Ae dil hai mushkil - I want my 120 bucks back!

After all the controversy ADHM is finally here. And Karan Johar creates another cliche ridden drama about rich people. His previous film, Student of the year was how rich kids go to school. ADHM is what these rich kids do as adults. *Spoilers ahead*

The plot is the usual. A story of unrequited love shown in the most emotionless way possible. Ayan (Ranbir Kapoor) is a filthy rich spoilt baby. He is in London doing his MBA.The only reference to him doing an MBA is a less than 5 second scene where he is shown in a lecture room. The rest of the time he is on vacation in Paris, Lucknow ,Vienna and everywhere else. But Ayan wants to be a singer. (Yes, major throwback to Rockstar) So one day he meets Alizeh Khan (Anushka Sharma) in a club. Alizeh calls for him and they start dancing together, then they randomly start kissing and making out together. And then they remember 'Ohh we have to introduce ourselves' (Right! so open minded know?) Anyway they start chatting and Ayan says he is splurging his dad's assets in London. Alizeh is ummm, she's just there. She's supposedly the youngest of four daughters but has never felt the love that the youngest child gets, (Really?) so she is living on her own in London. And doing what? Who is funding her? Nobody knows. 

Both these bored people are already in relationships. (Great!) Alizeh is dating a doctor her dad roped in for her. But she is still not over her ex, Ali (Fawad Khan) Ayan is with Lisa (Lisa Haydon) I think she was supposed to be like the comedian in the movie. Well, I just felt sorry for her. So these 'oh so cool' people decide to go on a double date, where the girls insult each other and throw red wine (So Hollywood-ish know?) They meet again for a dance sequence in a club. (The breakup song) Suddenly Ayan and Alizeh find their respective partners making out in the loo. (This is Karma!) Ayan is so heart-broken. (I mean how dare they do the exact same thing Alizeh and I did last week? Bloody copy cats!) Alizeh brings about the greatest revelation to him and tells him that he is not in love with Lisa. And to be a real singer he needs to feel real heart-break.(Rockstar again?) With all the unwanted crying and fake heart break the two decide to go to Paris for a vacation in Ayan's private jet. They book a single room because of budget issues (Yeah?) The only thing these two can do in life is go to clubs, sing, dance and quote various lines from KJo's previous movies. They literally did nothing else in the film. All this while Alizeh is clearly trying to friendzone Ayan. But Ayan is relentless he keeps trying to pop out of his friendzone. Why can't you just stay there man? Huh? why ? why? 

Anyway one night whilst they are getting drunk in a club Alizeh suddenly spots her ex. In comes (Ali) Fawad Khan. Wait, you actually tried to ban this movie because of this guy ? Oh Man! This guy is like the best thing in the movie. I mean not his role or anything which is actually quiet non-existent,(Don't know what the fuss was about) but just him. He is so hot.(Totally crushing on him). So Alizeh decides to dump Ayan, ooops, no...friend dump Ayan and go with Ali. (I don't blame her) Days pass and Alizeh is getting married to Ali in Lucknow. Okay fly London to Lucknow. (What happened to your MBA bro?) Alizeh tells Ayan he must come as her parents disowned her and she has nobody else.Okay, then how did you manage a Manish Malhotra lehanga with those gorgeous kundan jewelry? How? How did you manage to pull off the big fat Indian wedding? Who is funding you child? Now, Ayan being the spoilt cry baby starts whining about his feelings, this time right before her wedding. Dude she just wants to be friends. Leave her alone know? So then, Ayan pops the middle finger at Alizeh and leaves. (So cool) He cries on the roads and all the way to the airport. But you feel nothing. Just the background music being slow and mushy.

At the airport he meets Saba ( Aishwarya Rai Bachan) He acts like a creep and a complete retard. But Saba being a Urudu speaking poetess and all, understands his heart-break (now its supposed to be a real one) and gives him her number. Fast forward 3 months and Ayan is in Vienna to visit Saba. He learns she is a sexy divorcee with a great wardrobe, who wants a no-strings attached relationship. And they have a damn good one at that! Their romance gave me nightmares. Eventually Saba introduces Ayan to her ex-husband. And who do you think that is? SRK of course. This is KJo we are talking about , he needs to have stars in cameo roles (Very pointless) SRK comes in and says some recited lines with no expressions and no feelings. He tells Ayan that one sided love is the best feeling in the world. ( Haha. Okay)

Ayan is enlightened by Buddha and finally calls Alizeh over for dinner at Saba's appartment. Oh and she is in Vienna too now. Saba serves wine and cheese! And then they have bread and soup. (Really? This is too much even for Bollywood. Where is my bhel puri and dhal chawal?) Finally Saba dumps Ayan as she realises he still loves Alizeh and she just might be developing feelings for him. Okay bye Ash.

