TheFirstSixMonths: Movie Review- Harud

...means Autumn. Just finished watching the film, and found it disturbing. Not because it shocked me. I am aware that missing people phenomena in the state is by and large a thing they live with. And I do not think people deserve to go through such experiences, even if, a few of them went about creating havoc. I feel people can be influenced into violence, only when there's something starkly wrong in the background. In this case it wasn't lack of education, but perhaps a deeper social nuance. Even if many decided to choose violence, many others suffered in the process- and not by choice.

Germany started the war, and as I heard someone say today, it boomeranged back and hit them with massive destruction post the war. Many people supported the party for the inflationary/ economic conditions it addressed and was able to run a campaign with. Some people fled the country. Some stayed. All suffered. But the politics and war aside, not every war victim, in any form, deserved to go through it.

This movie shocked me not by the content. Just by the mere knowledge that I choose to ignore it on a daily basis on most cases. Like the rest and the other side. I wish I had the objectivity for the problems we face in our worlds. I wish I could push myself enough to do something. Constructive. I wish I could slap the guy who wrote the Times of India review for the movie. Because, giving opinions in the backdrop of severe lack of knowledge and empathy is a listed crime.

Conflict tales are not easy to portray. Conflict changes who we are, and what we project into our worlds. Certainty and Superman are not what carries into the childhood. Understanding it requires challenging who you are as a person. Of course I'd imagine it's easier for people close to it to be able to showcase it. But that's also what makes it equally tough.

People who go missing leave a vacuum. The sort of loneliness you decide to live with. Till it numbs out. As if it never occurred. Not once truly filling up. Even with Rafiq's newly discovered old camera.

P.S. Chasing Tales, at the backdrop of the recently awarded national movie awards. Aamir Bashir is very very creative. I loved the songs in the backdrop also. I wish the muttersprache was used as the main language.

TheFirstSixMonths: English Vinglish- Learning a new language

I've been wanting to write this post a while since I saw this movie. I had once (in 2005 or so) taught a bunch of young kids in the summer. The idea was that they're from disadvantaged backgrounds and sometimes lose 'touch' with the school life, because they're probably busier in either helping parents, or just playing. The summer school reminded them of school. I am not sure what persuaded them to attend these classes. However, I do remember one of them saying how important learning English was to become Sachin Tendulkar. How else would you give interviews at the end of those winning matches. I saw the same aspirational view in Seoul. People wanted to be like Americans, and talk like them, including Starbucks names, and accents.

These days I often see how important German is. For my health and just getting by. If everyone in the world could speak one language the world would be brilliant. Because I want easy a lot of times. I don't always enjoy the struggles of having to spend hours learning new words and their derivatives and genders, especially sometimes when I see no end to them. [Even though I understand how languages make you grow, the more the better in the Ludwig Wittgentstein way: "Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt" ]. Speaking is a bigger horror. Because as an adult I am too aware of making mistakes. I was sensitive even as a child. Makes me feel pseudo Japanese at times, with the whole thing about not wanting to make mistakes. When there is no perfection. Recently I said un-big for small. In English. I thought for several moments on why English wrote ceiling not as cieling [ Give it to a Deutsch person]. And laughed then at myself. That perhaps is also the charm of a new language. The liberation that eventually we all start with errors.

The movie made me aware of these weighted struggles, and watch them curiously and be able to empathise. I've had that coffee episode happen to me a thousand times over, and not just with coffee [see trailer]. The movie manages to do this even with a few scattered stereotypical notions, which didn't bother me really, because the interpretation through the actors was so refreshing [I love Sridevi in it]. I even liked the sound track. The no-nonsense goal based learning approach. And the learning intent to feel equal - as a self-image enhancer. Even though falling in love in French or Hindi didn't quite necessitate a mediation in English oder Deutsch.