Mysterious Skin

This is a movie based on the novel written by 'Scott Heim' based on child sexual abuse. The movie shows the causes and the effect of the child abuse. Two small kids were turned into gay's at their early ages by their base ball coach. Both the kids grow up with different remembrances of the incident which happens one night when they were molested together by their coach. The kids grew up differently, one almost forgets the incident and had believed that he was stuck by the aliens and the cause of the nose bleeding and the weird dreams is related to the UFO which he'd seen when he was young. The other kid turns into a hustler and remembers and infact cherishes the incident which is somehow ironic with the kinds of destroyed life he was living after moving to New York. Though both the kids were teammates in the game but they dint meet each other till the movie was about to come to an end. The one kid which turned into a hustler is Neil McCormick and the other one is Brian Lackey.

The movie starts with Brian Lackey stating the five hours of his life which he doesn't remember when he was eight years old. The character is portrayed with big glasses on his eyes and shy and inward. He sees a Tv show where he sees this girl called Avalyn who claimed to be abducted by aliens and left a scar on her body which is believed by Brain to be a scar by those aliens. He visits this female religiously until one day when she drops by his house and does an act of which Brian was completely asexual. He stops meeting and starts avoiding the gal thereafter. But she is the one through which Brain tries to find out Neil and the story goes on... To his hard luck, when he goes to meet Neil at his house, he finds out that Neil just left for New York and here he meets neil's mother and a fren of Neil who likes different hair styles and make-up like girls. His name is Eric. Though he seems to be another gay but the movie doesn't show any of his sexual activity. He plays a supporting role and is attracted towards Neil's body.

Another character is Neil's soul-mate Wendy, who keeps warning Neil to play safe and at one point objectively observes, "Where normal people have a heart, Neil McCormick has a bottomless black hole." She, was at one point of time attracted towards Neil and the movie portrays that she loves Neil.

Neil's experiences in the movie are sad and harsh. In one of the scenes, while he is enjoying his act, is simultaneously providing the commentary on a local baseball game. After he learns about AIDS, he tried to turn away from the profession of prostitute and try his hands on fast food industry. His encounter with a dying AIDS victim is sad and tender. The victim says to Neil that " This is going to be the safest encounter you've ever had. If you could just rub my back. I really need to be touched". And then later on there is a brutal encounter with a guy who likes wild sex. He beats the crap out of Neil, leaves him bleeding on the road. This incident shakes Neil and he comes down home on Christmas Eve as promised to his Mom. And this is when he encounters with Brian, who thinks maybe he would help out since they were on the same Little League team, Neil might remember something helpful and fortunately he does remember the fateful night.

The movie comes to an end when both the character meets up and Neil narrates that night's incident to help out Brian. Sneaking into the house of their coach, they both sit down at the same place where the sordid incident happened on the fateful day of those summers when Brian was eight years old. Now both of them are in their teens, Brian just celebrated his 19th Birthday with Eric. He shouts and cries but Neil is helpless but tries to console Brian to a large extent and the movie comes to a full stop.

Mysterious Skin is a movie full of emotion. If seen in an analytical way, it portrays Neil to be born as a gay who in his early childhood was ignited by his coach leaving him to become a hustle in his teens and Brain who could not accept what happened to him leaving him turn into asexual. Anyhow, the movie is terrific. The 90 minutes of the movie is worth watching.

UNTITLED

Just sitting in my IPR class on that day, I was listening to what my teacher was saying but just one word flew my imaginations to some other world and I started writing something and that something is what I am going to write here now....

Search, search, search
Where are you hiding?
I am looking for you
It’s Dark now
Come back home dear
Don’t trouble me so much!
I hope a miracle happens
You come and sit beside me
Talking to me, you fall asleep
Dreaming about your destiny, smiling mysteriously
Looking at you, I keep wondering
Is it me you are seeing?

Curiosity makes me ill
Wandering mind remains still
Thinking and guessing the dream
My heart stops beating
Oh! Come back to life, you seem dead
Wake up and open your eyes
Let me know you are still alive
Don’t make me loose the confidence
Confidence in you and me
Let this miracle be the reality
For me to keep breathing

Waiting, waiting, waiting,
The time is flowing hastily
Wind providing me faulty intuitions
Giving me nauseated feeling
Don’t let my trepidation be true
Worsening the situations all through
Bestow me with the green signal
I pledge to be good to you
Forgiving me of all my misdeeds
Drive back and discover me
Unfasten the grudges you hold
Acknowledging me the way I was
Not everyone is born perfect, and so is me

I am waiting for the illusion to envelope me
Releasing me from the worldly woes
Segregating me from this pain
Making me optimistic of separation
While you have departed and lost
I am still searching and waiting for the last glance
For my lamented soul to be blessed peacefully!

thats all....