Fast forward two years and Ayan has become a famous singer due to all the fake heart-breaks. He eventually finds out that Alizeh is single again and decides that now his chance has arrived. But no one knows where she is. (No fb, no whatsapp uh?) Anyway Ayan tracks her down even though she asked him to stay away. He finds her looking like Amitabh Bhachan in Paa . And Karan adds another unwanted element into the story. Alizeh has cancer. 4th stage. Why can't she have like kidney failure or heart attack. I would have died of heart attack if I had an Ayan in my life. Why does it always have to be cancer? Anyway Ayan still tries to force himself on her. (She has cancer dude. Have some compassion!) Finally after some breaking and throwing and Alizeh storming off , Ayan realises he has to behave and he probably can only be friends with her. (We believe him because it's been 3 hours and we have to go home) So anyway the movie comes to a painful end, almost like stage 4 cancer. 

Now, the only thing good about the movie was the base story line. But the way Karan tried to convey this message was a huge disaster. I just can't have movies that are this filmy. Nothing was realistic. From Ash's figure to the dance clubs to the lack of other supporting characters in the movie. Karan just moved from his typical Mumbai based fancy houses across the Arabian Sea and decided he will have some chic lofts in Paris and London instead. The film lacks logic.And worse it lacks love, friendship and any kind of feeling. The songs were great though. They are on repeat on my playlist now. Apart from that I can't give you any reason to watch this film. Just don't waste your time.

P.S I wish they had actually banned this film. Not for Fawad Khan but for everyone else in the film, especially Karan Johar. 

Remo- A living nightmare

For most part of the annoyingly long 140 or so minutes, I was cursing myself for wasting time over the same old garbage yet again. Before the release of the movie, in an interview on television I remember hearing Sivakarthikeyan say "Tamil cinema le ippidi oru padamae irundhadu illa. Idhu romba vithiyasamana padam. Kandippa neengalam enjoy panuvinga." Dude? This is the same story that tamil audiences have been watching for centuries. 

Boy sees girl- Boy stalks girl- Girls rejects boy -Girl already has a bf/fiance- Boy still tries for girl- Girl finally falls for boy- Happily Ever after!?!?

So basically our hero SK(SivaKarthikeyan) - what a clever abbreviation of his name, is the usual 'jobless' boy next-door. I am not sure why most of our tamil heroes are portrayed as jobless these days. Apparently jobless men are quiet appealing according to directors. So, obviously our jobless single hero needs two jobless side kicks (Motta Rajendran and Satish) to discuss his love life or the lack of it. Then of course the dramatic Indian mother (Saranya Ponvannan) Did you think there might be a slightest change in her role? Hell! No! She plays the doting mother(for the zillionth time) who feeds her son hot dosas and laments about his joblessness and his jobless friends. 

Now the heroine. Cue Anirudh music, some sudden climatic changes (slow hair-flying breeze) and cupid strikes SK and director says he falls in love with Kavya ( Keerthy Suresh) So now apparently Keerthy Suresh has taken over the dumb- cute- retarded heroine roles from her counter-parts. So as usual what do jobless heroes do ? Stalk girls of course. When will film makers ever learn? This movie takes stalking to a whole new level. And I prefer not to elaborate on that for the sake of world peace. Anyway after what seems like light years of cliched stalking our hero finally musters the courage to creep into Kavya's house where he sees her getting engaged ( Oh no!) to a rich successful business man. (cliche again) Why? Just why ? So obviously this affluent fiance has to be a heartless b*****d of a character whose true colors will be revealed later in the film. 

So anyway, the plot goes on and one day SK auditions for a role in a big budget K.S Ravikumar film. The role requires him to play a nurse. (- 10 to the director for attempting to recreate Avvai Shanmugi) Sadly he is rejected and on his way home (Still dressed up as the nurse) he meets his lady love on the bus. This scene was completely WTF. Why would you scribble your phone number on the palms of a random nurse you meet on the bus along with that annoying smiley? Why does SK say his name is Regina Motwani? (ReMo it seems) Why would you take a selfie with the random nurse again? Why do heroines have to act like they have the IQ of a five year old? Curved lips, widened eyes, prancing about on screen, taking selfies and drawing smiles? Why can't directors portray normal female human beings? Why am I questioning a SivaKarthikeyan movie? 

