Just Cuckoo

I just watched 'One flew over the cuckoo's nest' because it was one of the top movies on IMDB's list.

Straight out, I have absolutely no idea why it was rated so highly.

To me, the entire movie didn't just have anti-female undertones....it was as plain as the cap on Nurse Ratched's head that the writer was completely and utterly sexist. The book was apparently written in the 1960s, partly in reaction to the second wave of feminism.

There was, for instance, glorification of the McMurphy character. He was a fun-loving character who sometimes took an interest in other people: he tried to bring Chief out of his shell for one thing ( the extreme was forcing Billy to sleep with his girlfriend -or hooker friend, whatever she was- Candy as some sort of sick reward), but there was absolutely nothing to impress one about him. An ex-con who was sent to prison for assault('Rocky Marciano's got more fights and he's a millionaire') and statutory rape('she was 15 going on 35') and gives his reasons for being sent to prison as 'because i fight and fuck too much' does not possess characteristics that should impress any sensible man or woman today. How can a character who lied and pretended to be mad just to escape the work farms be seen as an honourable male, in any sense?

This whole movie just reeked of the 'men will/should be men' flavour. And how can they be(for the uninitiated)? Fighting, boozing, gambling and having sex indiscriminately apparently. Hear that, guys?

I'm not saying I liked the Nurse Ratched character either. She showed plenty of malice as well. It's just that her portrayal is obviously meant to show that women shouldn't be in charge. How dare they even attempt to be, right? She should have been trying to make herself look sexy, giggling and hanging on to men like the Candy character- and the other one, I forget her name.

That midnight scene was just astoundingly dumb. How can asking your girlfriend to sleep with another guy('you know he's cute'),  telling her 'I love you' and then slapping her butt go together in any sane guy's actions? Does she have no mind of her own or is she your property to be loaned out when required? Ohh that was enraging. I have a feeling McMurphy was actually mad. Why else did he go to sleep instead of calling Billy and Candy and scattering? Why did he have to stay in the ward at all? It didn't make sense how everyone just woke up the next day! I have a feeling that the writer just wanted a sad ending to show how terrible the ending for 'real men' is when there are women in power.

Those were two long hours of misogynism. There's a bitter aftertaste in my mouth, especially after I looked for reviews online and found this scum of a review. I couldn't believe such a site existed till I saw it.
Pshh.

Love that never fails

I was listening to the song 'Your love never fails' by Jesus Culture just now. And I was wondering about the lyrics. 'The sorrow lasts through the night but joy comes with the morning'. 'You make all things work together for my good'. And about 'You stay the same through the ages'. And I thought about how I've been struggling with the first two things: about how things of this world can make me forget God's love.

As a self-centred human, I often tend to define my 'good' as what I want from life. And I realise yet again what I so often forget, that anything I face doesn't mean that my eternal God's love has changed. Pain and sorrow have to be there so that life's joys can be realised and relished all the more. What's more, my life has been so sheltered that I don't realise what pain means. What I count as pain and what a tribal girl from a village in Bihar or Orissa counts as pain is definitely poles apart. Getting a good placement is nothing compared to starvation and the daily grind of earning enough in a day for food.
Perspective.That's all one needs from life, really.
And then the morning will come.

Lost

lost

all lost

a touch

one touch

a touch unthinking

uncaring for the moment

and it’s gone

all you dreamt would be yours

all you longed for

with your whole being

so much so that when it’s gone

you’re gone

your whole being filled with fire

now unquenchable

and unreachable

builds up inside

to the point where every single tiny little cell in your body resonates

with the need to let it out

to EXPLODE

into tiny little pieces

scattered all over your world

For my Appacha..

I've always thought my grandfather and I had a special relationship. I've been told I was with him in the car park at the hospital when Sana was born which is one of my earliest imagined vague memories. Vague, or imagined, as the case may be, it really doesn't matter. I loved him anyway. I‘m forgetting my own life at a really rapid rate, but I can remember many scenes from my childhood with him. I’ll never forget the ‘Silence Game’ that he played with us so seriously for so long which we never ever suspected wasn’t a bona fide game! He would sit on his chair in the verandah, the one on the left side and Sana and I would sit on the other two. I remember also (in the days before 2000) him riding the scooter out for errands and how we used to run to open the gate and come back on the scooter with him.  

I remember how wonderful he was after he lost his eyesight: how he never complained or whined about it, but took it with his trademark brand of humour and wit and had an unbroken and unshaken faith. I remember how he would sit and read the headlines as far as his limited eyesight would permit him, how he watched the news for hours together everyday and how both of them always consequently knew everything that was going on in the world. I remember him never failing to watch Munshi on Asianet at 6pm(or was it 7pm). I can remember watching parts of Malayalam movies with him where he still understood more of what was going on, without looking, than I did. I remember how he used to sit, with hands interlocked, head tilted down and eyes screwed up, concentrating on the dialogues and the way he used to laugh at a joke, the sudden bark of laughter. 

I remember how he used to put on the pump every day and listen for the water to fall from the overflow pipe and how he started delegating it to us: a special task. I remember how he used to tell us stories: about how he joined the army, how he bought the house, how he met Ammachi! His favourite saying was “Be content with what you have”. I remember how his dialogues could be really funny and surprising. I remember how he took stupid stands sometimes just to irritate Mama or Reji appa and went on arguing with them, sometimes with hilarious results, with everyone getting quite agitated! And then there was his ‘Tapatha thithips’ , samosas and buns...there's such a flood of memories!

Life won’t be quite the same without him in it.

And I'll try to continue to remember.

I love Economics classes! We've discussed Picasso's work, the Dark Knight, classical music concerts, conspiracies behind the depreciating rupee and  a hundred other things that seem very unrelated to our course on the face of it!

Anyway, so in one class, Sir made us do an exercise to see how many of us would donate to a common pool of money if we could use it anyway, whether we donated it or not. He was trying to demonstrate the need for paying taxes and the selfishness of free-riding individual consumers.

This throws up so many interesting questions! One such is whether, when a attendance is required for a particular function, an entire body of people can be trusted to attend or whether coercion and pressure to attend (if it leads to greater good) is justified. We have three hour sessions everyday! 

The right of it

I love this! It's exactly what I'd love to tell some people sometimes.
But then of course that would mean that they'd just quote it right back to me.
So does that mean no one should ever quote it to anyone else?
Confusing thing.
Maybe an outsider should quote it to everyone!
But then the outsider might be wrong in believing his statement is not wrong.
Grrr...Philosophy!

Anyway, I'll try to find a moral of the story: keep Snoopy's last statement in mind during arguments or discussions(especially theological ones!).

Unless you're right.
;)

White fluorescent strips shine down

Everywhere,one sees lines and light

And all the time, voices raised

Blending in the cacophony

Of a place which pays one to stay

And where one stays just to pay

One’s rent and food and bills.

I huddle in my green stole

All so cold..
Think I've caught the chills.