Happy Teacher's Day!!

5th September is the day for teachers. Today I am going to write about some incidents happened in the day. Started wishing my school days teachers through mail and they were glad to receive mails from me. I was kind of nostalgic when it came down to thinking about my school days, teachers day used to be celebrated with lot of fun. There used to be a small cultural program, the students used to become teachers and used to take classes on behalf of the teachers and the teachers used to act like students while few selected students imitated them in the classes. Those were the days my friend which are afresh in my mind even today.

In this university, there are no celebrations as such on teachers day but we tried our best to make this day a little special for our teachers by our own small ways we could do it with like wishing the teacher as soon as the teacher arrives in the class. There were some hilarious incidents too which happened in the day. When I wished one of my senior teachers, he replied me "Same to You". hee hee hee... the same was replied by another teacher later in the day when I'd wished him.

We requested the teachers not to teach us today and leave us but all these prays were paid no heed and the teacher went on teaching. When I wished my criminal honours teacher, he replied in his own stylish manner saying...sentiments attached to this day have no boundaries... hee hee... i think i did not understand as to why did the respected teacher stated such a comment. Later, we asked our IPR teacher to treat us with sweets. Its not that we dint ask other teachers but when we asked this teacher, surprisingly enough he asked two students to go and get sweets for the class and this is the distinctive thing which happened in the class today!!

The IPR class was really hilarious today with few of the guys trying to pretend that they are not understanding what the respective teacher was teaching in the class and infact i can say there was a mockery made out of the provisions discussed in the class.

Last class was the monthly test class for interpretation and with the failed efforts of getting it postponed, he took the books even novel from everyone and stated that the question framed in the exam is tricky and one is easy to make a mistake in it. Though I wrote the exam, I am not sure what i have written in it because I had to rush to the city for work.

Evening was marked with me cooking pakodas for myself and friends and they were yummy.....ahhh thts how i celebrated this day today... cheers!!!

Train to Pakistan!!

Train to Pakistan.. a celebrated novel by Khushwant Singh, which has been translated into many other foreign languages and is accepted as one of the classics of modern Indian fiction. The bold novel recites a tale of Blood and the ill-fate of the partition which took place in 1947 when India got independence. The book when published was titled as 'Mano Majra' but is now known as 'Train to Pakistan'

The story revolves around a small village called Mano Majra where there are only three prominent buildings, A Gurudwara (a sikh temple), a mosque and a home of the moneylender Lala Ram Lal. The characters in the novel are described by the Author in beautiful way. Lets talk about each one of them individually and the story related to them.

Staring with Lala Ram Lal, in the novel, he doesn't have a specific role because he is killed in the first half of the story but the author has tried to keep him alive by revolving the other characters around it. He was a big moneylender of the town who is killed by Malli (the badmash from the other own) and his group people because they wanted money and they loot the house of this moneylonder and go away.

Malli, a badmash from the other town round the village is a rival of another badmash of this village called Juggut Singh, whose family is the family of dacoits. Malli singh kills Lala Ram and the blame comes down on Juggut Singh because he was the renowned badmash in the locality who was barred from going out of the village area after dark. But on the fateful day of the killing, Jugga was with the girl(Nooran, daughter of Imam Baksh) whom he loved and because they heard the fires from the gun that they came back to village. but to his bad luck, the people have already reached his house to check upon his presence but because he wasnt there, the villagers believed that it would be him who committed the murder. Though some villagers were of the view that he could not have killed the man of his own village but their belief did not make much of difference. He went absconding but was caught by the Police after he came back to relax in his house in the dark. He then was taken to the jail where he had to spend his time for a long period with another guy who was arrested by the police on the same charges of killing the moneylender.

Before proceeding further, let us throw some light on the other characters in the novel, Meet Bhai Singh is the care taker of the Gurudwara and he preaches the words of Granth to people. He is a sensible man and believed in his God till the end. Then there is Imam Baksh, who is half blind due to his cataract but he is the caretaker of the Mosque. basically in this village the mullas were the tenants of sikhs.

Another interestung charcater is Hukkam Chand who is the magistrate and plays an important role in letting the train reach pakistan which contained the musalmans of Mano Majra in it. He has a distingushed character in the whole book. Though he wants to make love to a girl who might be his daughter's age but he cannot come over the guilt feeling he has when he thinks of doing it. he can be called a corrupt officer because he orders arrest warrants for innocent people and releases the guilty ones inspite of knowing the truth. He tortures the accused but one can come to the conclusion that he palnned things in an opposite manner which was directed somehow for the good of all the people of that village.

