FASION:MOVIE REVIEW

Fashion:

Its been long that a movie like Fashion was released. Hats off to Madhur Bhandarkar with equal accolades to Priyanka Chopra to carry off the role so well. This movie did have a definite taste of his own and Madhur did not make it the same as his previous movies. This was a movie which was a bit hatke as compared to his last few like Corporate and Page 3 where there was more emphasis on the story and the background on which it was different. More so they had had a very grim and heavy ending, leaving everything to be so evil. But this movie is different. Its more about individuality and the struggle he or she faces while rising up the ladder to success.

The story starts with Priyanka Chopra as a middle class Chandigarh girl who dreams big and whats to make a mark in the fashion industry,after she wins a local beauty contest. but like most middle class families she meets with a strong no co operation from her father.Still determined to make it big,she enters the fashion world and her struggle to stardom has been beautifully depicted by Madhur Bhandarkar. The real situation starts when success gets into her head and her attitude turns into arrongance. And then begins her fall. But with time and encouragement from her closest few she struggles to rise up again. The difficulties that one faces in that situation when one starts again from the begining and how tough then it becomes,even more tough than it was starting new is once again very well depicted well by Bhandarkar. The emotions involved,the weight of self expectation and the expectation of others with their real faces upfront more so on the ground that you have lost your self confidence and hope from your own self is very well shown here. Ultimately Priyanka manages to do it..albeit once again,which is actually the tough part.

This Movie is Priyanka's. Hats off to the actress for the splendid performance. She will surely take it all this time. Her day has come now. All the film fare awards would be singing only one name:best actress Priyanka Chopra. Madhur has indeed done a splendid job and he has left no stone unturned to show the darkness behind the glamour world.

The stroy which essentially is the stroy of the struggle, rise and then fall and then again struggle and rise finally has been beautifully told with the Fashion industry in its background. Kangana Ranaut too has given a great performance, but nothing much can be added to her role. Over all the movie in simple words is superb.

The essential theme is all about the ambition of a person that he/she does not realize that in the pursuation of this ambition he looses so many things and he/she is not conscious about the cost that he has to pay for the ambition he/she fulfills. As long he/she is conscious about the price that he/she is paying then its fine. If not then it indeed is a big price that he/she has paid when he/she looks back and sees it. Its all about being ambitious and knowing where you are going and conscious about the price that you are paying. As long as you acknowledge that you would always enjoy the success for when you reach the pinnacle,its very lonely up there,and one must be aware of this fact. I don't mean to say that given this fact that one must not pursue success,its just that one must acknowledge the reality of success.

The other aspect of the movie which has been beautifully shown is the fact that one most not judge others on one's own barometer of success and one must learn to accept others as they are as well as where they stand today in life and whatever compromises they have made.This is one theme that has been beautifully shown. Hats off to Madur Bhandarkar once again. I guess there are thinking filmmakers surely out there, but if you want to see an intelligent film maker,then Madhur Bhandarkar surely fits the bill.

Star rateing: 5star

Must watch in a theatre. Go ahead watch it today.

Know thyself:the true way....

Know thyself...
Every scriptures,every great pair of lips,every academia speaks of this:
Know thyself.

But don't we know ourselves....take the case of myself:
I am Ravi Manoram, student of DCE, blah,blah,blah..........
but then what is meant by Know thyself.... oh ok! Height and weight right. he he he well I am tall enough and heavy enough...and so must you all be knowing about yourselves....then what the fuck is know thyself.

Oh, maybe the food I like,the songs and movies I like...the clothes I like... yes now it is that I am moving in the right direction......

Well actually it was through this way that I started to move that I finally realized what actually is meant by KNOW THYSELF.

Well 'know thyself' not only means all the above but much more than that. My name,my qualification etc. are something which this society has given me, so am I not another of those in the herd. Who am I then???
Or is it that the whole concept of individuality is useless and a inhibits the development of the society. More so,is it so difficult to find our individuality, do we have to really go into the caves of some obscure hill the high mountains of Himalayas...!
Certainly not...
Ourself is here...we are here..... we have to be a aprt of this society..... we are all our own individuality yet to an extend we don't go about finding it....

