This Week’s Random Musings

While watching the movie Up earlier this week I got all choked up. I do occasionally cry over a movie or a book or song (Yes, I’m sloppy), but there was something about this movie that is just on a different wavelength. The story of Carl and Ellie is short and sweet. It’s simple. Yet it is unique. It’s about love. Love is such a universal concept. Just like music, where there will always be scope for new tunes and rhythms to be orchestrated, there will always be room for new stories of love to be concocted. No matter how far-fetched or surreal or flashy they seem. Or even art for that matter, someone somewhere will always excel than its predecessors by differentiating himself with that one stroke of paint taking him to new heights of public marvel. Just like that love will never be outdated, which brings me back to the wonderful movie I mentioned above. It speaks of hope and promise. They weaved such a beautifully engaging story around two people who as kids shared a common adventurous dream of visiting a place called Paradise Falls. Overtime their friendship blossomed into something deeper. We are taken through an appealing montage of their life together, where they deal with testing situations. They have dreams just like everyone else but they are quashed. Be it having a child or setting foot on Paradise Falls. They come to terms with it in their own way, but never leave each other. Through thick and thin they are always by each other’s side. It isn’t an epic saga of love or a passionate romance-just an undecorated story about two regular people that still manages to speak volumes. Why is it then that it strikes a chord with us? Why is it that it tugs our heart strings? It’s because of its utter simplicity. Details that map out an entire lifetime spent together. The clumsiness that they disclose as kids, the way they visualize their aspirations together under the sky, how they support each other through distress, how they save money in order to reach their destination, how they grow old adoring each other. Little things-it’s always the little things. The fact that for Carl, a promise he made to his beloved ever since they met still held so much meaning that he airlifts his entire house with helium balloons and steers it towards their shared pipe dream even after she passes away, is why I love this movie. The fact that every single time their savings for Paradise Falls are spent over some unplanned expense doesn’t deter them from saving again and not giving up is why I love this movie. The fact that Ellie kisses him like it’s the first time every single day till the hair on their heads turn grey is why I love this movie. The fact that Carl stands by her when she’s in pain is why I love this movie. It’s so incomprehensible to imagine a life without love. Sometimes it doesn’t make a difference as to what you are, what you do, where you stand, or what you own, its inconsequential when it comes to being loved. Maybe to people like Ellie, a life lived with someone like Carl was an adventure in itself that could never compare to a fantastical voyage. It wouldn’t have mattered to her that she could never go to that place she wanted to go to as a kid, because she got something much more fulfilling. So what if they could never achieve some of the things that meant a lot to them? They meant the world to each other and their words held true assurance to both of them. And finally, the story’s sharp contrast from our grim reality is why I love this movie. That is what made me cry. The fact that love these days remains only a word spoken too often but means very little made me cry. Something as beautiful as the emotion of love being confined to only a movie or book is what saddened me. Two animated characters emoting what we are seemingly incapable of now.

The Wanderer

Just a little while I promise I’ll stay,

Let me catch my breath, let it grow steady,

I won’t cause any more pain to you,

All I ask for is a moment or two,

I keep running, that’s all I know,

From things I can’t speak about,

From things I hide from you,

Sometimes life is such a torment,

With a fake countenance on display,

So I long to run into someone,

And forget my anguish for a minute or two,

I want to lose myself in you,

This is just an obsession, a cycle that repeats,

When I’m done with you, I promise to leave,

Till I find something else to fascinate me,

Keep me occupied, away from him and all things vile,

I laugh with the day and make merry till it dies,

They think, oh, she’s like the sun, always on fire,

I’ve placed all my sentiments on the pyre,

Ignorance and ego, we go hand in hand,

But I’m not all wrong; no,

I’ve got some things in me you wish you had,

But you can’t see them, try as you may,

The world is devoid of patience and time is slipping away,

So I keep drifting to unknown faces,

Taking in sights and surreal places,

I’m a wanderer in this age,

Searching for something I know I’ll never find,

But I don’t want to understand,

Now my heartbeat’s uniform, my head feels a bit secure,

I must go; my jaded spirit’s quenched for now,

My unstable soul needs to leave,

And pursue some other avenue,

Don’t judge me, don’t you dare,

Everyone’s got their evils to share,

All your mighty words and your deceptive eyes,

A poor smokescreen.

The End.

The End

So here we were a few days ago, thinking that the world was going to end (most of us were). The

Mayans made a prediction ages ago, which we upheld & actually thought of something akin to the movie we all must have seen i.e. 2012. We thought of the sky falling on our heads, the ground shaking beneath our feet, all the four elements of Nature- Earth, Air, Fire and Water wreaking havoc on our poor souls. For years different theories have been propounded by scientists, clerics and people (with no jobs I might add), as to how the world will end. An asteroid landing unceremoniously on our beloved planet, followed by all forms of natural calamities that one can think of and the Ice Age catastrophe, or other interesting theories included a virus outbreak that would annihilate us and wipe out our existence from the face of the Earth and my personal favorite- the Zombie Apocalypse (I absolutely love The Walking Dead!).  A thought struck me this morning when I accidentally glanced at the front page of my newspaper, maybe we shouldn't keep waiting for something like the above mentioned things to happen, maybe we shouldn't hold our breaths for a major event that will be earth-shattering (literally), because we don’t need these things to hasten our end. Maybe that’s not how everything is supposed to end. We are so engrossed in these different concoctions about the end of the world that we fail to see that we are already on the path of our destruction. We don’t need ghastly epidemics or Nature’s fury to finish it all, we are quite capable of doing that on our own, evenhandedly.  This is how it is supposed to conclude. Our race is destined to die destroying each other. We will fight, steal, kill, attack, rape, tear each other’s throats out and do other unspeakable things to each other hiding behind a hollow shield of religion, politics, war, greed, lust, administration, law & order, etc. which we will use as an excuse to justify our behavior, and that is how we will die. We are bound to be terminated at the hands of our own evils and we’re already doing that with aplomb. Our line will go down clawing each other’s life out. And the worst thing is we don’t care. What is drawing public ire will soon turn to just another headline as we reach the end of the year. It will be replaced by other innumerable horrendous and heinous acts year after year. We will again follow the charade of acting as we care for a little while then go back to our mundane lives with dexterity. The joke that we now know as democracy will go on changing its meaning by milking people out of its patience. Eventually one day when there’s no trace of hope left, when there’s no further room for progressive reform, when justice remains a mere word from some long lost time, just like characters in a book you hope to meet in real life but we all know that’s never going to happen, then the world will end. As we lose our humanity with each passing day, we still fail to grasp the true meaning of The Apocalypse. One day we will be completely stripped of our compassion and we will go back to that stage of evolution when we were living like cavemen, devoid of civilization and humanity. Hunting, scavenging, and surviving. Regressing to that point from which we began.