical and far away world of fiction.

I think the wakeup call for me was the realization that due to movies (and Twitter), all the world’s negativity and filth is getting into my mind which I did not deserve. There was 180 degrees of difference between my real life, my real self, and what I was exposing my mind to, due to Twitter and Netflix. So, I am happy that I have ended it and not going back.

Happy to be living in the real world.  

- Rahul Tiwary

Outgrowing Things

 

I had stopped using Facebook about a year back. After years of using it, I had started feeling uninterested in it. It did not make sense anymore. I logged into Facebook yesterday in order to reach out to someone whose phone number I did not have. When I scrolled through the ‘timeline’, I saw a college friend still posting his own pictures as if celebrating himself. He has been doing this for 10 years now; is he not supposed to quit at some point? Another friend still posts her family pictures. A few celebrities I followed, were still posting their own pictures. It seems everyone on Facebook is doing “self-love”, but needs to show one’s pictures to others, in order to get validated. What kind of absurdity it is? If one is doing “self-love” (as the practice of self-respect and care is called), why does one need to give daily updates to others?

A few days back, I deactivated my casual Twitter account too, because it was eating up lot of my time and it also filled me with negativity whenever I logged in and saw others’ tweets. I decided that enough was enough.

I have not been posting anything on LinkedIn since long time. Once upon a time, I was an active user and I also used to write articles. Later on, I deleted all my articles (my blog was the right place for it anyway). Yesterday, I checked LinkedIn and people are writing loads of idiotic stuff and getting thousands of likes and interactions. Social media is becoming a mad world. Someone had a bad experience with a bank, so he wrote a big post declaring that the bank had lost it. Lot of people post useless stuff no one should care about, but surprisingly lot many people go and write comments on such posts!

It seems everyone is suffering from huge insecurity and would get an anxiety attack unless others see their social media posts and validate them. It had taken time for me but I had come to the stage when I did not care to show my presence by writing and sharing unsolicited stuff on social media. I had seen that many others were ‘there’ before me; when they did not ‘need’ social media for any kind of validation. I had seen that they were much more at peace in their life and it felt a sign of self-confidence too. I could not be like them when I tried. So, I took my own time but gradually I reached there. I was going to reach there anyway, because I have seen that I am a man of varied interests and I need variety to ‘tickle’ my brain. I can’t read same subject for whole life, or do the same thing for decades. And I am glad that I reached a stage when I do not need any social media.

I know that I am still writing blogs. That is mainly because I love writing and I do want to continue that. But, sometimes I have even felt like quitting it. I will wait for the time when I shall be able to ‘outgrow’ even blogging.

- Rahul Tiwary

Some Movies - IV

 

‘Sherlock’ (2010) TV Series: Great detective stories set in a modern era. Some stories are too dramatic, perhaps when makers tried to appeal to the TV audience. Great series for Sherlock fans.

‘Sooryavanshi’ (2021): Good film but it tried too hard to convince how Indian Muslims are nice and hence the political content overshadowed entertainment portion and bored. Loved the comedy at its end. Can be watched.

‘The Crime' (2015): a Polish TV series, with help of subtitles. Brilliant one, liked it.

‘Shetland’ (2013): Amazing series of crime/detective stories.

'Playing with fire' (2019): a John Cena comedy film. A very heart-warming one; gets into all-time favorite list.

'Ungli' (2014): Watching it now, I realized that this movie was made in an era when anti-corruption was a major agenda in Indian politics. This movie has a surprisingly high number of popular cast, with major role with Imran Hasmi. An average movie.

'Power of the dog' (2021): A brilliant film with a chilling plot. Benedict Cumberbatch played it so well that I can imagine even Brad Pitt could have done  only similar job in this role. 

Songs from Satyameva Jayate 2

 

Recently, Satyamev Jayate-2 was released in theatres. This is a patriotic movie. I have not watched it, but I liked its promos and songs. I have collected below videos of its songs at one place:

Jann Gann Mann: This song has redefined the list of most popular patriotic songs our movies gave us. I found this song even better than AR Rahman’s creation. It is really wonderful how our film and music industry has been giving us one gem after another of great patriotic songs. 

Maa Sheravali: At the same time, some movies still give us wonderful religious songs too. In older days cinema, we used to have this trend and now this is not as frequent. Hence, it was great to find this beautiful song in this movie. Jai Maa Sheravali. 

Meri Zindagi Hai Tu: A beautiful melodious song:

Kusu Kusu: The ‘item song’: 

Tenu Lahanga: Perhaps the most popular song which makes you start dancing: 

Thank you T-Series and Satyamev Jayate makers.

