Taking Life...

The other day I heard about a friend's teammate at work committing suicide. I had never met the lady who had died, but it started a whole gamut of thoughts in my mind. Why does someone really commit suicide? What is it that pushes someone over the edge? We keep hearing that we value our life the most, then why do we end it with our own hands? And above all, does killing ourselves really solve the problem that we have been trying to face in the first place?

I remember I had always been opposed to the idea of committing suicide .. right from my college days. I used to have heated debates with my room-mates and friends in hostel over it. In those days I used to argue that committing suicide is the highest form of selfishness, where the person thinks only about himself/herself and not about anyone else! With time, that notion has changed .. I have understood that one is responsible only to oneself for his/her own actions and not to anyone else. But then, shouldn't we be more responsible this way .. about something which is so precious and if taken, cannot be given back?

Cheeni Kum: the movie

I came back couple of hours ago after watching the movie 'Cheeni Kum'. I had been watching the movie's promos on TV for quite a while and it had definitely managed to pique my interest. We managed to get the bookings in a theater that was not our first choice but it was still decent and the crowd was good too.

The movie showed the "spring-autumn romance" - a phenomenon quite common in Hollywood and portrayed in a very interesting way probably for the first time in Bollywood. It's quite natural to compare Cheeni Kum with Nishabd - another release this year where 60-something Amitabh romances a 17 year old Jiah khan. But these two are different genres of films and it would be wrong to compare them.

The fact that Cheeni Kum had many of the very talented actors (Amitabh, Tabu, Paresh Rawal & my favorite Zohra Sehgal) added to the charm of the film and its stylish creative design (the writer-director Balki is an adman-turned-director and it shows in the impeccable props in the movie) definitely made it more watchable. The movie has great dialogues throughout - especially the conversation between Amitabh & Tabu are the wittiest ones. I seriously wished that if someone actually spoke them in real life, it would be so mentally stimulating! And not to mention the ones by cute little 'Sexy' - her book of wisdom was so much more profound than any I have read/heard lately :)

The movie is well-paced, has very good performances by all the actors ( I know, I wrote the same about Metro too. But if actors are giving good performances lately, it's not my fault, right? ;) ) and has excellent dialogues & cinematography. The subject is definitely interesting and has been handled extremely well. I could relate to Tabu so well - she was also a 30-something woman, had a mind of her own, worked in the software industry and preferred men to boys - just like me! If I fall in love with a guy twice my age, I can definitely take a cue or two from this movie :)

There is a small list of things that could have been done better - the part about Paresh Rawal's satyagrah could have been shortened, Amitabh's tyranny in the kitchen seemed a little too much at times, the interest of general public in the matter of someone's private affairs seemed far-fetched. Apart from these, I didn't find any negative points in the movie. I am glad that Indian cinema is finally going beyond the regular singing-around-the-trees routine...