End of an Era...

We all knew that it was inevitable, but we could not see it coming. So quick, I mean. To retire or not, faced with this hameletian quandary, at last, the Maharaja took the plunge! He is the first of the pack, rest will follow soon. Playing over a decade against top opposition, piling runs and accumulating records, leaving nothing to conquer but only their lofty goals, they have come a long way. But as things start, so do they end. It was always a matter of who would blink first. They are not just a bunch of cricketers, they inspired a generation. Kumble, Sachin, Rahul, Saurav, they become more than a player when they become men in blue! Waking up at 4.30 am to follow their histrionics at Perth, burning mid night oil to see them fighting out at Barbados, ah!, those were the days. It seems only yesterday when we were cursing Indian tail-enders when they fell to gather those 18 runs in Chennai, after Sachin had played his heart out. Sachin's back to back centuries at Sharjah to win us the cup, Saurav's majestic 183 at Taunton, Kumble's perfect 10, Dravid the Wall's running around the Adelaide ground with moist eyes draped with the national flag after a superb batting display, all goes in a blur. Those were without a doubt the golden period of Indian Cricket History. The nostalgic feeling keeps coming back, may be due to their career span colluding with the best days for our cricket following days.

There is no doubt about Ganguly being the best captain we had in both form of the games, but his legacy does not just ends there. He instilled self-believe in the team who was reeling from the match fixing scandal and helped them to form a lethal cohesive force. That here we had a captain, who was not willing to buckle down under pressure, was determined to give it back as good as he got, not just helped the team to rise gradually through the charts but also slowly instilled killer instinct in the team which was missing since time immemorial. The seeds were sown then, and the fruits were harvested when India did the unthinkable by reaching World Cup finals and going one ahead and winning 20-20 final.

Not long ago i thought it was very unbecoming of Ganguly to come on national channel and almost beg to give him one more chance. 'Hi mera naam Saurav Ganguly hai, kahin aap mujhe bhoole to nahin hain.' It looked hilarious in a sense then. But now looking at bigger picture, it all settles down nicely. It takes more than just determination and courage to come back time and again to the highest level, prove your distractors wrong time and again. After all if you're not willing to risk it all, then you don't want it bad enough. For a player nothing is more important than the legacy he leaves behind. Ganguly being already touted as the greatest captain of the modern times, a superb one-day opener amassing over 10000 runs, a steady test player, practically he had nothing left to conquer. Money surely was not a motivator. But then champion players do not play for obvious reasons. They do not compete with others but have their own demons to conquer. Anything less than the goals set for themselves is an under achievement for them.

It's a part of the folklore now how Ganguly fairytale comeback reached the crescendo when he stuck superb 239 against Pakistan at Bangalore, after he had bailed out India in South Africa and Australia. One could not but help noticing the tinge of irony at Ganguly being made the scapegoat every single time, when all through his captaincy he supported his bunch of young players through thick and thin. Not for nothing players like Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan and Sehwag swore by his name! But all credit to him that despite being disappointed, he was not flustered. It is very convenient to forget that he dropped down batting order in the star studded line up despite being the captain and thus could easily have batted up in the order. Almost all the time in test matches, he had to stick around with tail-enders salvaging some pride, not to mention the match itself or look for some quick runs in order to call for declaration. Easily his average could have been a bit healthy but does he really care when his team is winning. In one day also he dropped himself down from a highly effective opening partnership with Sachin in order to accommodate Sehwag in the team. It is not just fashionable to trash Ganguly, it has also become mandatory so, it seems these days. I just laugh and get out of the brawl when my friends start the senior bashing! I cannot stop smirking when they in a jest try to fill their places in the team with current heart throb like Yusuf Pathan and Rohit Sharma. After all realism is the inevitable casualty of irrational exuberance. But to be effective in a series and to be productive over a decade, at different venues, against testing circumstances and fierce opposition when they have sized you up all these years and have come up with stringent plans to contain you, ensure your place among the greatest.

Sauvav Ganguly’s cricketing career represents a triumph of spirit. A fighter to the core, he traded new paths, crossed milestones where few had gone before, proved his doubters wrong time and again. Always perceived as playing into the hands of sycophantic coterie, he had to turn the clock every now and then. Playing in such a taxing and distracting environment, in his own words “with a gun pointing at your head”, he has achieved more than mere mortals. “The things which Greg says don’t faze me. I know what I can do out there. I don’t have to prove people wrong. That’s not why I am playing. I am playing to challenge myself and see if I can do it again,” said Sampras, when asked about to comment on Greg Rudeski’s comment that he was a spent force. On second thought this could be Dada’s word too!!

