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Sometimes I find the can’t-wait (!) feeling really annoying because it nags me like a pesky afterthought and keeps coming back to me.

I can’t wait long for good things to happen, since I’m selfish. Since I’m selfish, I need fodder to keep that same instinct intact.

This makes things harder for me: life isn’t like a dream, (though it’s possible) except that this isn’t a point where I can wish for a big bar of chocolate and buy it without going through “if-I-do-this-now-will-I-have-money-for-something-else-tomorrow?”

And so, I’ve to wait. Not just for the chocolate.

Most of us, acknowledge the fact that creative change comes when there happens to be drawn a connection between things that don’t sit next to each other usually, like when we pull a metaphorical device onto a line of poetry.

But… we do nothing about the way people around us, people on whom you can subject change upon, are left to learn things the hard way, go through the rigorous factory-like setup of churning out “high school grads” and “grads” until they realize they’ve wasted their years on something they don’t root by the heart for.

We acknowledge the fact that each of us, that each child is an individual, the individuality ceases to be within those lines themselves as we put them through school and college and let them be creatively and collectively tormented out of their natural inclinations. While we’re subjected to a new “…where else, but school? There’s nowhere else to be” we feel the urgent need to look for a better plan.

We talk on length on the need for change while we go through the recursice process that we hate so much and yet send our children through the same hula hoops again and make their brains work like a cuckoo clock.

We know everything yet we don’t want to do it ourselves. How the first step remains never taken and the road untrodden. How we let every generation succumb to great creative damage as it passes by us, when we particularly have the duty of “caring enough”.

I close with my pick of The Best Videos of Sir Ken Robinson, creativity expert; my personal hero.

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

“Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.”

Sir Ken Robinson, Hammer Lectures

“Ken Robinson has written numerous books, most recently “The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything.” This talk explores ways to connect peoples’ natural aptitudes with their personal passions to achieve at their highest levels in education and business. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 for his outstanding achievements in education and the arts.”

Do Schools Destroy Creativity? – Ken Robinson

“Sir Ken Robinson says a schismatic view of the mind has marginalized many people’s talents, creating a crisis of human resources. “Human dysfunction…is a bounty for all kinds of corporations and institutions,” says Robinson.”

Does it ever matter to you that you are not creating a greater ripple upon the pond of existence? Why are we satisfied just being the nameless faceless person in the crowd? It has been lying like a wet cloth over my head, and it’d mattered subcutaneously then, but now it matters in the most matter-of-fact way!

Sometimes I feel that, this is totally about me. How I look inward and with that insight how I look outward. With a changed outlook. I’ve pawned every lyrical and poetic quality to life that’d been with me sometime after I started writing poetry. Life isn’t anymore poetical. The blueness of the sky doesn’t matter when you can’t just write.

We have greater worries to claim our own. Some of us have been scared to crap of running into a point wherein we should say, “Oh, this is mediocre. This shouldn’t happen with me. Atleast with me.” Because we are all selfish. Selfishness has been so humanized and we’re all led to believe that it’s a part of us that we can’t remove.

I don’t want to accuse you or me in this; let’s just say that, that’s the way we are (and brush it under the carpet, in silence).

What rings in my ears is the line from the Jaagore ad: “Har subah sirf utho math. Jaago re!.”

Found out what’s making me unhappy. Beneath stacked layers of not-doing-enough-in-life the “what” happened to be “not laughing hard enough!” No, not the kind of rehearsed stuff like at Laughter Clubs alongside similar-sounding stifled air from the stomach.

To be around similar-minded people is among the happier things. I felt like a young kid on a big lawn, fresh on the grass. I kept jumping higher and still higher and it kept making me feel so good.

Back to the Theatre

Bhramaram (2009)

“Ini ee vandi nirthaane povunnilla!”

Went to see Bhramaram at the Soorya Fest (it was the inaugural film) with Soda*, Dee* and Ra*. SMSd everyone with words shamelessly salvaged from a JR*-original (The ones he send out thinking that they would scare the crap out of “friends” who’re on a “secret mission” to steal his ID and “misuse” it). That, he needs medical help is a closely contested fact. Let’s leave that to Infoscions in Mysore, to where he’s packing his bags to soon.

About Bhramaram: it’s too much Mohanlal; yes, you can’t argue about his acting prowess. Something still felt amiss at places (To me Blessy’s best was Thanmatra). So, what could’ve been a great movie stays back behind at the fence where it’s “just good” or “okay”. If I could blame it on the bad projector (and bad speaker-facility) at the Tagore theatre, I didn’t get the point where people raved about the cinematography.

Delhi-6 (2009)

“Zarre zarre mein usi ka noor hai

Jhaank khud mein wo na tujhse door hai

Ishq hai usse to sabse ishq kar

Ishq hai usse to sabse ishq kar

Is ibaadat ka yahi dastoor hai

Is mein us mein aur us mein hai wohi

Is mein us mein aur us mein hai wohi

Yaar mera har taraf bharpoor hai”

Saw Delhi-6 again (with Soda*); this time at the Theatre. I liked it again. I guess, Mehra’s movie was way over the head for some people who wrote the reviews and for the commoner, it was unlike his diet of masala. But incidentally, the “intelligent” crowd at the Tagore Theatre seemed to take a liking! There were occasional applause, that too from an audience of mostly over-40ers. Spotted Mrs. Lily Tharoor, mother of MP from Trivandrum, Shashi Tharoor on our way out.

*: Classmates