The other character is Iqbal who is basically a cut surd and a social worker sent to the village by People's Party of India to take the situation under control by imparting ideas and values in the minds of the sikhs. however, to his bad luck, he gets arrested by the police on the charges of Muder of Ram Lal even though he landed in the town a day after the killing took place. At the early stages of his arrival, he refuses to accept any religion as such but the situations make him accept that he was a sikh and his name was Iqbal Singh and not Mohammed Iqbal as claimed by the sub-inspector whose name in the book, i guess is not mentioned.

now coming down to the main story, the author is describing as to how the minds of the individuals who till yesterday were addressing the fellow muslims in the town as their own, were changed to go against those fellow members itself just because in other part of the world, their cast people were murdered by this cast people. It starts with the murder of the moneylender of the town who was a hindu, people started suspecting Juggut Singh who is a Sikh. The police arrest him to make a case against him which might be true or might not be true but because he is the badmash in the town, he was arrested. A day after the murder, Iqbal Singh comes to the town to maintain peace but his ideas are drowned due to his unexpected arrest by the police with the charge of murder. the police insipte of knowing that he is a Sikh, fills the chargesheet with the name Mohammad Iqbal instead of Iqbal Singh. The Trains stopped passing from the town on the right time it used to or more late than the usual time to get late. The daily routines of the people at Mamo Majra got effected but nothing really bothered. The magistrate comes to the town to have his wishes fulfilled but this visit turns to be a disaster with the partition taking place, the law and order of the town goes out of hand. The trains started coming with corpses instead of living people in it, the magistrate and other people associated with it, tried to hide the fact to avoid any kind of commutation in the village but the villagers used to climb on their houses and peep in the far fletched area to see what is happening. the fact that the lambardar was asked to collect the woods and the kerosene which can be spared by the families in the town made the people believe after some point of time that there are dead bodies which have to be cremated. but with the break of monsoon in the town, the cremation became a tough task so they started burring the bodies after digging the ground and pilling up the bodies one on the other. meanwhile, juggut and iqbal are in the jail unaware of anything of this sort happening outside. the police catches Malli and his associates for the murder of the moneylender but they were left in front of the villagers and the police tried to fool the villagers by asking about Sultana who was a Muslim Badmash but had already left the town with the other members of his society. Meet Bhai singh tried his best to control the situation but nothing was in his hand, he was just a preacher and not the authority. Hukkum Chand has different plans everytime an arrest is made for the purpose of the murder.

Later due to lot of trouble anticipated, the muslims of the area were asked to leave the town so that their lives can be saved but who knew that their own people who were swearing to take care of their houses in their absence will turn violent against them after an instigation by a stranger who challenged the manhood of these sikhs. This is when Juggut Singh and Iqbal are released from the jail and then juggut singh learns the departure of her love who is carrying a 2 months baby in her womb and was first turned down by the mother of this badmash. thereafter, juggut singh decides to save this train passing by which had his love and other members of their society on board by ruining the plans of the stranger. He lost his life but dint not let the train stop for the massacre to happen. it is disheartening to mention that the train which passed by earlier containing dead corpses was marked as 'Gift for Pakistan' and here we could see a Hindu saving a life of hundreds of the muslims.

Even though in those times when the country was getting divided, there were people in the various parts of the country who were like Juggut Singh who, just to protect the lives of their countrymen parting from them, laid its life to save theirs. This is what India is known for but why do people like that young stranger poisons the minds.... The consequences are grave which cant be healed in decades to come... the people are ripped of their own dignity and no one knows who started this whether it was Hindu's or Muslims... but there were victims irrespective of the cast!!!

That Thing Called Love!!!

That thing called LOVE.. this is a novel by Tuhin A Sinha, apparently this is his first novel which basically explores the relationships in the contemporary, urban set up of Mumbai. I somehow do not agree with the caption as featured. The novel is not only about the life at Mumbai and the relationships shared by the couples coming all over India to live in that city but its could be said that the novel talks about unwanted circumstances which makes a life of an individual hell even though the so called thing 'love' tries to creep in which subsequently is the sole reason for the devastating end of the novel. When I started reading the novel it more or less seemed to be almost like the movie 'metro' but i can now safely conclude that it isnt that similar with the author tried to use such circumstances in the novel that would simply happen in an on going life.