“Those whom the Gods wish to destroy”, Cyril Connolly , once wrote in a bout of self-confession ,”they first call promising. ” Right from the debut century at the Mecca of cricket to being enshrined as God of off-side, Ganguly has been hinting that, you can destroy a man, but cannot defeat him. We will miss you Dada and your audacity to challenge best in the business. Thanks for all the memories.

When Ed Smith in his wonderful diary, On And Off The Field wrote, "perhaps failure, not success, sends us in unusual directions", he was not far from truth, atleast for me. Here I was dejected by a personal failure and brooding over my future. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, the situation was "hopeless, but not serious." And voila, comes a respite, in the form of the magical world of movies. When Sandra Bullock was mouthing , "Beginnings are usually scary and endings are usually sad, but it's everything in between that makes it all worth living" in Hope Floats, she was not just putting the screens across the world on fire but was also igniting my heart with new desires, newer thoughts. Needless to write, instantly it got my attention and slowly I started realizing that they are more than a medium to tell the stories.

When I was being mesmerized by the wonderful cinemas, I thought about sharing it with others who have not been so fortunate of being introduced to this magical field. I mean, it’s almost a sacrilege to live a lifetime and not to watch movies like Casablanca, Wild Strawberries or Seven Samurai.

So here I have made an effort to list some of the movies which I have seen lately, which I think rather feel, given a chance, you people should not miss a chance to see them. But then they are personal choices and even if I am confuted, take some of your time to appreciate the efforts which have gone into making them. A person has got to see a bad movie once in a while to be thankful for a good one.

The movie which was one of the first to catch my fancy was One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, now I always knew that Jack Nicholson was a fine actor, but you need to see this movie to believe why he is rated so high. He is just too good to portray himself as a free-spirited, ebullient, rebellious convict. His heroic, crazed struggles against oppression, his unbreakable spirit, his openness to embrace the life strikes a chord instantly and leaves indelible memories.

Now almost all of us have seen Godfather, haven’t us? And when I thought that this was a complete movie in itself and nobody would ever dare to deal with these topics and show himself in poor light (like our own RGV who dared to make Sholay, a cult movie, and how did he fare needs not to be written. But then at least he tried). Coming to the point, so when I saw GoodFellas, a gangster film, I had my own reservations. How ignoramus of me to think like that. It traces the life of an aspiring mobster Henry Hill (Liotta), and when the movie starts with the lines "As far back as I can remember I've always wanted to be a gangster", you know that you are for a ride for an awesome movie. And then I fell in love with Robert DeNiro. Needless to say, my next movie was always going to be his masterclass. And what better then Taxi Driver, and here if I fail to mention the fabulous director that Martin Scorsese is, will be a sin! It’s about a about a violent, alienated, unfocused, psychotic NYC taxi driver who dislikes the hellish society around him. With superlative performances, this is a movie to watch. Needless to say it won an academy award for the best movie.

And as I was going through movies, along came To Kill A Mockingbird, and my ignorance that The Lords Of The Rings is as good as an adaption one will ever get, was shattered and how ! An adaptation of Harper Lee's best-selling novel, the movie quite remarkably weaves the children’s carefree days, their nightmares, racial discrimination and a doting father, who lets his action rather do the talking then words. A wonderful movie especially when you have not read the novel.

Moving to the 90’s defining movies; some of my favorites are The Usual Suspects, Unforgiven, The Shawshank Redemption, The Silence of the Lambs and Fargo. The list grows as days pass. Those who like movies portraying crime with a bit of black humour thrown in, just cannot afford to miss this one. Fargo is a tale of greed and crime, aptly adjudged Best Picture of 1996 at Academy Award. The Usual Suspects is another crime thriller, which keeps you guessing till the end. Unforgiven is a masterpiece by the actor and director Clint Eastwood.

Some of the movies which use legends and myth to great effects are Big Fish (a memorable line from the movie, “They say, when you meet the love of your life, time stops, and that's true. What they don't tell you is that when it starts again, it moves extra fast to catch up.”, how true!), The Green Mile (an amazing story with Tom Hanks in lead role, and a power healer god-gifted black guy incarcerated at a place called Green Mile), Shaun Of The Dead, The Man from Earth, Hot Fuzz, Pans Labyrinth(the dichotomy between little girl’s real world and fantasy world is too good).

