My attempt at a movie review- My Name Is Khan

I just went and saw My Name Is Khan, Karan Johar's latest film starring none other than THE Khan, Shah Rukh.

Ironically, I think the entire hype that the Shiv Sena created by rallying against Shah Rukh Khan and threatening to boycott the film was the biggest boon to the producers, and a higher ticket-seller than any publicity stunts they could have possibly attempted.

Rizwan Khan is a muslim from a small town in India, who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome (a variation of autism). He has a caring mother and a perfectly normal younger brother who is jealous of all the attention Rizwan gets. He goes to the US for higher studies, and as soon as their mother passes away, Rizwan joins him there, in San Fransisco.

It is here that he meets, falls in love with, and marries Mandira, a single mother of a young boy Sameer. The problem is that Mandira is a Hindu (I know, cliches galore... but in this modern day and age, the movie plays down the opposition to their match).

Then, in the midst of all this drama, 9/11 happens! Being a muslim in the USA isn't safe anymore, blah blah blah. A bunch of American kids beat up Sameer and he dies. Mandira is heartbroken, and blames it all on the surname she got when she married Rizwan KHAN. She asks Rizwan to leave, and in her fit of anger and grief, tells him not to come back till he says the words "My name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist." to none other than the president of the United States. Khan sets out on a journey across the country, following president Bush to all his various appointments, trying to get a glimpse of the man so he can say the magic words and go back to his wife. Along the way, he meets several interesting people, among them an African American mother-son duo, who he later (somehow in the middle of the whole movie) goes back to save from a hurricane in the small town of Wilhemina, Georgia.

Again, in the midst of ALL this, the presidency changes hands, and Khan finally meets president Obama and says the golden words, "My name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist"

Oh, did I mention he gets the wife back in between? There's just so many "major turning points" in the movie, enough to make one dizzy!

That, in a slightly huge nutshell, is the story of the movie My Name Is Khan.

I'm not trying to belittle anyone or put anyone down, and the acting performances were actually quite good. Also, the film has a nice message, albeit one which seems to flit in and out of the movie from within the many layers of themes it is buried under.

I may even go so far as to say the autism angle might have been used to make the movie seem a little less unrealistic, as it is quite hard to imagine someone with all their mental faculties intact doing the things that Shah Rukh's character does in the movie.

If you do watch the movie or have already seen it, I think you'll understand what I mean.

The movie was...... interesting, to say the least. It showed me that there is a very fine line between a great movie and a terrible movie, as it seemed to continuously jump back and forth across this line, as if with a skipping rope. There were a lot of relevant human themes, too many of them actually, and the fact that the director took this mish-mash of emotional, controversial topics ALL TOGETHER and still managed to produce quite a moving film is rather commendable, in my opinion.

Playing along with the tag-line of the movie, I would like to end by saying:

My name is Iyengar, and I do not do Yoga.

Don't bury your FACE in that BOOK

Okay, now I'm going to attempt to tackle an FAQ by all people over the age of forty (Especially parents of teenagers, or rather, especially INDIAN parents of urbanized Indian teenagers)

And that question would be,

"What do you kids do for so much time on facebook?"

Well, at first my answer was the same as most other people my age: "You won't understand, Mom, you're old."

But then, I decided to implement the term I keep hearing thrown around in my Sociology class, and tried to "take an objective view" of the whole thing.

So why IS our generation so hopelessly addicted to social networking sites in general (and facebook in particular)?

Well, what was originally started as a way for people to keep in touch has now become so much more than that. Because the only people I "keep in touch" with are the people I see everyday! So that kind of defeats the whole purpose, doesn't it?

Here's what I usually do as soon as I log onto my facebook page:

1. Check all my notifications (for the uninitiated, this means I check who's commented on my pictures, posted on my wall, sent me a sheep, etc. etc. etc.)
2. Look at my home page, where the Live Feed shows me everything thats going on in everyones virtual lives (notice I used the word virtual, but the lines between that and reality are slowly getting blurred)
3. Facebook-stalk my friends (which involves going to their profile, seeing EVERYTHING they have been doing and EVERYONE they have been interacting with, commenting on anything I find interesting etc.etc.)
4. The facebook-stalking leads me to other peoples pictures, posts etc., some of whom I don't even know.
5. Chat with people who are online (Again, these "people" are usually the ones I met ten minutes ago, and hang out with on an hourly basis)
6. Then, when I'm out of pages to mindlessly stare at or sarcastic comments for my friends' posts and have said "LOL" without meaning it a million times in the chat windows, I turn to the applications.
7. These include checking my fantasy football league, playing poker and trying my hand at miniature video games.
8. Some people are involved in weird stuff like building farms, creating a virtual mafia empire, and making their own aquarium, but I consider myself too cool for such frivolous pursuits (I know, what a hypocrite, right?).
9. There are also numerous pages on all topics under the sun which one can "become a fan" of, right from 'sleeping late' to 'waking up late' to 'sleeping all day' to 'not sleeping at all' to 'pissing the teachers off' to 'pissing the principal off' to every single hang-out-worthy place in the city/country/world to shoes to bags to puppies to kittens to....... well, you get my drift. Again, I consider myself too cool to become a fan of these innumerable pages, though I will admit to having crossed over to the dark side in the past.

