Ennui or indifference or just acceptance…

Imagine you are in a car, it’s evening, the sky is red, but a hazy red, partly because of the pollution. The city road, barely two lanes wide, sandy, choked with dust and a phalanx, of vehicles, like an overgrowth of mushrooms. Unhindered. Unabashed. Untenable. Ugly. Bikes crammed against the rickshaws crammed against the cars crammed against the buses. The blaring horns, the cacophonous songs, on the radio.

Snailing vehicles through snaking roads. The ambience, discombobulating.

Nauseating. Vexing. Agitating. Angering.

And your feeling of discomfort and discontentment here is even more profound if you have experienced such routine ordeals rarely, until now.

A couple more such experiences, and your righteous, angered, indignant self is humbled into submission. Rendered helpless before the circumstances, the realities we often avoid facing, compartmentalizing and tucking them away, far away.

The irated hollering demeanour is replaced by that of a calm discontentment, consternation is whittled down to just resignation, and in some cases, the sense of submission is so true that those people start finding fun in the ordeals, and looking at (actually squinting at and groping for) the rare positives.

But for others, it’s just ennui. Enthusiasm is further than the farthest cry. And it’s constant. That feeling of tiredness people often keep complaining about. That feeling of mediocrity. Those sporadic bouts of sadness, those pangs of failed dreams, which can strike anytime, and terrorize you, and then abandon you.
And this… is not just the traffic or the dust or the honking. It’s everything. Everything which relates to adult life.

The systems we created as we accelerated into the future, those constructs, rituals, those practices, attitudes, choke us now.

Kids, they are fresh, they look at things simply, call spade a spade, find happiness in simplest things, have very basic, simple emotions. Until. They start learning the ways of the world.

And boy! Are they good learners.
But in us adults, the emotions, the acquired traits, learnings, attitudes, make our personalities so complicated, facets struggling among themselves for precedence. A constant battle. And so, with time, and circumstances (which we and our predecessors were unable or not brave enough to change), everything changes.
And people learn to live with it, ennui, wade through it, smile through it, somehow. Maybe it’s our innate ability to fool ourselves and put our hands up in the air if things don’t go our way. Maybe it’s our fear to live on our own terms, or to challenge the existing conceptions, constrictions, constructs. Maybe, it’s the realest form of indifference.
We are accepting the modern ways, attitudes, fads, the future, so rapidly. Like an insatiable void. And we are not shunning those obsoletes as rapidly as we should. Just because they are too big. Just because they were actually applicable at a time, but now are just prevalent, and hurtful.

This… this complicates things. This creates a suffocating, marshy present that we live in. And we have more or less surrendered, accepted.

We are too indifferent to oppose, to resist, to rebel, to repel, to renounce, to repeal. Or maybe too submissive now (even if we care).

We look at these words above with such contempt, and fear. For these, to us, denote conflict, and such inconvenience, and pain.

But these are some of the very fundamental ideas and ideals of human existence and sustenance if looked back at from a neutral perspective.

But as we have seen, and been led to believe, resistance, and revolution and rebellion has brought in many sufferings, deaths and pain to this world.

And to avoid that we are ironically resisting our own human nature from blooming.

We are becoming mere slaves of the rusty reeking constructs we foolishly think to be true and absolutely firm.

And thus we smother the radical, the righteous, the rebellious, in a sea of inertia, insecurity, and submission.

Everyday a possible revolution is bedraggled and pummeled to just a feeling of discontentment, and a dream. Everyday.

Thus the ennui, then the indifference, and then acceptance.

Why do we have to squint to find beauty in an Indian marriage??

Marriage.

Ideally- A communion of two souls.
Happy? Very.

Colorful? Exuberantly.
Sacred? Depends.
Though it understandably warrants some  serious reverence and veneration.
Now.

An Indian marriage has everything. Period.

It’s like a small-scaled simulacrum of India. Of us. So many dimensions.

You can see everything. You could see nothing at all. Depends on what you want to look for. And when. And where. Or do you want to look at all?? Just letting everything carry you. Nudge you. Push you. Yank you. Caress you.

You could see a multitude (that’s a small word) of people you have to be polite to. And cringe in revulsion. Or you could see a lot of new faces, new friendships in the offing, you could observe, overhear, it’s… entertaining surely, if not anything else.

Though, I prefer the second set of glasses, but I’m stuck with the first. (Introvert issues.)

By the way. A grand party, a grand scheme of things, a grand days-spanning preparation, where people move erratically, talk profusely, trample over each other to have a photo taken, gyrate in mass hysteria to utterly obnoxious (or so fucking amazing) drum rolls and dholaks and even crackers can be hell for an introvert. Or all this could be his or her initiation. The blooming moment.

You could see the incredible amount of money wasted (spent) on ridiculous (fun) rituals, ceremonies and cringe (revel). You could see the plethora of food items which taste the same (or uniquely amazing).
You could see gaudy, kitschy costumes, blinding (vibrant) sarees, sherwanis, glistening coats and choke (or smile).
In all this, you judge, you feel people judging you. Those eyes, you can so easily sense it. Relatives, uncles, aunties, kids, opposite sex, which is your age. That’s a lot of pressure ( or a lot of fun.)