Did I mention our retarded heroine is a doctor? (face palm) I am sure she got through management quota only. Anyway now the dean of the hospital (Prathap Pothen) gives nurse Remo a job (bigger face palm) So Remo now goes overboard being the nurse. Doing nothing but exaggeratedly tossing a strand of hair and swaying along corridors. Remo also has a few song sequences cropping up for no reason, some children who adore her, some magic shows and a laughable fight sequence between the rich fiance and our suddenly turned Bruce Lee, Remo. We then have the hero's doting mother who somehow believes that the hero should continue his pursual of the retarded heroine even if it means calling off her engagement. 

After all this there is still some time for drama. A kid who needs to be operated will only do so if nurse Remo performs a magic trick.( Am i supposed to Awww?) For f***k's sake why even listen to a 10 year old. Pointless! The trick obviously reveals nurse Remo's true identity. Finally. (I was waiting for this, as this meant the movie was coming to an end. Yaayyy!) Retarded heroine is furious as she was hood winked. So then you would expect her to say goodbye to SK. But no, apparently not. She falls for SK and they live happily ever after. ( Applause) 

The rest of the film team comprise of Anirudh (Again ah ?), PC Sreeram , Resul Pookuty (Why would you rope them in for such a film? ) 

Now the sad part is this movie is a blockbuster hit, which now gives hope for more directors to recreate the same nonsense. Directed at young male audience's this is far from a commercial entertainer. But in so many instances during the film, I could hear a bunch of boys whistling and breaking into applause. Maybe I should consider calling for a Trump campaign to deport these people. Maybe then we can have some sensible and real films. 

Huh? What?

It was a week ago that I was going about reading the newspaper when I came across this shocking yet somewhat laughable headline:

"A Hindu son can divorce his wife for the cruelty of trying to pry him away from his 'pious obligation' to live with his aged parents and provide shelter to them. A son, brought up and given education by his parents, has a moral and legal obligation to take care and maintain the parents, when they become old and when they have either no income or have a meager income."

Okay! I was appalled. I read it slowly again trying to take in every word and understand what exactly the Supreme Court was implying. I am sure all the feminists out there would have had a field day with this one. I am a feminist myself. Not the kind that belittle men but the kind that are looking at empowering women. 

Anyway, firstly the entire judgement or whatever is clearly flawed and very biased. 

Let's get some things sorted first. The world is changing and so is society. Girls are being educated and are slowly but surely making their presence felt in the male dominant society. When I see this visible change happening I am quiet glad. But then there is this,that caused quiet a stir among us women. 

If you read the clause it says it is cruelty to pry(another word that shouldn't be there) him... Clearly the genius people who put this together did not know the meaning of cruelty. How can asking your husband to move away from his parents be cruel? Hello?! We just moved away from ours. We have been moving away from our parents forever.

Okay I know. A girl gets married and she has to move in with her in-laws and husband and be a obedient 'daughter-in-law' .. blah blah blah. 

Okay so why doesn't the rest of the civilized world follow this? A man marries to start a new life and family. A woman is not married off to serve his parents and him which is sadly what most people think a woman's marital duty is. 

Also, it says it is a man's pious obligation ... So apparently court of marriage, you were not aware that our parents educated us too. We have our dreams too. Some of our parents struggled, they took financial loans and educated us so that we can stand on our own feet when we are out into the real world. So don't we have any obligations? So our dads have to slog when they are old and grey because society would not allow his kind daughters to lend a hand? Do we let them suffer?

The article elaborated that in normal circumstances the wife has to live with her husband's family. For God's sake it is 2016. Wake up people. Child-marriage was normal, Sati was normal, female infanticide was normal. Aren't we making some ideal changes slowly? So why cant we change the way this is done?

There is something I would like to put out here. Recently a female acquaintance of mine received a marriage proposal. The families got talking and one of the first things the boys family asked the girl's was " Will your daughter frequently want to visit you? Because it is not so common for us and might be quiet inconvenient for our family" Luckily the girl's side cut them off immediately. I was stunned to hear this. There are still people who think a girl cant even visit her parents after marriage?

