A taste of the senses

If you ever want to feel utterly helpless and feel emotionally spent by the end of it, this is the experience you would want to read about. I mean in a good way. In fact, a bloody fantastic way!

My friends and I had the opportunity to visit this restaurant at Inorbit Mall, Hyderabad called Dialogue in the Dark. I'm aware that this concept isn't totally novel. However, I believe, in this day and age, what with the first thing we do when we wake up being looking at our phones, a dine-in meal in utter darkness is an experience worth leaving phones, spectacles and watches at the door.

The picture outside the door said 'Your senses make your world beautiful... It's time to awaken them.' There couldn't be a better sentence that would describe the experience we had at the restaurant.

Let me start from the beginning. When we left all our belongings in a locker outside the restaurant, we weren't really sure what we could expect out of a generic looking reception, where we were given some general directions and taken into the restaurant. That's what it was all about, though. We were to leave our sight at the door, with our attitude that we would be able judge everything we see.

We were slowly seated at a table. Rajender, our guide, remembered all our names and even turned to us correctly. With a completely blind staff, it's their impeccable training and customer service that has build this brand for the company. The food that we were served was, however, not anything to really write home about.

The highlight of our meal, however, was something that we probably paid for unwittingly: an opportunity for a conversation. We had been drowning in a sea of assignments, internship applications and career choice questions when we happen to go to the mall looking for a bite to eat. The absence of anything but the sound of each other's voice and a sense of proximity didn't bring up difficult or stimulating conversations. It did, however, change something between us. Like a non-verbal can of fresh orange juice was opened and was taking us along in its cascade of imagination. We asked each other where we thought we were. We let our imagination run wild! We could make that dark little restaurant any thing we wanted, as long as it lived in our imagination. The feeling of having this kind of power of imagination has left me high on the experience.

I cannot imagine all people being able to appreciate this restaurant equally. However, if you like new experiences and are comfortable sitting in utter darkness, do make sure to go here. Dialogue in the Dark has many branches around the world and can be experienced in a very similar manner in most of them.

I'm glad to have gotten this opportunity and want to wish you good luck if you choose to visit the restaurant!

Doomed to fail

What if you know your relationship with a friend is doomed to fail?

You care too much to organically let things happen and you blame yourself for their sadness.

You stay away.

You don't want to be brave and accept that you need them. Just the sound of their voice makes you want to do everything they say and you thoroughly despise yourself for letting them have so much control over you.

You stay away.

You hurt them but you think they are better off. Actually, all you are doing is setting them up to becoming more cynical.

You understand their vulnerability, the one that they are too proud to admit. So, you don't suggest it at all. This is one person you know is enough for you and you feel like even if all the wonderful people weren't there, the absence of this one person would tear you apart.

This scares the shit out of you. So?

You stay away.

You think you are doing this for your own good. Are you really? You know you've hurt them but you don't know how to make it right.

You are too scared to admit how much they mean to you lest they are scared away themselves. So, what do you do?

You do the whole god-damn thing again. You make them feel like you don't care. It all goes over again.

You stay away.

You are doomed to fail.

What do you do?

Education and Empathy

There is a very popular Kannada proverb that, when translated, says, 'Travel or read'. Understanding the diversity of our environment, either by reading different stories or experiencing them, educates us to better accept and empathise with people around us.

Among various other philosophies that educate and guide people to live their lives in certain ways, in my opinion, this particular proverb encompasses the essence of knowledge the best. In my experience as a volunteer at various educational facilities, a wide scope of travel and reading helps not just in broadening one's horizon, but also in making better decisions that impact other human beings.

Unfortunately, this requires a lot of disposable resources and there are many talented people in the world who do not get the opportunity to explore their talent in various arenas because of a lack of resources.

Fund-raising is one activity, but the real lack of resource amongst us, today, is a lack of empathy. It stops us from providing the right things to the right people at the right time. Again, this is a vicious cycle of lack of knowledge and empathy that keeps repeating itself over and over again.
Even in large organisations, with access to so much information, a lack of knowledge is very common.

As a trainer and mentor in my previous organisation, I met with many people who had wasted years thinking that there could be nothing they could do to solve their problem, when all they needed was a little education. This could very well translate to me and my lack of knowledge for various things.

What is important, though, is that while a situation cannot be understood with the resources one already has, seeking new possibilities is a must, and this needs a lot of confidence. Let me stop right here or I may go into another tangent of how belief in an object makes it more true than when the object is not known to exist, even if it does.

The point of this whole write-up is that while education is important, the resources to access it is what we as a society must be able to provide for each other.

Life experience without work experience

Heartache bothers us all.

Whenever, and I promise I don't mean this lightly, I feel like I've begun to get attracted to someone, it soon turns out that they've been feeling not so hot towards me or even noticed how I feel. The latter is probably because I'm super insecure and awkward and may be too scared to actually project it.

So, what happens when I see that they don't feel the same or that they do but for someone else? A cycle of jealousy, 'why not me?', self-hate, general hate, self-pity, self deprecation and finally, acceptance of my short-comings runs all over again like a film in a broke film theatre with dying equipment and scenes get stuck.

I'm in 'self-hate' right now. So, to detach myself from the situation and be writing this is quite the challenge but an interesting one at that. Yeah, yeah. There was someone and that did not do too well for me. While I feed the lonely void in my heart with this mindless incessant typing, let me tell you something that I wish someone tells me every time I get into this situation: "It will always suck when you see your goal and find the roadmap, but, you don't have the night lights or the support system to realise the utility of the roadmap to get straight to the goal." This requires both divergence and convergence of thought. In business, like in any aspect of life, one has to back off and really see the big picture.