Song: Kalle Kalle (From "Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui")

 

I liked this song very much, so thought to share:

Wynk music:

Kalle Kalle (From "Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui") Song Online - Kalle Kalle (From "Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui") mp3 song download | Wynk

Youtube:

Kalle Kalle Lyrical | Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui |Ayushmann K, Vaani K |Sachin-Jigar Ft. Priya Saraiya - YouTube

Book on Death and Near Death Simulation

 

Earlier this year, I read a book named ‘Death’. Yes, you heard it right! Check Death Book - (sadhguru.org) for more. In this book, Sadhguru (Shri Jagadish Vasudev) presents a comprehensive analysis of everything about death. He attends to common questions like what is life, why are we here on earth, what exactly is death, what happens after death, how should relatives behave after death, do death related rituals help, and what to do and what not to do about those. He heavily draws ideas from Hinduism as well as common social practices and concepts in India or abroad. A few pointers from the book would include Sadhguru’s good explanation about why cremation is better than other forms of dead body disposal like burial.

I had previously read about concepts and practices in Hinduism from many sources including many sadhus and from Ramakrishna Mission and Vivekananda’s writings. After reading this book on death from Sadhguru, I largely agree with what he said, if I match it from my previous reading from other sources on Hinduism. I have also found that Sadhguru’s writing style is unique and perhaps he connects with 21^st century generation readers in a better manner as compared to older writings by other religious organizations. I also noticed that near the end of this book, Sadhguru tells about some ritual services his organization Isha Foundation offers in Bengaluru. It does sound a bit like undercover marketing for his organization, but it is not done excessively and hence it is ok.

I noticed one unique lesson from this book which was about how Sadhguru explained that the “moments before death” are very important. He said that even a criminal can die in a better manner and it can help his soul, as compared to a good man who can die in a bad manner and it would cause problems for his soul. As far as I remember, since it has been many months since I read the book, he talked against the practice of gathering whole family or doing make the death a big event. A peaceful death in solitude may be better. I think he gave example of elephants, that when they have to die due to old age or any reason, they choose an isolated spot and just wait there till they die. He said that even animals know how to die in grace, while many people make a big fuss before dying, making entire family gather, cry, or plead to God to stop them from dying. And this harms their soul rather than helping in any manner.

Now, after some time since reading this book, I was very sick, my body and especially legs were paining immensely, and it was nighttime. I don’t remember if I had taken medicine or not, since it was day-1, but I was in immense pain for a few hours and in desperation, I wished to God to take me away to relieve me from the pain. I was in this state for some time and then I questioned myself about what I had just wished. So, for some time questions and answers happened within my head. I asked myself if I was really serious to ask God to take me away since it was a serious thing. I got the answer that I was serious about it. I did not see any great value in continuing anyway, so I thought what’s wrong in now than later. Next, I asked myself if I wished anything before I died. My mind brought pictures of my kids before me, but apart from that I did not really have any specific wish. I questioned myself if I would not like to think about all material wealth I had, if I was really willing to part with all those, did not I have any wishes to do before I died? I realized at that moment all material things did not matter to me at all and I did not care what happened to all my money after I died, neither did I wish to do anything with it before my death. Now, this was a very important realization, because at the time of death of Sushant Singh, we all had questioned about how he could die if he had amassed so much wealth. I realized that at the moments before our death, material wealth does not really matter to us. At that time, somehow, we are ‘detached’ from most of the things which matter to us during rest of the time. It felt that once one is ready to go, nothing else matters. I did not have any regrets, no wishes, nothing. I was simply ready to go.  

I had quickly recovered in a few days and those moments of death ‘simulation’ felt distant afterwards. I did not think much about that day later on, nor did I get any similar feelings afterwards. But I wanted to write it down for my blog, so I am finally doing it today.

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Why I Cancelled My Amazon Prime Subscription

Recently, I let my Amazon Prime subscription lapse. Amazon had it coming. My reasons were as follows:

1. Quite sometime ago, I noticed that everything I wanted to buy on Amazon, was being sold on Flipkart at Rs 100 less.
2. I already had Flipkart Plus membership which also offered free delivery
3. I already had Netflix for movies and Netflix is 10 times better than Amazon Prime Videos
4. For music, I am already using Airtel Wynk free music app
5. With Covid restrictions gone, physical shopping has started and I needed online shopping very ness now

Therefore, Amazon Prime membership had become a non-essential overhead and it made more sense to let it go.

Good bye, Amazon Prime!

- Rahul Tiwary