#MovieReview: Ghostbusters (2016)

Disclaimer: This is a spoiler-free review of the movie Ghostbusters that released this past week. Spoiler-free, not by choice, but by restraint. There is nothing much I can spill as the writing of the movie is the real ghost that needed some major busting. 

If you stepped into the cinema hall expecting to be blown away, stem your expectations right there. Nip them in the bud. This movie is nothing like its predecessor with the same name. 

There are moments in the movie that make you feel like you could stay on till the end, but for most part, I was inching towards the exit door. And all the harsh things I say, I say for the script alone. The writing and the setting of the movie is so lifeless, I am surprised the actors did not fall asleep during shots. Or maybe they did, we don't know that. 

The casting is spot-on! An all-woman ghostbuster squad is a dream concept and despite the bad reception the movie's trailer received, I was expecting some amazing stuff. Sadly, that did not come. I could not believe my eyes when Thor was wasted away like that. You can call me out for typecasting Chris into a singular role but when you watch the movie (if you do) you will comply by what I say. Melissa McCarthy and Kate McCinnon are great, pulling off a dull story rather splendidly. Leslie Jones as the loud, funny tag-along is bearable too. Kristen Wiig is made to look stone-faced all throughout the movie, except for the times when the ghosts vomit slime on her face.  

My favourite in the movie is Kate McCinnon. It's a shame she stands behind Chris Hemsworth(a horrible miscast) in the movie posters. Kristen Wiig is under utilised, there is hardly any depth in her character. However, that is in no way a reflection on her acting prowess. Obviously. The script failed her! Then there is Bill Murray, along with many other actors who appeared in the earlier Ghostbusters movie, trying to pull a Stan Lee with forgettable cameos.

Rating: 6/10

Watch the movie if you have loved these brilliant actors on Saturday Night Live and would not mind seeing them being wasted away. Also, find it in your heart to get over Chris Hemsworth's dumb blonde moments in the movie. He was just acting. I hope.

Our Imperfect Perfections

I turn 27 tomorrow and I have a confession to make. I am an imperfect human. 

I am not a great looker and my sense of style is perhaps misplaced. I am not an exemplary cook nor am I a prominent name in the profession of my choice. If I were to decide the course of my life, I would fail miserably at it for I know not where my heart really lies. One day I want to be a master homemaker and the other, I want to be the most successful person there can ever be. I define the word fickle and push it a new level each day. But it is okay. It is okay that I look at the timelines of all the 1000 friends I have on facebook and think about how perfect their lives are on paper. It is completely fine, that some days I choose someone else's life as a comparison scale for what I should live like. I am only human. And I am vain as most humans can get. Sometimes less, sometimes more. We have all been there. Our virtual realities overpower the sense of our real selves, and no matter how many clickbait websites tell you that 'facebook infused depression' is a disease, trust me it is not. It is in our nature to be jealous, to be happy and sad, all at once when a friend gets engaged or promoted. We have been gifted the ability to feel, and to feel a hundred emotions at once. Then why create a pathological parallel universe and bracket yourself as abnormal, when our reactions are as habitual as breathing and sleeping.

But we are not all a whirlwind of crazy. We are loving and silent and loyal. We are practical and dreamy and loud and very accommodating. Sometimes, all at once! I know I am. A single personality trait hardly ever defines me and I have gotten it checked, it's not a psychological condition. My heart and the head are always in a tussle and there is never a clear winner. There can never be a winner for what is right for the heart need not necessarily coincide with what the head wants. And that's just about fine. Because if everything could be figured out in no time at all without us putting a decent amount of effort into it, failure and wisdom would be redundant. Wouldn't they?

We are a mixed bag of imperfections and that is what separates us from the rest, that is what motivates us to be unique. In every way, we are unique. Paradoxically, we are one. 
In our imperfect perfections, we are all one.

Cheers,
D!

The Phone Call

To me, there is something very empowering about making a call and striking a conversation. It is an exhilarating experience on occasions when the person on the other end is an old dear friend or they are someone you just randomly happened to phone the first time because of some work. I have had many a delightful conversations in the past and I have consistently noticed that a phone call ranging from normal/average to happy have significant mood altering results on me. All of them, positive.

So here is my pattern. Once every couple of months, I dedicate an entire evening calling estranged friends and people I have lost touch with. It is not a pattern or a fixed list of people, these are the people I am randomly missing that day. And when I call, apprehension-free, I am triggering a mood alteration sequence in all those people I am talking to. That gives me a lot of power (and responsibility) and makes this an exciting task. In this entire process, I am also reconnecting with myself from the past and those people I talk to. In simple words if I am happy, then the person I am calling sort of gets infected by my happy bug and alters their mood, even if it is just for a brief period. 

Not just me, I think once in a while everyone should rise above WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter and call them peeps whose voice you probably would have forgotten because you have been hitting as many Vevo channels on Youtube as can be possible. Flex your fingers, pick up the phone and make that call. And when you call, remember these things:

• Do not be apologetic. You may be calling after ages but you are the one calling right now. You win! The only exceptions to this rule are your parents. Call them, call them now. And apologise for being such a slob and not calling them everyday.
• Slang is your friend, if it is your bud or your sibling on the other side of the call. Discretion is advised, however.
• Immediately disconnect when the conversation has steered to a place where ",,,and, what else?" was spoken out loud for the third time. Marks of a conversation that has gone redundant and is not fun anymore. Think twice about calling this person again the next time.
• For once, DON'T worry about the bill.
• Reminisce about the past. Plan future tasks to take up together. Discuss the present.
• Building on the previous point, never discuss the weather for more than a 20 seconds. 
• Don't be egotistical. It is afterall just a phone call. Don't compare notes about who called whom last, serves no purpose.
• Walk. Might as well get some exercise while you are at it. 
• Write down all your important phone numbers in a planner or a telephone book. You have no idea how amazing it feels to flip through the pages of a phonebook and locate a number to dial it.

