Story of our lives

This a story of which must have been experienced by most of my friends out there.

Boy meets girl.
Boy likes girl.
Boy speaks a lot to the girl.
Boy feels girl is taking interest.
Boy asks girl out.
Girl says "No, lets just remain friends."
Boy is in a boiling rage and feels he just received the biggest FU of his life.

There might be some differences to the above but this what usually happens when most of us.And life can become quite disturbing after it with all the awkwardness in the air whenever you face her after that.

I have been through those same phases in my life but I got through them.But I agree it would have been quite impossible if my family and friends were not there for me. And it has made me realize, that the person that you should be with is not the one that you like but is actually quite the opposite of that. It should be the one who cares about you.

A re-imagined climax of Harry Potter

Now we all know that the last part of Harry Potter was,well,pretty much of a disappointment, at least for me. Well I saw the movie again recently and I am not kidding I had a dream which I am gonna narrate to you.

My dream begins when Harry first goes to face Voldemort after discovering that he pretty much was a "Bali ka Bakra". So he goes there and the whole Avada Kedavra shit happens. Both Voldemort and Harry faint. Now this is where the climax deviated for me in the dream. Voldemort asks Hagrid to check for harry's vitals (again this was a dream so I dont why he does that) Hagrid realizes that Harry is still very much alive. So Hagrid lies believing that now those Death Eaters would leave them alone.But they celebrating and in comes the Crucio spell towards Harry that paralyzes his limbs. Hagrid then runs away with Harry's body. Half of the death eaters chase him while the others go with Voldemort towards Hogwarts to pretty much destroy everything over there.

Hagrid finally manages to thwart his chasers and uses his skills in mechanical engineering(again it was a dream) to develop robotic limbs and then attaches it to him with a cool helmet and a face mask. So Harry starts looking like Darth Vader ( he even shouts the infamous "NOOO" when he discovers this!).Meanwhile Nevile has become General of all the students and teachers present in the castle of Hogwarts and slices of Nagini's head. Enraged Voldemort goes on a killing spree. He finally faces Neville who tries to kill him but misses the opportunity when the Gryffindor sword misses Voldemort's neck by inches but hits the Elder wand in Voldemort's hand breaking it.The sword slips from Nevile's hands and falls on the ground. Seeing this, Neville skedaddles away from the spot and Voldemort gets the sword.

Hagrid then reveals to Harry the location of the mythical sword of Excalibur. Said to be the toughest sword ever created, Harry goes to retrieve the sword, obtains it and heads straight towards Hogwarts.

After that many limbs are cut, body parts dismembered, heads rolling around here and there until finally Harry faces off with Voldemort (now this is the part where I really got excited coz Voldemort faces with Harry but he looks like Darth Vader so its actually Voldemort vs Darth Vader!!)

So after some trash talking from both the sides, the action begins. And in true Star Wars style we have sparks, full on swings, collisions of both the swords at each and every moment of the duel.Spectators staring at the whole spectacle unveiling in front of them with their eyes wide open and their jaws down on the ground.

Ultimately, Harry slices Voldemort's head off his torso while the rest of his body just blows off like a super nova.

19 years later, Ron is shown to be owning a franchise of stores that specialises in selling super-brooms (which is just like a normal broom but with super magic given it so it goes faster!). Hermione opens a chain of fashion stores and marries Ron and Harry, well, Harry's robotic limbs stop working so he is now restricted on a wheel chair but then he pretty much becomes the Stephen Hawking of the Magic world(he even gets magical equivalent of what Stephen Hawking owns to communicate) so good for Harry.

And after reading all this, you thought "What the hell was that?" I qoute Nelly over here "It was only just a Dream".

Close Encounters of the Third kind..

We have all heard of the classic Steven Spielberg movie Close Encounter of the Third Kind.It showed the way in which members of an Alien species contacts with the members of the Human Race. But what if all that happened in real.What if aliens actually made an attempt to contact us??

Since a millennium, We (Mankind) have always wondered whether we are alone in this universe. I think we are not. The possibilities and mathematics and statistics might have a different story to tell but then if life can blossom on our planet, why is it not possible that it may on another planet? After all, we are not even sure that life that has evolved on our beloved planet is actually native to it.

Yes friends, we might be aliens ourselves on our own planet. There is a prevalent hypothesis in the scientific community of "Panspermia". Panspermia is made up of two Greek words Pan meaning all and sperma which means seed. So literal translation of the word would be All Seed. Basically what this hypothesis states, is that life as we know it might not have necessarily evolved on our own planet. Millions of years ago when our planet was in the ending stages of its formation, hundreds of thousands of space matter like asteriods, comets and planetoids crashed into Earth. Panspermia proposes that life can survive the conditions of outer space like bacteria trapped in debris. This debris would then have crashed into our planet thus giving rise to life on our planet.

