The incredible dumbness of being

One of my friends is getting married and e sent me his foto along with the would-be. The would-be was dressed in a traditional sari with all the jewels bedecknig her torso and even some sparles on her face.
She was a woman. A full-grown woman.
This unsettles me a bit. As much as a kid callnig me an uncle.
At 28, I still feel very young. My concept of girls is still the - backslapping, beer-mugs clinking and making-out in the back seats of an empty cinema hall- kind . A woman overwhelms me.

Every day I perhaps become more bitter or wiser (or probably both are the same thing), but there is this restlessness taht refuses to settle down. Inspite of the fact that each passing day makes the fact of my ultimate non-impact more obvious. But somewhere I still feel the fire. The only thing holding me back, and perhaps a generation is -
1. the fear of poverty (no matter how rich some pals are making it, I still feel this underlying fear very strongly, esp. in friends coming from middle class bkgrnd. )
2. unwarranted peer pressure (esp. strong for those graduating from "premier" institutes
3. the kind of unreal, hyper-hyped, over-paid corp. work taht we do that alienates us from true human reality and art

I see this gonig only two ways.

Either I will leave my MBA career and do something in the next couple of years.
Or, I will push my head deeper into the grinder and die silently.

A moment passes
An energy drains off
I sigh
I think it's gonig to be the latter

Cruel Intentions

Of all the shitload of teen movies to come out in the recent years, it is this adaptation of "Dangerous Liasons" that has interested me. The film revolves around the amoral duplicity in the lives of super-rich kids and their games.
See it if you stil haven't. Nice treatment and an amazingly good-looking cast.

What lies beneath

I can never be a "great" man. I am a terrible listener. My ears only prick at the unusual. A man tellnig me 10 great places to invest in tomorrow so that I can reap 100% a week afterwill lose me. But if he mentions just a little about a friend who shits standing up, I am all ears.

Since childhood, my fascination has been two fold - stories and the people in those stories. I like seeing people. The way they move, scratch and mutter. I discovered this when a friend from school met me last month and told me this. In IIMB, I had a guy named Anurag Hans sitting next to me and he followed the same interest. We had a whale of a time discussing why everybody wore the clothes they had worn to the class then, which of the guy might turn out to be a wife-beater, dear old Vibhor Kumar and other odd topics.

Now that I have started clicking a few, I find that it's again people that interest me. Caught unawares. I hate getting fotografed and fotografing people striking a pose. A digitalSLR gives me the freedom of keep on clicking till the person drops the pose and gets oblivious to my antics and gives me something more soulful.

Here is a collage of people who have interested me in the past 2 months and whom I have clicked.

Top - San, Nilanjan, San, Srijit, Prachi, Me (clicked accidentally)
Middle - Prachi, Prachi, Ronjon Da, the very handsome and very young Raheem, my favorite subject - Rajeev
Bottom - San, Vibhas, Gulshan, Tara, Vibhas, Tammy

The need to be seen

A friend who professes to be above base-human desires and hubris (if this was not pride itself!), inadvertently let his slip show yesterday. We were discussing a celebrity and not very flattering at that. My friend told me that he'd met this start once and, with a touchof pride, had a photograph clicked enselmble.

I've met some celebrities also. And tho' I don't live in the shadow of those events, I still wonder - that did they affect me even for a little while thereafter? Did I feel elated by an aura of celebrityhood (the phenomenon of strangers pointing and gaping at you from across the street instead of just ignoring you) experienced second-hand? Did I make more of a casual meeting with a comedian who rarely makes me laugh, a thspian who does, a singer who brays just because the no. of people knowing the guy-girl outratioed those konwing me by a factor of 10000:1?

Another seemingly related point. Since I have started clicking strangers, I find the ratio of people interested in getting fotografed to those indifferent to be huge. Sometimes with an enthusiasm which is difficult to explain since it's very clear that they're never even going to see the foto.

Why do we all have this craving, this need to be noticed?