I want to be Jason Bourne

Don't get me wrong.

I do not want to be an assassin or even a reformed one at that.
I do not want to wield a pen or a rolled up magazine as a weapon.
I do not want to run flat out, at a high altitude, for half an hour before my hand starts shaking.
I just want to speak 6-7 languages with Jason Bourne's fluency in local accent.

The way Bourne switches between different languages is stuff what dreams are made of.
I know in movies all this is possible.
What we see on the silver screen is perfection - behind it all are hundreds of takes and retakes.
But that is what idols are for - they are perfect and we strive towards perfection.

We all find our idols in most unlikely places.
Who is your Jason Bourne?

Sound of Silence

Now I am sleeping and now I am wide awake. Just like that.

I try to figure out what happened.
Was it some bad dream?
A noise?
Then I realize ... there is no noise. In fact no sound. No where.
I stay awake trying to listen to any sound from anywhere. Nah!
The entire hill station of Kodai goes absolutely still at around 3 a.m. in the morning.
This happened to me the first two nights I spent at Kodaikanal.
I now know what is meant by 'deafening sound of silence'
I feel like a zen master :-)

Or rather like Kamal Hassan in the movie Pushpak Vimana. He cannot sleep in the 5 star hotel. So he goes back to his room that is next to the cinema hall and records the loud noise. Back at the hotel he plays the tape recorder and snores away to glory.

Have you seen the movie. It was released in the north as Pushpak. There are no dialogs in the movie. It is not required. Unfortunately, it was not a box office hit. I wonder why wasn't it India's official entry at the Oscars. Anyways, click on the above link to know more about the movie. And if you haven't seen it, go ahead and get a copy from the local video library. I promise you won't be disappointed.

Coming back to my experience of total silence at Kodai ... I was disappointed that I did not wake up in the middle of the night on the 3rd and 4th day. I sort of started enjoying the experience. There is a kind of peace in total silence.

Bollywood is in our blood

In India movies have a huge influence on people. We all grow up on a healthy diet of Bollywood movies. And contrary to popular view, the influence is not all negative.

Let me give an example how this works. I was just talking to a friend about tax saving. The talk veered to a common friend who takes a fair bit of liberty in interpreting the tax laws to his advantage. I disapprove of it but I haven't said so on the common friend's face. Anyways, as we were talking, my friend stated that sometimes circumstances may make a person push the limits and my reaction surprised even me. Before I could even think, I referred to a scene in an old Amitabh Bachchan movie Deewar where a teacher condones his son's act.

The scene is something like this ... A police officer, played by Shashi Kapoor, arrives at a scene where he sees a boy being chased by a big crowd screaming "thief, thief." The police officer joins the chase and after a couple of warnings shoots at the running boy. I think he hits his legs. When the police inspector discovers that all that the boy had stolen is bread, and the reason he steals this is because his father is a retired school teacher and there is no other earning member in the family. The police officer feels guilty and takes food to the old teacher's house and confesses that he was responsible for the shooting. The boy's mother takes off but the old teacher says that there are many other people in the world who are hungry; does it mean that all of them become thieves? This of course is the lesson our brave police officer was waiting for. He then takes this lesson to heart and goes on to shoot and kill his elder brother, a smuggler, played by Amitabh Bachchan. In all this there are some fantastic dialogs and a couple of memorable songs and romances ... you get the idea.

I think I saw the movie about 30 years ago. If my first reaction is to refer to an ancient movie, then you can very well imagine the impact Bollywood movies have on us.

Phew!