Game of Thrones Memes: House Stark

To,

House Stark.

Don't mess with us.

Love, The Lannisters

Game of Thrones Memes: Ser Jorah the Man-servant

Ser Jorah Mormont - Previously worked at Brave Knights Inc.

                    Presently employed as man-servant/flunky.

Game of Thrones Memes: Dragon Eggs

Previously : Dragon eggs, precursors to the most fearsome creatures in the realm

Presently: Decorative stones

Getting Old at 24

To some people, the age of 24 years might seem as far away from being termed old as it could possibly be. But getting old is more of a mental state of being than a physical one. You could still be able to walk miles at a stretch and not feel tired, but even as you walk, the past and future haunt you even as the present seems uncertain. 

And not so long ago, I found the whole concept of a Mid-life crisis a bit vague and out of place.

I guess I am beginning to enter that age when nothing on Facebook seems interesting anymore. My friends keep requesting me to get out there and solve some criminal cases, perhaps play some Poker, but I guess I am too old for games now...maybe in a few months my Facebook Timeline will look like that of all the other "old people" who maintain Facebook pages for God knows what reason!

Instead, all I ever seem to want on a weekend is a good book to read and a nice, peaceful nap that goes on and on.

It doesn't hit you like a brickbat, mind you. It creeps up onto you and before you realize  you are introduced as "uncle" to small kids, and addressed similarly by certain ladies with a distorted sense of the passage of time.

It occurs around the time you file your first Income Tax Return. Your family starts taking you seriously and your advice on financial and social matters is eagerly sought and duly noted, instead of being brushed off as immature as should have been the rule before having filed said return.

Money matters take the first hit. Unlike earlier, when money would have at best been associated with a smartphone or laptop budget, you start contemplating your investment portfolio and devising tax-saving schemes to save some hard-earned money from ending up in government coffers.

Then come fairly small, almost unnoticeable things. One day you miss an eagerly awaited cricket match due to work, and the next thing you know, you have lost all interest in such childish pursuits. I do not even remember the last time I watched a cricket match on Television or even cared to turn to the Sports page at the end of the newspaper.

It is the time when you contemplate life-altering decisions while walking to office eating an apple, standing in the shower, waiting for your Burger at Mc Donald’s (on second thoughts, they have a pretty decent service and plenty of distractions (:P) around so let us count that out). You no longer care about the stares from the onlookers while you stare straight ahead of you deep in thought like a perpetual visionary.

Well, to be fair, I have always been a bit out of place for my age group. My idea of "Aaj Kuch Toofani karte hain" (Let's do something rash today!) still involves reaching the Bus Stop 5 minutes earlier instead of the standard waiting time of 15 minutes. Minus all the Harry Potter, Disney and Batman movies, I am a pretty intense character.

It is just that for the first time in my life I am missing the innocence of my childhood. Back then, life was pretty simple, you do your homework on time, watch Disney Hour, write your exams, and play for 1 hour in the evening.

But now, there are such a large number of variables involved in my life, I can’t comprehend the order of the differential equation that shall solve my woes! And all this when the most potent complexity (or so I have been told), the Female conundrum is yet to hit me!

I hope that this complex, uncertain phase ends as quickly as it began. But for now, it seems like a particularly long wait!

The Star Wars Conundrum

The Star Wars movie series is widely believed to be one of the greatest movie franchises ever created. So, when in my Third year of Engineering I finally decided to give it a shot, I was faced with a rather awkward question: Where do I start from?

For the uninitiated, George Lucas, the creative “Force” behind the Star Wars released the movies in two installments of three movies each over a period of 2 decades, with the last three movies serving as a prelude to the once released in the mid-80s.

The films in chronological order of their respective releases are:

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope                                       May 25, 1977

Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back                     May 21, 1980

Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi                               May 25, 1983

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace                           May 19, 1999

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones                            May 16, 2002

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith                             May 19, 2005

So, for someone beginning a decade too late, this question becomes a bit difficult to answer.