But then a question arises, if life didnt begin on our planet then where did it begin? I am afraid we still dont know the answer to that question, however, what I do know is that if we ever make contact with any alien species in the future, it may be possible that humans and that species would sort off be related. Again, this is merely just what I think but it could be true.

Anyways, Hollywood's fascination of Aliens landing on Earth and causing mayhem may not be true. I mean if they were to travel such a huge distance to contact us why would they want to conquer our world? But then looking back at the history of human kind itself, I become a bit cautious. We have instances where the Spanish and the Portuguese journeyed across the Atlantic not to understand the ways of the new civilizations that they may encounter there but for the resources that they would find there which was basically Gold and Silver.

Also even if the aliens do come in peace, we can never say that us Humans would be in favor of that as well because it all depends on the person who interacts with the aliens. A person who would then effectively become the representative of the whole human race.I say this because the heads of our governments of the countries of our planet clearly wont be qualified to do that because at that moment they would be having an ulterior motive as well. They would like to use the opportunity to press forward their own country's agenda and thus there is a need to decide who will represent us. Would it be the person who heads the United Nations or would it be someone else??It depends on us.The entire human race. Because a single person could usher in a millennium of Peace, Friendship and Co-operation or spell the utter destruction of any one of the two species or even both.

Moral Ambiguity

What is Morality?

It is basically a code of conduct that is put forward by a society when someone has to do something right. Basically it helps us in taking right decisions when we are faced with such opportunities.

But by this age, we are all mature enough to know that the whole world is not exactly Black and White and many things are situated in place that is often dubbed as the "grey" area.

There are many decisions in our life that fall in this region and it is how we tackle those decisions that makes us what we are and how we are perceived in the society.

Now a classic example of moral ambiguity can be the Nanavati court case of 1959.Most you must have heard about this case recently in News channel debates when the verdict on the gruesome murder case of Neeraj Grover was given which made headlines when one of the lead accused Maria Susairaj was found not guilty of killing Neeraj Grover. This case was compared to the Nanavati one because of the Crime of Passion theme that both had followed but my interest in the Nanavati case lies not because of the crime that was committed but the moral ambiguity that followed it.

What happened in the Nanavati case was that KM Nanavati who was a naval commander murdered his friend, Prem Ahuja who was his wife's lover. The background of the case was that as Nanavati was a Naval Officer who was away from his home for long periods of time due to his assignments. This left his wife lonely and she eventually fell in love with his friend Prem Ahuja. Now this love had grown to such an extent that Nanavati's wife was ready to give divorce to her husband and then go and marry Ahuja. One day, when Nanavati returned back from one of his assignments, his wife confessed to him about the affair because she now doubted her lover's intentions of marrying her once she gave divorce to her husband. Naturally this came as a shock to Nanavati and he dropped his wife and kids in a cinema hall and went straight to his friend's place along with his pistol which he took on false pretext from the naval yard. When Nanavati reached Ahuja's residence, he confronted his friend on whether if he, Nanavati, gives divorce to his wife, will he marry her and accept his children into his household. After Ahuja replied in the negative, Nanavati shot three rounds from his pistol and Ahuja dropped dead. After this, Nanavati went straight to his superiors, confessed to the crime and surrendered himself to the DCP of Mumbai.

For those who interested in every aspect of this case the wikipedia link is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KM_Nanavati_v_State_of_Maharashtra.

As we can see here, we are faced with a real dilemma. Legally, this case might have a different tone and I am saying this because I am not a lawyer or a judge. But to normal person, he obviously faces a dilemma. On one side is the accused husband who is ready to give up his own married life so that his wife can lead a happy life with his lover.On the other side, the victim is basically a playboy who stabs in the back of his friend whenever he goes out of his home by going out with his wife. I know what you are thinking right now. You are obviously in a dilemma. The husband is ready to sacrifice anything for the happiness of his wife but he shot down his friend.But that very same friend has betrayed him but he died and that is not acceptable as well.

It is very difficult to decide what to do over here. And that was what actually happened at that time. Ultimately because of all the media coverage, the jury voted in favour of Nanavati and he spent only three years in prison.

Moral Ambiguity has become a new rage in the circle of arts as well. We have many movies nowadays that deal with such themes. An example can be Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight which explores the theme of to what extent one should fall when one's nemesis follows no rules because if you follow your nemesis's methods, there is nothing that can differentiate you from your nemesis and on the other hand if you stand guard on what you are, you risk losing against your enemy.Another example that can be considered is the video game Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent where the protagonist Sam Fisher who works for the CIA must work as a double agent within a terrorist group and report to his superiors in CIA but he must also work for the terrorist group to maintain their trust in him. Often these objectives clash with each other and one must then choose a suitable option and move forward but the problem is that in each option you stand losing something. For example, at a particular level, the terrorist's decide to bomb a cruise ship in the middle of sea. Of the protagonist lets this happen, the CIA loses trust in him and 30,000 people die as a result of the explosion. On the other hand, if he stops the explosion, his cover within the terrorist group gets blown and the CIA would no longer receive any sort of valid intel from that group.