Individuality is all about responsibility. Responsibility of ourselves. TO some extend if we look abck and forth, we shall realize that we have been running away from ourselves. We our so weak from inside that we always need some external force to guide us, be responsible for us, govern us and set rules for us. Can't we have the courage to go about our own.

Well lost in the thoughts of these I realized, I needed to march on this uncomfortable journey to know myself. It was indeed painful, somewhere I gained immensely somewhere I lost alot. But it was nota zero sum game. The things that one learns finally is something that one takes back forward in life....

To know thyself the first step in the journey in this direction,start being skeptical. Start disbelieving everything. Reason for everything. Well now I don't mean to say that when you see adog you start to question that oh, is it a dog, no certainly not. What I mean by being skeptical is that you start disbelieving everything that you think you should not believe or that you don't find any reason to believe except for the fact that if you don't believe that, you actually fear that. I mean to say that fear becomes the force that makes you believe it. Reason everything.

The second step in this direction is to overcome this very fear that makes you skeptical. yes fight it out. Well you can't do something like shoo shoo and the fear will go away. You need to handle it. You need to understand that your heart cares for you, that is why it fears for for you. But sometimes it can be unreasonable, fearing the monsters created by the figment of man's own imagination. Its that very time that you need to walk ahead. Look in the abyss and light the torch of enlightment. The enlightment of your inner soul, the inner self.What I mean to say is that walk ahead,acknowledge the fear, walk in the face of it, reason out your fear whether it is real or no and then move on.........

The third step in this direction of knowing yourself is to start listening to your inner voice. It says something, sometimes what you do in the outside world and what your inner voice tells you to do are two different things.... learn the art of balancing the both,for you cannot live without either. So start listening to it,start talking to it,and you shall very soon realize that it is a new being inside you. A new self, a new person whom you did not discover in all this time.

Well there could be many things, but to give you a vague idea, start believing in yourself, start reading alot,start doing things in the world that you actually want to do,and stop just being a puppet, dancing at the pull of some mysterious force. You need to balance between this thought and action.
Remember this is not easy,the toughest journey I think is to undertake the journey from oneself to oneself.
But once you reach there, it is worth it.And don't worry you won't be alone,and there will be something that shall always be with you,yourself.And at this moment let me reveal a fact to you,everyone knows about you but you yourslef,but everyone just pretends for the fear the fact, that they too don't know about themselves.

Self Motivation and what it is not

Self Motivation

When ever we come across this word we usually stick to the view point that this is something great.

Well to an extend it is.

So what is usually meant by self motivation in the usual sense?

What I have begun to infer out of it is that self motivation is usually meant by people as something like u use to inspire yourself and fight out from a pathetic state and come out a winner. Fine great! Isn't that what everyone actually means when he hears the word self motivation. Like I a guy had two back papers,things were going bad in his life,then one day he decides to end his apathy,fights and comes out clearing his back papers in one shot,and reaches a comfortable level in his life.

Usually self motivation is meant by that where you have a stimuli from an external environment that actually inspires to do something great, to achieve something substantial in life, but there isa problem in this case.

Usually that thing we achieve is usually limited to the given set of opportunities that are currently existing. What if one wants to achieve something even bigger than that? What if he wants to get out of the comfortable zone and once again go into the uncomfortable zone where in this time time he is not in a pathetic state rather he is in a uncomforable state where he has given up his secure and comfort level to achieve something that you can call great. Do we have motivation for that..... well most of the time no.

We are used to work in a state of fear and pressure. Untill and unless there is not much kick ass, we don't really muster up courage and stuff to achieve something in life.

We compete because we are afraid to loose even our existence.

We compete because we may loose a given set of opportunity which are fellow friends might grab it.

We compete because we are just enhancing our present state of being or maybe securing our present state of being.

In a different situation, imagine when we are working towards something that is part of our dream, something that involves a substantial state of mind where it can create something big, but yes things like this require time and money, it requires coming out of the comfort zone and fighting out to win something that is truely one in the world, there is I guess the real self motivation that lies.

Can we motivate ourselves to give up the comfort zone and work towards achieving something that is great, something that is out of the box and at the cost of our present, secure, state of being.

This is where the primary difference lies between the two kinds of self motivation, one is to fight and come out of the dungeon and the other is to fight and build a  sueprb palace, everyone can develop that motivation for the first, but for the second you really need a great lot of even more self motivation. 