The people who watched the movies in their intended order, who should now be in their mid-thirties are obviously biased towards the 80s movies that they grew up around. Though low on the technology front by today’s standards, the old Star Wars movies must have been visual marvels in their time.

But for all of their originality, these movies had a very simplistic and predictable narrative, out of tune with the complex, multi-dimensional stories of movies like Inception and The Dark Knight.

The relatively younger crowd, of which I am a part as well, that saw the last three movies released in the 21^st century first and watched the so-called “sequels” only out of curiousity, we are obviously enamoured by the superior use of technology and better, more complex narrative in the recent movies, which are almost unanimously panned by the older generation.

Having made my preference towards the recent movies clear, I shall give you an example that will help you in your choice for the sequence of Star Wars movies you wish to see.

For doing that, I shall make an assumption. That you have already seen another one of the greatest movie franchises of all time: the Harry Potter series. The next assumption is that you liked them and are a crazy fan like me.

Now, suppose, after 10-15 years, Warner Brothers comes out with a movie franchise that traces the childhood and life of Tom Riddle until the time he turns into Lord Voldemort. The movies, with the strength of hindsight and superior technology, shall obviously boast of a stellar, more intelligent and complex narrative and a visual extravaganza.

Now, for people like us, who have already been witness to Lord Voldemort’s cruelty and have had our childhoods and adolescence years filled with happy memories of Harry Potter’s adventures, many of us might still prefer the original Harry Potter series, and shall obviously recommend them to be seen first to a beginner.

But would it not still be awesome for the stranger to find out for himself how a seemingly innocent kid first discovers magic and then turns into a fearsome Dark Lord, before moving on to, out of curiousity of course, what happens next, when a similar kid endeavours to bring him down.

Now, you have to choose, what you would rather see first in such a circumstance and apply the same logic to Star Wars. Believe it or not, you will find the analogy strangely similar.

A word of caution: The Star Wars movie series is going to blow your mind, whichever way you watch it!

Vishwa-BAN-am

Okay, so I will come out clean right at the beginning. I have seen only three Kamal Haasan movies in my life-Chachi 420, Hey Ram and Hindustani. I did like them at the time, but not the way I like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter or Star Wars now. This clarification was made to serve 2 purposes. One, I am not a raving Kamal Haasan fan who shall stand by him come what may. Second, that I admit I am not a movie expert (those self-professed experts who tell you which movie to see based on a highly complex and mysterious mathematical function).

So, this afternoon, just as I was going through the news, the reporter told that a PIL has been filed in the Madras High Court complaining about the recent Kamal Haasan movie Vishwaroopam hurting Christian feelings.

And I realized, this ought to be one of the biggest moments for Indian Cinema!

For, believe it or not, Kamal Haasan has accomplished the rare feat of making an out and out action movie that has managed to somehow hurt religious feelings of the two religions (which are generally seen at each others’ throats) that make roughly 55% of world population.

Personally, being a Hindu I feel a bit left out of the party. Let us hope that some enlightened Hindu organisation is able to find some flaw that ought to hurt my feelings. Then, that would make us a truly united and secular country. Isn’t that what reverse engineering is all about? If you can’t get secular by agreeing to each other, you find a way of agreeing to disagree with somebody else.

The most incredible thing about this episode is that the said film is not even a Historical drama (say about Shivaji and the Mughals), or about Christian missionaries, or about the many religious riots that have taken place in our country where there is ample scope of distorting or presenting an alternative view of history that may inevitably hurt someone.

No, nobody in this country is stupid enough to make a movie like that. That is why, unlike Hollywood which idolises history, both the good like Lincoln or the bad like the Holocaust, Indian children do not learn about their history from racy historical dramas; they learn how to flaunt their disturbing attitude from B-grade movies like Dabangg and Ready that end up getting 4 star reviews and a multitude of awards, while their imagination is ably restricted by katrina Kaif and Kareena Kapoor instead of effective Story telling, High quality animation or Science fiction.