The recent movies which have caught my fancy would be 88 Minutes(brilliant Al Pacino), Bucket List(you always expect a great movie when two great actors come together, Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman in this case), There Will be Blood, No Country For Old Men, Juno(an affecting performance from Ellen Page ), Into the Wild(a true story about an itinerant guy, who drops out of college to live life in wilderness, roaming like a free bird without a thing in the world to worry, my personal favorite).

The list does not get complete without mentioning movies from my favorite genre, i.e. romance and comedy. The 40 year old virgin, rates very high on this list. The Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants, Sideways (about an obfuscated guy, wines and some more wines and discovering live along with it), Darjeeling Limited, There is Something About Mary, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb(A Peter Sellers masterpiece,” Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”- from the movie), Annie hall (urban romantic comedy about a New York couple's neurotic love affair), 27 Dresses, The Waitress.

Those looking to enamor a suitable partner, do not need any other charade to watch romantic movies. “You make me want to be a better man” from Jack Nicholson in “As Good As It Gets” or phrasing the brilliant line from the flick Good Will Hunting, “Sometimes i wish that i had never met you, so i could go to sleep at night not knowing there was someone like you out there” will be just enough to save oneself from the anguish of romantic ordeal. And those who always have wondered “What is it about powerful women and shitty men?” would like to watch recent movie Perfect Stranger. Those looking for some inspiration to their romance should watch The Notebook and Jerry Maguire. Romantic musical movies which are worth a mention here would be Across the Universe, August Rush (a must see for music freaks, lookout for the overture from the genius prodigy!), Dead Poets Society (“No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.”- Robbie Williams impersonating as poet Keats). Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (a bewitching tale of crime and thriller with a great deal of humour thrown in between), Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (I was pretty surprised when they played two Dev Anand songs in background!), Superbad(super comedy) are some good oeuvre.

I have always believed that the guys who like animation have a child in their heart, which is kind of good! I have not seen a great deal of movies in this genre apart from some quite popular ones like series of Shrek and Lion King, Ice Age. But few of worth mentioning are Wallace and Gromit-The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Horton hears a Who, Spirited Away, Monsters, Inc. and Ratatouille.

Huh, it seems this blog is going to take too much space on the web! Coming to the last section of this write-up, it would be a bit unfair if I fail to mention movies out of Hollywood domain. There are numerous movies which have moved me to tears, helped me to break into laughter or a prompt smile. One such movie would be Before the Rain, the movie starts with lines as “Time never dies, Circle is never round. And guess what, when you are through the movie you really know for sure that Circle is never round!!” Then there is a thriller called Run Lola Run, with three different versions of an incident, all more sensational than its predecessors. Although I believe most of us might have seen The Lives Of Others, for those who have read this blog till here, this is one movie you cannot afford to miss. It’s about a man, with less authority, going out of the way to save a writer who is being accused of being a traitor during 2^nd word war. Terrific movie. Pans Labyrinth is a wonderful picture of fantasy woven with gruesome truth of war. Wonderful depiction and portrayal of characters. La Vien En Rose, a bio-pic about singer Edith Piaf, is a powerful movie about music and struggle in her life. Other movies which I watched and enjoyed are LaHaine(French), Oldboy(Korean), The Kite Runner(Afghani, those who are not into book reading), The Beautiful Country, set in 1990, keeping alive hope, humanity and generous spirit and Lilja 4-ever.

While there is no denying that movies are a great entertainer. But it’s impinge just does not stop there. It cuts across the barriers; brings some burning issues to the fore, confronts some serious stigmas and gladdens reclusive souls. Cinema is as art where either we can blossom amid it’s beauty or wither in its drabness. But whatever it is, like death and taxes, there is no escaping them. They have a profound influence in our lives, some that leave indelible mark on our consciousness, others blink-and-you-miss ones do not do much. But ostensibly, their influence upon individuals or society cannot be undermined. Similarly the movies are made due to various reasons, be it for lure of lucre, satisfying creative urge or to make people sit up and take notice of certain issues. Whatever be it, keep on dreaming, munching popcorn and watching great flicks. After all “What is life, without the pursuit of a dream?” - Vanilla Sky.