FEAR AND CONFIDENCE

Fear of failure
Fear of self
Fear of society
Fear of success
Fear of pain and hard work
You name it, and there are hundreds of fear out there lurking in the darkness of our mind, making us surrender to our knees,asking us to forget success rather think about our insecurity or failure. Yes indeed,I am talking about that kind of a fear.

There are two kinds of fear, existential and hypothetical or self created/self believed ones.
Existential fear, like the fear of lions if you happen to have one is good, fear of jumping into a high current river,fear of slapping your teacher because the consequences would not be very encouraging,etc etc are the good kinds of fear and I shall not want to touch them here. Let us all have this kind of fear,for they itself make us human enough to love and care for our existence.

But what about the fears that are non existent. That take us away from our own well beings and keeps us confined to the life like that of in a ghetto.
The kind of fear that I am talking about.....yes you got it...the fear of failure when you want to do something new,something different in life. That is the kind of fear that sucks,and to an extent we are sucked because we allow it suck us.
Take for an example,if you are caught in a certain stream of a career in your life. Though this career provides you with security that you feel is required at the moment, but what about it in the future and in the near future. One day you tend to realize that your present sucks and you want to change it for the better and for the future. But do you do? No you don't. Why? Though you want to try something else but that something else is so something else that someone else from some other else's place has not tried to do this very something else.What I was trying to say is that you try to do something which is out of the box and people have not done it,and this something comes at a cost which you do not want to part with. We wan a gurantee that this something else that I wish to try has to be a success. But no. We can't. Because actually if you are successful,then you are successful or you are not. That is as simple as that. This thing usually happens when we want to try something creative,or when we want to enter a particular field which people say is very risky and some crap like that. Do we try?No.
"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision"
--Ayn Rand

Yes that is the confidence that is indeed required. But what she says,is it possible? Well I don't know how to answer that question,but for certainly I can say that yes it is NOT impossible.

So how do we get to the affirmative state of the possibility? At the moment I just said that it is not impossible, that is very much a positive statement but it is not an affirmative statement. Why? simply because we are not speaking it that way and that requires confidence.
So from where is the confidence going to come?

For confidence to come I guess the biggest indicator is self awareness. Yes that is one quality or thing we need to have. Self awareness! Most of the people tend to run away from themselves. They never like staying alone,why, because they tend to hear voices which comes out from their own,but it seems so like a stranger. Yes, that is the unconscious voice, the voice that connects to the reservoir of knowledge,of everything. That is the voice that is telling you what you ought to do. I guess Paulo Coelho in one of his books defines it as something that connects us to the womb the earth. When we are self aware, we tend be in synchronous with this very voice. We tend to teach her,she tends to teach us. We learn,we grow we see and yes we sometimes see the future. That is something like listening to the intuition. Well I guess need not need to mention that self awareness also means and thus includes and thus is what is the general perception is that,it means ones strength, weakness and taste. In a nutshell, a realistic self perception.

Confidence also comes from one of its biggest ally,self love. I am not talking about naricissiom, which people tend to get confused with, but purely self love. That is to say, doing things that you love and are good for you and match your skills. Thus in a way,developing your USP. At this point someone would say,I love to see moives so what should I do,keep watching movies or what. Well the question is can you? Well from now on try watching the movies that you don't like and then tell me,how you feel? Become a movie critic for that matter? Well let me assure you you will have the worse time of the day if you only watch the movies for entertainment purpose and when you will have to do that as a profession. There is marked difference. Thus check your premises, most probably something is wrong.
Self love is not punishing yourself and doing things at the cost of yourself. How many times have you compromised on your career choice just because of some obscure reason like family and stuff? I am not talking about compromises where you give up Berger for aloo tikki just because your girlfriend wants to eat aloo tikki. I am talking about specific life and career goals. When you compromise on that level,I can assure you disaster awaits you as well as your loved ones for whom you compromised.
The point is fear can be removed and confidence brought in,and yes that dos require hard work.

Rest is up to you.
Hope things be good and you achieve what you want.
Amen

MOVIE REVIEW: AUGUST RUSH

Many a times life's moment have ignited curiousity amongst us, but its only a few times when our passion was ignited. "August Rush" happens to be that two hour phenomenon.

