Life's Onward Journey...

In a land far, far away, there is this place where you can reach only after climbing up and down a couple of mountains. The valley with flowers down its slope. As the cool breeze caresses you, it brings with it a mixed scent of flowers and moist air. The best way to feel it is with your eyelids shut. You'll feel the warmth of the winter sun on your toes and hear the  sound of birds chirping somewhere, not too near yet not so far. With no hint of human civilization, this is the place I want to be. I have been thinking about what this dream could mean, since a long time. It is special because this is the first time I have had a recurring dream which has some kind of happiness and a pleasant feeling attached to it. Compared to constantly dreaming of failing in exams, missing a train or a flight, a fire or an earthquake, this current one is a welcome change. All the 5 or 6 times that I have dreamt about this place, there have been small variations. The first couple of times I w...

The good news is that both Imran Khan and Katrina Kaif now have 3 and a half expressions compared to a poor 1 and a half at the start of their film careers; and they look great together. That the director has tried to cash on their cuteness-quotient and the eternal monument of love, the Taj Mahal, is very apparent throughout the movie. But apart from some nonsensical sequences and some unpleasant-while-they-last-and-forgettable songs, the movie still manages to entertain and leave a pleasant after taste.  Dimple, a london-born, bidi smoking, law-breaking, 'wild' ex-DU (Delhi Univ.) student succumbs to family pressure and agrees to go for a conventional arranged marriage. During the groom-hunting process she bumps into Kush, a sau-pratishat good boy who neither smokes nor drinks and also believes in family values, who is looking for a dulhan for his settled-in-london brother, Luv. They remember meeting briefly during their DU days when Dimple was a rebel and a rockstar. To be...

It has been a long time since I reviewed a movie. Two movies I really want to write about some day are Dhobi Ghat and Band Baaja Baraat, the only two movies that have impressed me in recent times. But for now I will stick to Bol. Even though I tried my best not to compare Bol to Khuda Ke Liye , I didn't succeed. There are several commonalities between both these movies and the major one is that both aim at unveiling the evils persisting in the Islamic society. The saddest part is that all this is claimed to be done in the name of God. Even though the story is of a Muslim family in Pakistan, I think the issue is beyond a specific community, language, state or a country. We have our own shame list comprising of female infanticides, khap panchayats, honor killings and many more. The main protagonist of Bol is Zainab who has been sentenced to death because she killed her father. She is granted her last wish of telling her story to the world before being execute...