There are two characters around whom the novel is circled. Its Revathi, the married female who was happily living her married life before meeting up this guy "Mayank". This guy has apparently fallen in love with the married woman and she inspite of having gut feeling that there is something a miss in the relationship shared between the two, never really bothered about it until one day when her chauffeur commented on not liking mayank because he thought that mayank just wants to have physical proximity with revathi. This fact somehow did not appealed her but she spoke about this with her husband and that is when the real problem starts in the married life of Revathi. Mayank would insist on talking to revathi late at night as she is free by that time from all her household works and everything and he would intentionally intrude in her personal life by asking her questions which despised her husband and made him not trust her loving wife whom he has proposed 10 years back. The love story of revathi and pranav (husband of revathi) is another part of the novel which describes as to how Pranav who was basically a lecturer had proposed revathi (student at that time) when she'd started working in Mumbai on the offer proposed to her by Pranav. Anyhow, the indulgence of Mayank in the personal life of Revathi made her married life suck as her husband would always caution her to be more careful about her hang outs with mayank and that he doesnt like the company of mayank with revathi.

[Revathi and Mayank were business partners and it is on some deal to save his business, that these two creatures came across each other and the meeting of Mayank with Revathi made mayank resurface his first love and he concluded that revathi is similar to Shweta (his first love whom he could not get married due to condition put by her father with regard to his earnings) and that he would want to marry her and not Rewa(he got engaged to Rewa because his parents wanted him to get married to him as he was unable to find a better prospect for himself inspite of him working in the website based company thematchmaker.com]

Anyways, the other part of the novel invloves two friends of mayank, viz Vishal and Anil, whose married life was also described by the author quite diligently. the problems surfaced in their married life was narrated constantly in the novel. The relationship of Anil was on the verge of break up but was saved as Rupali (Anil's Wife) tried to commit suicide because she was not able to explain her position to her husband. The sad part of the Anil's married life was that he had married a gal who was not able to come over her ex boyfriend whom she adored and was in love to a great extent and because she was spotted with him at one time when she has lied to her husband about a night out work at office, which created troubles in their relationship. But divine intervention saved them from any damage to their married life.

About Vishal, his ending was like one of those saying's that 'not every love story has an happy ending'. He actually was a male chauvinist who derived a strange kick out of cheating on his wife but he realised his mistake at some point of time and left that chauvinism and had started to be like a good husband. This was also because her wife had finally got pregnant and both of them were looking forward for their child. the twist comes in the life of Vishal when he surfaces the fact that the receptionist of his office 'Tina' with whom he had made love at one point of time confronted in him of the fact that she was pregnant. To his surprise, he came to know that she was a call girl but at this time she wanted help from Vishal to get herself aborted. Though Vishal was reluctant but he gave in and took her to a hospital where she could get her abortion done. What ruined the married life of Vishal and Gargi (Vishal's Wife) was the SMS sent by tina which was a thankful note to Vishal for getting her abortion done. Gargi misunderstood the SMS and without listening to any explanations, left Vishal and went away, putting their married life to an end by getting the abortion done on her too. [ :(]

Now coming back to main characters of the Novel, Revathi and Mayank. Revathi was proposed by mayank when she went to put her relationship to an complete end and this meeting was supposedly her last meeting as advised by Pranav. But the meeting turned out to be the reason of the end of the relation between Revathi and Pranav. The another reason behind their break up was another character in the novel 'Sonal' who had a huge crush on Pranav at one point of time and then they had parted ways as she married someone and went abroad but lately came back to India and in wake of getting in contact with her old friends, she contacted Pranav and tricked him to start a business with her which was agreed by Pranav.

The recital of the meeting where mayank proposed revathi devastated Pranav and with subsequent circumstances made revathi leave the house and stay alone somewhere with her small girl child "Ria'. this breakup between the two, made the Mayank to indulge in her life way beyond too much which her daughter had started disliking for her own personal reasons. But later neither Mayank and Revathi could land up together but even Revathi and Pranav got divorced.

After 2 years when Revathi decided to meet Mayank out of curiosity, it was a wrong timing as he had just got married to 'Sonia' in the court and after a small meeting which ended awkwardly, made Mayank wish that he would have never met Revathi and this was heard by Revathi who couldnt take this anymore and left from there without taking her cell which she forgot in his house.

The Novel is a good attempt at defining relations which can get so complex at times taking unexpected turns and creating a total chaos. Revathi's life is the symbol of married women's dilemma i.e. the problem faced by her when such obsessive lover comes out of blue to ruin their life completely. This is another saga of the times to come.....