Little did I know that this movie would have had that profound effect on me when I first watched it yesterday night after getting a copy of the movie. Excellent is the name I shall give.

Ok first, the a little briefing of the movie.
Evan Taylor or should I say August Rush(played by freddie Highmore), is a orphan. Rest of the boys in the orphanage call him a freak, why because he thinks he can listen to music,he can listen to his parents and that is what connects him to them. They bully him, taunt him, but he never gives up his faith in music.

So one day he he follows the music,leaves his orphanage in search of his parents. He believes music will take him to them and he lands up in the main city of New York. There starts his adventure and his tryst with music. He is discovered to be a child prodigy by first a street man,called wizard(played by Robbin Williams), who makes alot of money using his talent. Later he lands up in the Julliard school of Music where his talent is cared and honed.

Mean while his parents, who actually had met each other during their teenage days, are both musicians. His mother Lyla Novacek(played by the gracious Keri Russell) is a cellist and his father Louis Connelly(played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is a club singer and guitarist at the local bar. Both are great lovers of music. One day they meet at a party where they end up spending the night together. Lyla's father, the next day takes her away and doesn't let the two unite. But Lyla gets pregnant, and one day she has an acident,and in the hospital the baby August is born. But when Lyla regains her consciiousness, her father lies to her that her son is dead, but in reality,he sends him to an orphanage. Lyla and Louis live separately and both give up music as they feel incompletele without eachother and so does their music. After 11 years,Lyla learns the truth from her dying father and goes in search for her son, ultimately its music that unites the three of them.

"The music is all around us,all we have to do is open ourselves and listen."

Such is the beauty of life,explained in its simplicity.The story very well told, the movie is a musical treat,and emotional journey told through the life of a young eleven year old.The direction and screen play was great. Hardly did I feel the movie had any mistakes. This is a movie that cannot be judged by mind,but by the virtue of your heart and intuition, maybe that is what is love. The only feeling that could describe you after you have watched this movie is contentment. Its been long that such a movie was made, which takes us in a long journey within ourselves,helps us find that softer side of ourselves,telling the brilliance of life in the simplest of words,leaving your destiny in the hands of the angels as you move in the journey with the young August for two hours in the movie.

Watch it, thats what I can say, sail through this ocean of emotions, for the words are not enough to describe,for sometimes,the best things in life are experienced, and learnt through the language of words.

The trumpet to the war has been blown

Ye finally the trumpet to the war has been blown. The war has begun and I have offically declared it against the enemy. Wait a minute, who is the war between and what for?

lol! Well the war is between me a nd and my sense of fear and insecurity that lurks inside me everytime. Ok I am confusing you even more.

the point of writing this post is purely selfish and a way to curb my one weakness through another.
Ye indeed. I wanted to be on my own for sure. Atleast if not my own then I should make an effort to get into a sector in which I preferably have an interest in.

Thus this is a post that signifies the giving up of my old self and embracing the new. Yes the new.
Since my the inception of the 2nd year I searched for ways and means to enhance my personal self and my personal interests. Infact to be more specific I was in search for the truth, finding what the real answers were to questions pertaining to life and living,career,sex,relationships,human nature,etc etc. Well now I am in the fourth year and most of these answers have been found and really I find alot of joy in now living in sync with the reality, and somewhere down the line, the trilogy of Matrix has a great role to play in i for whenever I saw the movies, I always felt some kind of a restless to answer many of those questions myself.