Moral Ambiguity thus is something which all of us would face at some point of time in our lives. It is at these moments when sometimes choosing a lesser evil can also be a very dangerous move.But why does this happen? It is because our code of conduct or morality still views everything from within the framwork of "Black and White".It is just too simple for a world that is as complex as ours.Viewing from the perspective of Chaos Theory, it is just a simple system that has been forced upon a complex one and when something like this happens terrible things are bound to happen.

Why did the Allies win the WW2 because it was made abundantly clear to everyone that the Nazis were the bad guys and they were needed to be weeded out before they caused anymore trouble. Today's situation is very different from what we had 70 years ago and thus a time has come to change the moral code of conduct which is more in accordance to today's life and not something that is very ancient. It should adhere to spirituality and not religion because spirituality does not always go hand in hand with religion. And why I believe that morality should adhere more to spirituality because it is through spirituality that we can connect with who we are and thus pass on a judgement that would be truly correct.

Review of Bodyguard

Bodyguard..
Well one thing that I have always admired about Salman Khan is his ability to entertain his audience. But unfortunately that's not enough.

In Bodyguard, Salman Khan plays the titular bodyguard. He defends celebrities and other people he is assigned to against their foes.After reading the above line, you may feel as if the movie is an out and out action flick but that's not true. Its basically a masala flick at its core and this becomes apparent tens minutes into the movie.

The Plot:-

The movie begins as a lot of Hindi movies nowadays begin, an item number. But these item numbers are basically title tracks which are used to introduce the main lead to us and to show us how that character's character basically is e.g. in Dabangg we had the track hud hud dabangg, Ready had Character Dheela, Singham had the title track Singham. Similarly Bodyguard has the title track Bodyguard whose tune is a bit catchy but the same cannot be said about the whole song. Anyways Salman Khan does a great job of entertaining us throughout the track and bringing out Katrina Kaif (in a special appearance) by the end of the track.

The movie begins basically with a damsel in distress situation although here the damsel doesn't know about her distress as of yet. Kareena Kapoor is the daughter of a powerful person(Raj Babbar) in a village called Jaisingh. Lovely Singh(Salman Khan) was taken under Raj Babbar's care during his childhood because of the death of his parents.He later becomes a Bodyguard and is ordered by Raj Babbar to guard his daughter because he fears for her life because of some actions that he had taken against a human trafficking gang. His daughter doesn't like this one bit and tries get to rid of Salman Khan. What happens is a series of mis-adventures which inevitably lead them to fall in love with each other although not in a way that you would imagine.

The problem with the movie is that although Salman Khan is at his best in entertaining us, the story itself feels a bit predictable. At times it feels so boring you just feel like leaving the cinema hall then and there itself. I also have a gripe against the ending of the movie. It feels pretty much forced onto the script and makes the movie drag on pointlessly for more than 10-15 minutes after the climax.

The Action:-

The action sequences in the movie were pretty good. Good but not believable as is the case with masala movies, yet they were entertaining.

The Music:-

The music was just okay. There was nothing particularly great about it except for maybe the title track.

The Performances:-

The performances by both Salman Khan and Kareena Kapoor were good especially Salman Khan who keeps us entertained throughout the movie.The acting of the rest of the cast was fine.

Final Verdict:-

All in all,Bodyguard is a movie that is watchable only because of the presence of Salman Khan.The story could've been much better and same goes for the screen play. All I can say is if you like movies like Dabangg you will most certainly enjoy this flick as well. If you don't, well my advice would be to stay away.

Amount of Stars given:-

**

I give this movie 2 stars out of 5.

Vacations

Its been a long while since I have posted something on this blog. To be frank, I had actually forgotten I had a blog until just recently when I was googling my own name on Google (admit it,at one point or the other in our lives, we all have googled ourselves to know how many web pages have our names on it). Anyways, since I have got so much time on my hands I decided why not start blogging again. So here is in short what all has happened in the two years since I have posted over here
1. Graduated from Engg with First Class ( Yes!!!)

2. Got placed in a nice company

3. Enjoying my vacations as I have not received my joining date yet.

Now we all love vacations. We get to do a lot of stuff in them. We can do whatever we like. Sleep till whatever time we want. Eat all the good stuff and hangout with your friends for hours at a stretch.

What I dont like is the awful amount of vacations that I have got this time around.

Being a student of Engineering, I was used to those 15 -20 day vacations we used to get in between each semester. Now though the vacation seems to be stretching on and on with no end in sight.

Still I have my hobbies which I have been paying attention to. I read a significant amount of books. Mostly stuff related to games like Halo but some nice Fiction novels as well. I have also seen a great deal of movies both english and hindi, the most recent of which was Bodyguard.

Also I have finished a couple of nice computer games as well. Some of them were new but the rest was just a play through.

Anyways this was just a brief sketch what I have been doing till now.