Bits & Pieces 7

What’s Your Dope?

A dashing cousin once confessed that his love for bikes and racing had surpassed his love for any other thing in the world. He got a peculiar kick by speeding his motorcycle on dimly lit Delhi roads late at nights with his biker gang. More than three fourths of his salary went into maintenance and accessories for this passion. I said that this was his dope. Another friend of mine enjoys watching movies and all of her time goes in browsing through IMDB and watching them like a sincere student, sometimes up to three in a row. This is her dope. We all have our own dopes. The word ‘dope’ that immediately reminds us someone high on drugs lying upturned in the middle of the road, actually is derived from the word ‘dopamine’ a chemical secreted by human brain that induces the feeling of happiness and bliss. My neighbor’s dope is gardening. Even when she is sick herself, I can spot her tending to her plants like they were infants, crying for her. To be happy, we just need to spot something that can give us innate happiness, an inextinguishable source of bliss. So, what’s your dope?

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Myopic on Biopic

The recent spurt in the graph of biopics in Indian cinema points towards a few things. Firstly, it is evident that fame and popularity scores over content and work. That is why notorious Charles Shobhraj can boast of a biopic made upon his wayward life and not Kailash Sathyarthi or such people who have put delinquent and painful lives back to track, who have gathered pieces together to make many a life worth living again. The recent biopic made in Hollywood upon the great Indian mathematician Ramanujan indicates how short sighted we have become when it comes to choosing subjects for this genre. Secondly, it is as if we have run out of new ideas, and people’s lives, no matter how banal they have been, are being turned into money grosser movies. I do not think some celebs whose lives have been captured on the wide screen deserve that much. No one has yet bothered to make a biopic on Hockey Wizard Dhyan Chand who impressed even Hitler first with his game and then with his loyalty towards his country. The next biopic, I read somewhere, is going to be on Late Kamala Das, the great Indian writer, and Vidya Balan is going to portray her feminist and enigmatic life. This is fine; she can motivate many women but still, there have been celebs who clearly did not deserve even a short docu-drama. We need to think and be more creative with story lines and plots and yes, music as well.

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Miss Attitude

I have noticed that for most people, esp girls, being rude and sarcastic means being modern. They have this deep rooted perception that not asking or replying politely, throwing weight around, snubbing acquaintances and loudly conversing in English with modern slangs thrown liberally is a clear recipe to become attractive, desirable and ‘hot’. It is a stupidity, a sheer one I dare say. No one can look lovely with an acerbic tongue and useless attitude that has roots nowhere in concrete. Attitude means having a spine and confidence to stand up for one self, the maturity to draw the line between friendliness and harassment, the courtesy and gravity to accept one’s mistakes. However, every other girl (even school going ones) is throwing dollops of attitude without even realizing how idiotic and insolent it makes her appear to others. 

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