Amongst those questions and answers were those related to interests,passion,life,career and one's individual creativity and his special attributes that he is born with.Of all that I agree with PAulo Coelho,one of the most imminent ones is the fact that everyone is born with some talent inside him that moves in sync with his unconscious doing things like an automated robot,far more superior in the sense that it self programs itself everytime and does not require any instruction from everyone,even God for now God is already a part of him.
I did I find a few fields that I am passionate about,and one of them primarily being the art of writing.
Since the days of my childhood,I wrote alot of things. My poems and articles used to be published in school magazines,and I wrote and won in many essay competitions. SOmetimes I used to write my diary and I didn't know when I used to overflow and thus run into many pages where I had just scheduled a couple of pages to be written. But never the less this art could never be nurtured. This talent laid in the frying burn and it kept getting burnt and cooked in the labrinyth of destiny. My secondary schooling in an army school,played havoc in this regard. Though I would not actually like to blame the system for it,though it taught me alot of things like courage,valor, fighting and taking a stand,etc etc typical of the army life, yet I was never able to nurture this talent of mine there,for it was never valued in such an environment where a goal in the football game brought more cheers and recognition,or a parade performance brought more respect then academic things like doing well in the class and intellectuality.How this did make my overall personality,which I must admit I could not maintain post Sainik Scool life.
but a far greater degree of a problem to this non development of this art was that,unlike other creativity this filed had no formal grounf,atleast in India. Those who wrote books were too profoundly intellectual to be compared, and the art of creativity was limited to things like,painting,music,dramatics etc. Nevertheless,I had a ginger in each of these fields coz I enjoyed them all,but of course I never excelled exceptionally in these fields because I was never greatly talented in them.
Thus I always chose a main stream of a career and finally landed up in engineering. It wasn't that I was afraid to get a bullet on my chest in the army, the more imprtant thing was I felt caged in that kind of life, where like RGV's "Darna mana hai", the life in army,which I felt was like "sochna mana hai". And taking orders like a medicine was not my cup of tea. I was comfortably rebellious even in that strict environment,and have left enough marks for the school to remember.
Thus out of an effort to escape from the armed forces,out of an effort to escape from my father's idea of me pursuing a medicine course and lack of awareness of other lucratvie career options other than the ordinary graduation, I chose engineering. Never the lessI am atleast happy for the fact that I made a conscious choice back then,and it was far more a weighed option because at time the only advanced option that I considered was MBa,and in IIMs 90% people are from the engineering fraternity.
Well in pursuit of a life in that direction,I have finally did things that would propel me that way,one of them was alot of reading for english. Thus once again destiny was bringing me back to my own track.And once again,when I began to read,I got so invloved in the mysteries and intricacies of life that I forgot everything. I read alot,much more than my bulky engineering books would want me to.
And here I am. Amindst that journey of mine,when did this desire of mine become so strong that I wanted to be a writer,I don't know. When this passion for literature developed, I don't know.But for one thing I knew,my line of writing was much more better than English literature guys albeit minus its technicalities,like grammar,sentences etc,which I guess they were better.

So finally I have chosen. I am going to developa web 2.0 site,.a content based site and at the moent I have two books in mind. All these things require an effort,alot of effort indeed...and I really wanted to share this because I was frightened a bit, I too was feeling a little insecure,I too wanted a job and thus save myslelf from the pain of going on the road the road less travelled,whose future I did not know,but the present was certainly painful,and more painful is the begining,where everything is in a state of darkness not knowing where the road shall take me too,but never the less I have decided that I shall follow it and make my own fault.
The onlyb consolation prize that I have,is whenever I look back,I would not say that I could have done this, I could have done that,instead of living in the past later on,and living in the future now in the paradoxical sense that I shall do so and so in the future when I am comfortable and and secure, I chose to do it now. If life is not worth living now,then when??? And how am I to know whether I shall be success or failure in the time to come? The answer to all these is simple I do not know. And I can only know if I shall do it. I can only know if I shall put into practice what needs to be or ought to be done. I can only know the future if plan to make to one. But yes if I leave it to the heaven to guide me,then god knows when those people will fall asleep and I shall go astray for who knows,those up there in the heaven are usually old people who have died and gone p there,and old grandpas are prone to making alot of mistakes./
Thus its better that I trust my own intution and judgement and move on. Its better I believe in myself and make a decision,the decision maybe wrong, but yes even wrong decisions made by one ownself teaches you alot, because you are with it every step judging and weighing its pros and cons everytime.
Thus the trumpet has been blown. The war begun,no more shall I be lack lustre in my decisions and ways of life. Its easy to blog and write about ways of life and success and following the different path and all that stuff,the difficult part is actually implementing them with a strong vision in mind and a strong desire in the heart to make it happen.
Amen