I even have relatives constantly facebook-stalking me, and teasing me about any and every girl who is in any pictures with me, or comments on any of my posts. Its quite irritating sometimes, but I've accepted it, because hey, that's what you get for putting your entire life out there for the world to browse through. And to those relatives (who are probably reading this blog right now) I say don't take it personally, I'm just trying to prove a point :P

There's just so much to DO! You can never get bored when you're on facebook! (though that's started to happen to a lot of us as well, you'd be surprised)

And I believe the reason for this is that our generation has a CONSTANT need for stimulation. What's more, the stimulus needs to be ever-changing, because the immense amount of technology we interact with has programmed us ALL to have miniscule attention spans. (I think the whole world is going to have Attention Deficit Disorder soon. Seriously.)

We have grown up multitasking, and have the innate ability to have twenty things on our minds at once, something which earlier generations didn't and find hard to fathom.

This, my friends, is exactly the purpose that I think facebook serves. There's so many different things to do, and so many ways to do them, that we don't need anything else.

And it's actually kind of sad and a little bit scary, because we are slowly and steadily shifting our entire life to the virtual world, and I'm worried that the situation may deteriorate to an extent where we cannot cope with reality.

But the fact remains that this IS our reality now, or at least something pretty close to it.

So now I'm going to go back to my facebook home page, which has been open in another window all this time, and stalk somebody.....

Until the next post! :)

Rishi

My house of cards

I have recently started a new hobby during my seemingly endless free time: building card houses! I got the idea from my cousin, and found it to be an excellent exercise in concentration and patience, and even, to some extent, a great way to develop mediocre architectural skills! :P

So far, I've build a few card houses, a card castle, a twin tower of cards ( well, almost) and even a card colosseum!

When I sat back and thought about it, I realised that this apparently frivolous pursuit of mine can teach you a lot about life, if you choose to learn. So here's a list of the things I've learnt so far. Many of them may sound cliched to you, but it's MY blog and I can write whatever I want :D

1. With a large number of like-minded people, great things can be achieved. (A single card can't even stand on its own, but the more cards you add, the bigger your house will be)
2. If you fall down, just stand up again! Who knows, you may go even further this time. Failure isn't the end of the world.
3. You've gotta work with what you have. If you don't believe it's good enough, you might be surprised ( But if you do, then you definitely won't be).
4. The top layer is always the flimsiest. It's what there is deep down that holds everything else up.
5. Don't be too proud or afraid to ask for help. You get the job done faster and better, and you also have more fun. You might have to share credit, but the end result usually produces more than enough credit to share.
6. Never get too overconfident. Just when you think you're done and begin celebrating before completing the very last step, everything you worked for can come crashing down in an instant.
7. If one, layer, level, or side of the card-house falls, don't knock the entire thing down in frustration. What I mean to say is, don't give up hope when you face minor setbacks. Just backtrack to the point you slipped up at, and begin from there. Why would you want to do TWICE the work when you could have dont only ONE AND A HALF TIMES the work?
8. Life, like the house of cards, is fragile. Don't waste it taking stupid, unnecessary risks, because you never know when a gust of wind might blow your way.
9. On the other hand, don't waste your life sitting in a 'deck'. Which card do you think is better, the one who has been flat the whole time, or the one who has stood at the top, balancing on its edge?
10. It is possible for ANYONE to accomplish incredible things if they have the determination and willpower. When the house is finished, it doesn't matter whether the cards at the top are Kings, Queens and Aces or 5s, 6s and 7s.
11. And lastly, I think it's good to have expectations, but don't rely on them too much. Most of my card houses, many of my poems and even this particular piece of writing, turned out so much bigger and better than I thought they would be! This is why I feel that we should be striving, right until our last breath, to be something more than what we already are.

Wow, this is one ginormous post!!! And to think I got all this from a house of cards. Who would've thunk? :)

Hi

I am Rishi Iyengar and this is my blog.

Just to be clear, you may have been misled by the name, but this is not a blog about Yoga techniques, nor is it some kind of South Indian matrimony site :P

It's just a collection of thoughts that run through my (sometimes immature) mind, and as the title suggests, it is basically things about the world that strike me as worth writing.

Hope you guys enjoy it. Happy Reading! :)