You could see the amount of work that needs to be done, it’s always huge, and you can lend a hand (or you’re told to.)

Or you could find nothing that interests you, so you lie in corner (whatever space you get) and wallow, and pull faces and curse yourself, as people pay no heed to you (not that you wanted it anyway.). And you keep on scrolling that phonescreen, or just write something you have excessively thought so many times. I was talking about myself.

But as the focus, gravitas on actual wedding, those mantras and havans, I do’s and kubool hai’s are subsiding. An excessive and exaggerated attention is being guided and tethered to the secondaries and somewhat needless and flamboyant and ostentatious revelries, (That’s the ever continuing trend.)
You …. You find it hard to find some actual priceless moment of innate happiness and those moments of unaddled beauty.
Yeah. Beauty could be someone who looks actually beautiful. (Away from the rat race.) Beauty could be a smile. A gaze. A tapestry. An anecdote of an old lady. A  joke from an unlikely source. A differently beautiful song in the background (Not what they play now-a-days.). The look of actual happiness when you see your relatives, and meet long lost friends and forget those drab formalities and cordialities for a moment.                           And dance. And eat. And laugh. And cry. And what not. That beauty.

Marriage… huh! It could be the synonym for happiness. Only, it isn’t.

 

It’s so intimate. Yet so inclusively social. It’s emotional. Very emotional. It’s aesthetic. NOT materialistic. It’s about two people. Two hopeful, smiling, beautiful souls.

 

Why don’t we just focus on that, and that only?
Because marriage is about people. About our inner beauty.
Nothing else.

Why we need darker superhero movies.

We are lucky. This generation. We just are. While so many of us have feasted on the phalanx of comic books and their animated versions, live action superhero movies seem like the real deal.

They have brought so many things to life, our dreams, our wildest imaginations. The action moves, the kicks, the punches, the costumes, the worlds which we could only imagine, are realised, and its soooo gratifying.

And the greatest thing about superhero movies is that there are so many stories to tell.

Sometimes it feels like the mainstream movies are running out of stories to tell. That they are unilaterally governed by their profitability and marketability.

That while making movies, these are THE two constants. And the whole movie is built around them.

A lot of focus, today is on the viewers’ satisfaction. Big movie production houses, distributors, they have grown so big. And they invest a lot of money. Millions, like pennies. So it’s not rocket science to understand that they want profits, huge profits. It is the era of commercial cinema.

Earlier, a movie didn’t necessarily mean gratification, over the top moments,        a “wohoo”. It could torture you, it could tether your rapt attention to that celluloid, it didn’t necessarily have a rich soundtrack or some catchy tune, and it did have a story, most of the time.

Today, its not that such movies are not made, many such movies are made, but the thing is, they are not trusted as much as they used to be.
A superhero movie seems like a perfect marriage. It has imagination. It has story. It has (a lot of ) action. It caters to the masses. Because of the birth of superhero comic fandom in the mid-twentieth century, today, in the 21st century, all generations today can watch a superhero movie. It has humongous hype. It has the ever-burgeoning profitability.

And these movies have truly rocked the stage. In these past 10 or 20 years we have seen a lot of them. And many of them have been so popular, so awe-inspiring, so funny.
But will these movies always be like this?  Smart. Funny. Super action-packed. Light-toned. Light-hearted. Riddled with highlights and flashes.

This… trend needs to change. At some point we are going to get bored. Yes. It will happen. And it will be so excruciating to be bored and disappointed​ by a superhero movie. Unimaginable. But impending.

That’s why we need a change. That’s why we need darker themes, darker stories, more intensely portrayed characters and challenging and taut storylines. Of course we need action. And jokes, wisecracks, of course. But not unnecessarily.

M. Night Shyamalan’s  Unbreakable was a first or its kind. Unique. Realistic. Mature. The portrayals of Samuel L. Jackson and  I Bruce Willis were brilliant. This movie could be a beacon to usher the superhero movie genre into a new and exciting era.
Batman Vs superman is one such movie, like Watchmen (Both directed by Zack Snyder) which showed us perspective and the unimaginable territory to explore in superhero genre. Though lambasted by critics and even some fans, it’s darker tone, grittier story and some astute movie-making might as well make it a cult movie in the future.

Making R-rated superhero movies is also a big risk despite the huge aesthetic freedom. But movies like Logan and Deadpool have succeeded beyond all expectations. Both critics and audiences adored them. And that should somewhat set the tone. Distributors taking the example of 20th century fox should explore newer realms in newer ways.
Superhero movies make us wonder. They inspire us. They transcend us from our mundane existences, and show us what it could mean to be more, much more. Scenes reel in our heads for days. Some death rankles deep. Dialogues hit home. Those superhero landings lift us.
And the last thing that anyone who loves such awesomeness wants is to get bored of it. And for that, a continuous reinvention of superhero movies is so important. Darker tones have to be groped for. Some realism, even amidst some mind-boggling fantasy is necessary.                                                             Because all of us want our fantasies to be more than just a dreamy celluloid phantasm, if not real.