Now all of you don't start thinking I am a cliched feminist. I am not suggesting that the husbands have to leave their parents to suffer. But divorce? How can that be fair? How can that be equality? Our parents made us into who we are now. I wouldn't call this a moral obligation but love and gratitude that we all have towards our parents. A wife has as much right to fend for her parents as the husband. Just taking this as far as divorce just does not seem worth it. I think it is way smaller than that. Something that can be sorted out over a family discussion. Giving the weapon of divorce in the husbands hands is what has angered us.

Women are working now, they are bread-winners too. They have to stop being put second to men, and we have to stop with this patriarchal mind-set. There might be some cruelty from the wife to her husband, but surely living away from the parents is not cruelty. 

I am (not) good enough!

I am not good enough. How many times have you had this phrase cross your mind? How many times have you heard people around you say this? 

I am guessing that might have been quiet a number of times? Right?

Now I would like to suggest how to learn to look at things. 

First a given situation is not the same to everyone. Everyone has a different and unique way of perceiving things. One man's trash might be another man's treasure. One man's hate might be another man's love. One man's hell might be another man's heaven. Think about it. 

The way we perceive ourselves might actually be so different from another person's view of us. You might think you are dull and boring but someone else out there might just find you beautiful and fascinating. Because the obvious fact is, any opinion we hold about ourselves is nothing more than our mind playing games with us. Really. 

It is something repeated to ourselves endlessly that it tricks us into mistaking it for a fact. 

So why do we sometimes feel like we are not good enough?

The main suspects I would say are unrealistic portrayal of women/men by the media. The constant buzz of people saying 'be like her, be like him'. We as social beings do that dreadful thing all the time called, comparing ourselves. You might compare yourself to someone thinking they have it all. But the reality might be different than what you perceive and its actually your personal definition of success that is not on par with someone else's.

Our minds are really wonderful things but at the same time scary too. Its the mind that tells us 'No you cannot do that, You are not good enough' Thoughts are just thoughts. They are not facts.

It sadly is a vicious cycle that we get ourselves into. We never begin that dance lesson or apply for that job or ask someone out because we keep feeding this story into us that we cannot until that story actually becomes reality.

So how do we overcome the fear of not being good enough?

It's definitely not going to be easy. It is not simple and will not happen overnight. But it will happen eventually once you start taking conscious effort to block your mind out of those unhealthy and negative thoughts. And when you stop believing everything you think. So every time you find that negative thought creeping in, ask yourself, 'Why not me?'  ' Why him and not me?' 

And the more you question yourself the more you understand that the only person who is standing in your way is you. You're the one who actually has to give permission to yourself to do that thing you did not do cause you thought you cannot.

You cannot hate your way into loving yourself. That just wont work.You need to dust yourself and pick yourself up in times of failure. You need to keep moving forward. Sometimes you have to treat yourself and be proud yourself. You have to love yourself regardless of who you are and where you stand. 

I know it sounds annoyingly simple, But you really are worth more, inside and out, than you give yourself credit for. And you are enough just as you are. 

It's Okay.

Against every bit of advice that has been thrown at you, today I'll propose that : maybe it's okay, maybe it's more than okay. 

Haven't we all gone through that moment in life when we have no idea whatsoever, of what we are doing and in what direction our future is directed? Those moments when we question everything letting our minds run endlessly. Those moments when you feel you graduated from the wrong field, chose an unsatisfactory career path, stuck in a mediocre relationship. The moments that question your very existence.

It's in these moments that you need to stop. Sometimes it's okay to not know. Sometimes it's really okay to not have the answers to those questions. It's okay to be confused and not know the bumpy road ahead. I mean, what can really happen if you didn't know? What is the worst that can happen? Think about it. The worst that can actually happen is that you wouldn't have it all figured out. And you didn't anyway. It's not like not knowing is going to kill you. So it's okay. Really.

Will life ever be certain? Hell, no. I don't think such a thing even exists. And what's the fun in that anyway? It is a good thing to have a vision and want your life to be a certain way but do not forget that there is a lot of uncertainty to it. Maybe the career you have today may change(it might not) or you might suddenly wake up one day without a job. The degree you thought was pointless might just lead you to the best career path. The person you loved today may change tomorrow.

The reality is, nothing is certain. There are gonna be numerous times when we don't have all the answers, and that is when we need to trust ourselves, our heart and our intuition. It's so important to focus on the present. Living for that moment and focusing on filling our lives with the energy and passion that is required to make the best of that day. If you do that it's all going to work out fine in the end.  Life is a mystery and you just have to be okay with that.  Remember, the way to creating your future is living today in the best way possible.