Michael Phelps:The man who swam to the status of being a Legend

Seems like the the Beijing Olympics bug has indeed bitten me hard.First it was Abhinav Bindra that stunned the 1 biliion(now even more) strong nation,and now to stun the whole world is this 6 feet 4 inches man,with an arms span of 6ft 7 inches,a man with a hunger of that of a monster,is none other than Michael Phelps. With the Beijing Olympics running up, this man creates the legend of being the most successful olympian on earth with a total of 11 Gold medals in his kitty and maybe more in the recent times to come because there are still 3 more events that are due for his participation. Truly,Michael Phelps is the man of the moment.Close two him is Mark Spitz,with 9 Gold medals,but he his History and the last he participated was in Munich in 1972,while Michael has many more years to go,his age being only 23 yrs at the moment.
If you google a little you shall get the list of all his wins. Surely this man swims like a butterfly in the water. but whats more interesting apar from his grand success at the Olympics is his past,which is something I would like to share with you all.

Born oon June 30,1985 ,eveerything was said to be abnormal about this wonder kid,for which he did really have a very tough childhood.At the time of his birth he was 9 pounds,6 ounces and 223 inches. Almost one and a half times the normal kids.Michael was a freak since his childhood and demonstrated tremendous physical attributes while equally dull in academics. his teachers used to hate him.He was even taken to psychiatrist for a check up and he was diagnosed with ADHD(Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).His teachers complained he could not sit still,focus nor do well in academics and was always with Bs,Cs and Ds. he was also medicated with Ritalin, a drug to treat hyperactivity. He was 9 then. If that was not all, he grew like crazy with abnormal height and shape,with big arms and big ears. Surely, this seemes like a situation in the movie X-Men, where people were mutated to abnormality which was also actually their very strength,wait even more than that their super power.He was bullied by his friends in the school bus for this,and when he hit back and whacked one,he was suspended for a week from the school bus. His mother indeed had a tough time,and at that time she was enrolled in a course,was on the verge of divorce and had an abnormal kid.Wow, seriously, life is indeed stranger than fiction and of course even more thrilling.
But by 9, Michael was exposed to swimming,his sister almost made it to the swimming US national team but due to an injury she could not make it finally.Thus at 10,his swimming career started and he was already a national champion by then. Alot has to be contributed to his coach,Bob Bowman, who happens to still be his coach, who talked with his family and convinced them of Michael's super abilities.
Bby 15 he was at the Olympics,at 16 he had his first world record,and by 19,at the 2004 Olympics he had had his 8 medals,6 of them gold.

Michael once considered deformities prove to be his golden goose,his platform for success and his USP. LEt us have a more closer look at it:


THE MUTATED X-MAN:

Physical attributes:
6ft 4 inches tall
arms span:6ft 7 inches
His disproportionately long torso allows him to generate force from the body's core.Can shunt great volumes of water behind him,which allows him to save energy by using fewer strokes than others.

His amazing stamina is due to his unique physiological attributes. Under aerobic strain,he produces far less lactic acid than other atheletes. This acid,together with other metabolic products,interferes with a muscle contraction and leads into fatque.

After he set the 100m butterfly world record in 2003, Michael's blood lactate level was an absurdly low 5.6 millimoles/litre of blood,half or 1/3rd that of other top swimmers. He can also tolerate high levels of blood lactate and swim at full pace on levels that would make other athelets crawl.

Mental attributes:
Michael's mind is like a clock. He can go into the 200m butterfly knowing he needs to do first 50m in 24.6 to break the record and can put that time in his head and make his body do that 24.6 exactly.

Truly Michael is exceptional. And this characteristics of his has given him enough trouble in his childhood. Never the less due to his mother's love and his coaches guidance, he finally was able to chanellize his strength and achieve the victory which can only go on to make him a legend. In this days of nuclear weapon and automated weapons,it seems man's truest physcial and mental valour has been left in the sport's arena to be shown and indeed, Michael has shown what he is capable of.

His success also serves a lesson for all we normal homo sapians, that do not make fun of others, do not taunt and describe others absurdity as in a negative way. Especially the teachers,who ought to help the students in a certain way but instead they go after him like a witch who can only spit evil. these morons of the society need pay heed and look up to this man. So before you point your finger at some abnormal person that you think he might be, just remember he could be a mutated X-Man, and beware,for the day he unleashes his energy or his wrath,for the next would be a day in history either for the reasons of the holy or maybe evil.