Lolita and Parineeta

I watched Parineeta alone on my birthday and was floored... simply floored by the character Lolita... I believe that which Lolita felt for Shekhar is the only one worthy of calling love.

However thats not the basis of this piece. This piece comes from a comment a friend made when she said "That kind of love was possible only in the 1960 s and that put me thinking".

Yes, that kind of love was 'plausible' in the 1960s but its not that its not 'possible' today for however much we say dedication and commitment are an integral part of this emotion we call love. If we say the defiition has changed today and dedication and commitment are no longer part of it then lets call it a relationship yes but love, no.

What Lolita offered to Shekhar was herself... completely... thats dedication and only to him... thats commitment... any deviations are just not welcome. It did help matters that she was near perfect in all other matters. She knew just how to behave with whom, cared for one and all, sensitive, unpretentious, reserved when necessary, independent but selfless and breathtakingly beautiful.

Anyway, guess the real beauty of this emotion is each one experiences and defines it in his/ her own way but that is how I would define it.

How little we know

There s a line that I keep remembering from an old Bengali movie called Herok Rajar Deshe (A Ray classic btw) in which the evil king to keep the students from learning teaches them "Jaanar kono sesh ne.... jaanar cheshta britha tai"

Now a bit of the background. The last month or so has been pretty much very hectic on the job front but now things have gotten slightly easy. Now when you are sitting in the office pretending to be serious when actually you don't have too much work one of the safest things to do is read on the net. So over the past few days I ve been reading up on a few areas that I ve wanted to know more about.

The present one is Che Guevara its been a very revolutionary reading period... with the readings moving to Cuba obviously and finally yet again obviously Castro. However what stood aside is that while I ve seen Che s face in mugs to t- shirts its funny how little we know about him in general. If you expand it a little bit more you ll see how poorly read we actually are. The Cuban crisis remains some missile thing that brought the US and USSR to war and my friends seem to know more about Havana cigars than the revolution. How much do we know about say Latin America apart from their soccer stars, Samba and women?

The moot point here being how little we know. So this plea is simply one to you all that as and when we find time which we waste uselessly lets read. The internet is an amazing encyclopedia not just a chatting place. The television carries lots of good channels and we needn't restrain ourselves to the Floydian "Fourteen channels of shit on tv to choose from".

There is as it is so much in the world that we cannot know in a lifetime but there is a lot that we can if only we are willing to put in a bit of effort. Isn't it worth that much?

Maybe I am the only ignorant one around but something tells me that I m not. Am I preaching too much here or just getting too old?

After a while!

I guess its been quite a while since I posted anything on this blog. The reason has been that I just joined my job and hence there has been a bit of travel, relocation etc etc. Anyway now I m more or less settled in and so decided to take a look at things around me... actually not around me rather inside me... and this space has let me talk of things that I believe in... in some ways it lets me talk to myself first and then to others