No, because if somebody makes a movie about Akbar, Ashoka, or Mangal Pandey, we ought to step in and offer our expertise to right the wrong that has been done. Can’t Indians just sit quietly in their homes and not fret about what the neighbour or his distant relative might end up thinking when the movie portrays an opinion not shared by us? No, we ought to ban the stuff, coz we are an illiterate, aimless people that might end up in a theatre paying for a movie that we might not like. Or perhaps we didn’t like a movie and that’s why we wish to ensure we do not end up watching said movie again.

My point is, why keep up this hideous mask of secular, democratic, free thinking nation? With this attitude, does our country ought not to be compared to a state like Pakistan. At least they are so used to their negative portrayal throughout the world that they have stopped complaining. Did we hear people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, heck even the Taliban complaining about this movie? Afterall, from the trailers, it seems they are the guys being shot around in the movie.

My advice to Mr. Haasan is: By all means, go and live a better life in a First World country. If you are a good filmmaker, you will become incredibly famous, perhaps may even get a real Oscar. If not, there’s always the possibility of flinging a hundred bad guys (don’t mention their religion please) in the air single-handedly back in India. We seem to be kind of into that stuff. That doesn’t seem to hurt our sensibilities.

Sense amidst outrage

Over the past few days, the nation erupted in anger over the heinous crime committed in the national capital by a couple of goons on an unfortunate girl. I call her unfortunate because it could have been anyone. With such madmen prowling our streets a disaster was only waiting to happen.


Until now, I tried to keep away from writing about this particular incident. I didn’t want to express my views about this incident because writing about social issues generally ends up being rhetoric. I am neither an elitist nor an activist who would cry hoarse just in order to be heard. I do not like to preach because I know that the people who will be at the receiving end  are already quite harmless, those who are so inclined won’t take much out of it anyways, and those who need it, don’t have access to a platform like internet. Do you really feel that someone like that bus driver could be talked in some sense by anybody? But with the constant media bombardment, I just can’t get the thought of the girl out of my mind.



I won’t RIP her, to show others that I subscribe to her cause or perhaps satisfy my conscience. There was nothing peaceful about her death. There is no point in me lying to myself. I won’t hang my head in shame, because I didn’t do any wrong. I know that I am different from those men, and that knowledge is more comforting than the feeling of shame over what others of my gender end up doing.



To be honest, I do not believe anyone could have imagined the outrage that spontaneously erupted. Perhaps it was the brutality of the crime or the symbolism of it happening to a well-educated girl in the National Capital. However, I do not believe that such an outrage would have been seen if an incident like this happened anywhere else in the country, perhaps a remote town or village.


People, including many celebrities posted on Facebook, Twitter and various blogs demanded how the culprits should be stoned to death, hanged publicly, burnt to death etc. I do not believe in stooping to their level of barbarism for some sense of closure; That’s not punishment, that’s revenge. However, I do hope that these criminals at best get the death sentence and at worst imprisonment for life, so that such bestiality is never allowed to happen on our streets anymore.


That said, I am uncertain what we are taking back from this incident as a society. I am pretty sure that the thousands who gathered at Delhi and faced water cannons and Lathis have been, if they weren’t already, have been sensitised about the trauma that a man’s apparent urge for domination turns out to be for the affected girl. But what of the policemen and lawmakers who come to work with their own set prejudices, who will educate them?


And something, I am still critical of is the sensitisation of the sections of society living in remote closed-off areas or marginalised neighbourhoods of our metros who still find some fault with the girl in this entire episode. When this public enters our liberated cities, they bring with themselves their prejudices and distorted opinions of male supremacy and female subjugation. How, do we educate this class? We cannot wish them away. Perhaps the only possible way is to bring them at par with ourselves, and that is only possible with nationwide women empowerment.


Until these issues get resolved, we can only hope that stronger laws and our collective awakening are able to ward off such incidents in the future.