There there! Wasn't that easy?

Go on ahead, make that phonecall and start the happy mood chain reaction. When you hear the other person smile through the conversation, it will be worth it! 

Cheers! 

D

Love

Love is exhausting. Love is rejeuvenating.
Love is contradictory.
Love is demanding and irrational.
It is about having to let go of a fortune to gain that one person's willing attention.
Love makes. Love breaks.
It is the strongest magnetic pull there is.
It craves attention, it gives attention.
It wants you to be happy.
Love is to keep the significant other happy, at your own expense.
Love is giving up on that last drop of water for them.
Even if its under the parched sun.
Love builds. Love destroys. It is a savage.
It makes one gentler than ever.
Love blinds. It fogs minds.
Love is also clarity.
Love is kind. It is jealous.
Love is lust. Love is a hermit.
It is the devil. And it is the saint.
Love is all.
All is love.

Throwback

I wrote this particular piece nearly 6 years back. Back then I wanted to be like Chetan Bhagat, a Rs 99/- wala book writer. You can safely say, I was naive. My naivety will reflect in my rather flat style of writing below. But this short little story is closest to my heart because it made me want to be a writer one day.

Here it is: 

Spolier: It talks about me! :D

DATE – 20^th September 1988

TIME – 7:15 am

  

In a not so well-groomed courtyard sat Mr.Chaddha on his armchair swaying back and forth. He was sipping his favourite Darjeeling cinnamon flavoured tea greedily like there was not going to be a tomorrow morning. He was a portly man in his late forties, though he looked much older, had a pot belly large enough to store food for an entire battalion and had a good natured face with a frizzled moustache. It was exactly 7:15 in the morning of that drizzly September day. The South-west monsoons were on the verge of its end. And so it rained pretty heavily to mark its last. Mr. Chaddha picked up The HINDU and read the headlines.

He tut tutted something about politics going to the dogs and put the paper down as if it had deeply disturbed his conscience and made his heart ache. The expression on his face was terrific, humanly impossible to even form for us normal earthlings, but then that’s Chaddha uncle at his diplomatic best. He pushed the troubling thought out of his mind and went back to slurping his lukewarm morning drink. Wait a minute, enough of him. Because, this is not his story.

No, it is not!

Three blocks away was a hospital – Sita Bhateja Nursing Home, run by a gynaecologist. No prizes for guessing who ran the nursing home, Dr.Mrs.Sita Bhateja. Right then she was in the labor room nursing a woman terribly in pain. The hands of the clock slowly ticked as the anxious parents of the aforementioned ‘lady-in-pain’ waited. Her husband had been informed the minute her water broke and the father-to-be anxiously started for the hospital. It was their first child after all. All this was happening in the Garden City of Bangalore; and the father-to-be lived in the neighbouring capital of Hyderabad, and he left instantly to be with his wife. He knew he would well arrive after all of it is over, but still the excitement and the anxiousness got the better of him. He was overjoyed. This over enthusiastic ‘father-to-be’ is my Paa, more specifically my FATHER. And yes, the lady-in-pain is my MOTHER, my Maa. Oh, now you are getting it, this story is about me – the child about to be born.

Let me tell you how my Ma and Pa came together.

They met in the strangest of fashions. Theirs wasn’t a love marriage. It was arranged as was the tradition at that time in the small village of Rajasthan they hailed from. The story goes that Maa was the pretty maid in her early twenties and she had heaps of prospects peeping through her doorway everyday; she had a hell of a choice to choose from.

‘I’m confused’ is what Ma blurted out after meeting each prospect in due succession. And then…… enter Paa-The dashing young man! He was smitten by the beauty and charm of the beautiful young lady and her confusion made him fall crazily for her. Their meeting was arranged, Maa and Paa saw each other and it was love at first sight. An alliance was anticipated and everybody expected an almost immediate formal announcement of an engagement. But my Grand-dad played spoilsport and like all the typical prospective groom’s sides in India, my grandfather said he would give his answer in a week or so, but Paa found that too much time to wait. Overnight, he boarded a bus, traveled nearly a thousand miles from Hyderabad to Rajasthan to get to Maa’s house and declared his wish to get married to Maa as soon as it was possible. That’s the best thing Paa did because if he would not have made it then Maa was being forced to say yes to another prospect. And if this alliance failed to happen, I would have never existed to tell my story.

Now it was all settled.

Paa said YES and Maa accepted it more than willingly.

And then they had ME.

No wait, they were still in the process of having me. Maa’s in pain and Paa’s still in the train.

‘Wow!’ 

That rhymed. I started training myself in such feats in Maa’s womb itself. So, you could say that a genius is about to be born.

While Dr. Mrs. Bhateja nursed my mum through her painful labour, my attention shifts over to the anxious looking parents of the mum-to-be. They were about to have their first grandchild, an achievement in itself and were bloody beyond happy. Today is the occasion of firsts.

Now, the moment of action. Precisely, at 7.16 am, a minute after Mr. Chaddha tut-tutted about the Indian polity, I was born. Like an angel to curb the negativities of politics which ached Mr. Chaddha’s heart even as he sipped his tea. I was the saviour who was born as the one who would shine as the lone light of hope and the end of the dark tunnel of the disappointing administrative machinery. I was born to be the source of relief to the balding gentleman three blocks away. But, unfortunately for him, I was neither of these. I am a baby, after all.

So, big discussions can wait for now.