With the guy I had a crush on, it hurts when I see that it's going elsewhere. So, all I had to do was step back, take a deep breath and actually look at it as a human thing while making a decision to manage the emotional connection while keeping certain emotions in check.

Yudh - Episode 19 review. Beware of minor spoilers.

The penultimate episode starts to unravel much of what was setup in week one and two. I'm going to ignore weeks three and four because it felt like more of a filler than a continuation of the story.

Since this was the episode before the finale, it was rightly high-in-action and had a lot of drama. Some of the reveals were interesting and some just weren't. However, this episode got better towards the end.

In this episode, Rishi's character, although with lesser screen time than usual, got an interesting push, further than his has ever been. Ajatashatru and Rishi were, in this episode, the most interesting characters. Although, they could've cast a better actor for the role of Ajatashatru, he does manage to put up the underplaying mastermind character decently. Of course, the actor seems more uncomfortable in this character than in his "Taruni's Fiancé" role. His portrayal was, however, much better in episode eighteen than episode nineteen.

I, particularly, enjoyed the Inspector in this episode, who not only exhibits great levels of intelligence, but adds some comic relief to the whole show. Zakir Hussain as Anand was great, as usual, but his scenes were actually overshadowed by the Inspector.

There were two scenes where I was surprised with the level of violence shown. One was the scene with Anand's son trying to play with his mother with a real gun and the other where Ajatashatru kicks Taruni in the stomach multiple times. Both these scenes, I feel, did not deserve the amount of blasts and kicks it received. If it was just an exaggeration to raise the number of viewers or a genuinely required aspect, it is yet to be discovered and I will reserve my opinion over it till I see the finale.

Based on the previews of the finale, it seems like most of the episode will be a face-off between Yudh and Ajatashatru. What it really is will be seen in the finale of Yudh, a promising yet mildly prolonged TV mini-series, which will help other producers to take up scripts that are much more challenging and engaging than the regular hum-drum of Indian Television (CID plays for, approximately, six hours a weekday!).

Robin Williams - The Genie.

I remember the first time I ever watched Alladin. Despite the very handsome Ali, the demure Jasmine, the very clever and dangerous Jaffar, the wise-cracking parrot and the utterly lovable monkey, there was one character that brought charm and heart to the movie. The Genie was crazy, classy, extremely intelligent, funny, sassy and a downright whack-job. He was also Ali's best friend and shared amazing chemistry with the magic-carpet. The Genie was noble, humble and understanding. At  age seven, I would've done anything to be his best-friend!

I was such a big fan of the Genie that when, seven years later I had the opportunity to own it's DVD set, my younger cousins, nieces and nephews would come over to visit, I would always coax them into watching Alladin, the movie, thinking it necessary education to know and understand the Genie, like a silly rite-of-passage with me. If they found Ali more fascinating than the Genie, I would get cross wondering why they wouldn't see the brilliance of the blue angel, shifting shapes and dancing proudly with his paunch out! They would wonder the same about me, though.

Years after watching countless Robin Williams movies, the cheesy, the whacky, the really bad ones and the brilliant, and while looking up a movie a friend had recommended, I stumbled upon Robin Williams' IMDB page. It said "Died: August 11, 2014 (Age 63)" right above an image of him with an Oscar. I didn't quite process it at first glance until I saw the date. It was yesterday! A whole day since the blue and hook-nosed genius passed and the world was continuing to turn. The wars that were being fought were continuing on, the unhealthy bureaucracy of various governments continued to exist, planes crashed, people died, people were born, babies cried, my mother continued to nag me about all the things I was supposed to do but haven't. A Genie's voice had ceased to exist but it's words and humour hadn't.

After all the singing, dancing, screaming, laughing, stoically watching, times of Robin Williams, in my mind, I cannot think of a more perfect fit than the Genie to the genius Robin Williams. Of course, there have been Rathbones/Cumberbatches to Sherlock Holmeses, Tennants to Doctor Whos, Amitabh Bachchans to Vijay Deenanath Chauhans, but Robin Williams was the human incarnation of the Genie. He will always be that for every child and adult who has grown up falling in love over and over again with that movie. Thank you, Robin Williams, for colouring mine and a billion other childhoods that fun colour of blue! Hope you find immense joy wherever you go on from here.

Yudh - Episode 17 review. Beware of minor spoilers :-)

The last week of an Indian mini-series, a first after a long time! Yudh's seventeenth episode promises much and delivers quite a bit of that chunk! Ha! Surprise! Yes, after a long time, an episode of Yudh aired that wasn't just tolerable, but was good!

In fact, this episode was so good that my dad, my Yudh watching companion, and I were, quite literally, on the edge of our seats. This episode was so good that the actors in supporting roles, for whom there was either no real purpose in the show or their potential was not being fully utilised, fit perfectly! Now, this episode was so good that it set up for all the big plot bits to be fully solved for the story. Finally, this episode was so good, that, in fact, it solved the most dragged out bit of storyline in this entire series, the mining plant story!

Thank god for the dramatic crescendo beginnings and endings create, because if not for that, I'm sure the story would have been stretched further into areas not meant for the show to enter, just like the countless TV shows on Indian Television today.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui, an actor I hoped would join the show earlier, was barely on screen and seems to have done it more as a favour to Anurag Kashyap than for anything else. However, I hardly seemed to have missed him this episode due to the back-in-form Mr. Bachchan and, surprisingly, Pavail Gulati.

Speaking of Pavail Gulati (Rishi Sikarwar), I especially liked the way the makers went about solving the Mining Plant plot problem. It was subtle, unspoken at times and, most importantly, an opportunity they grabbed than creating a long-winded melodramatic moment!

After two weeks of mostly mediocre acting and confused writing, Yudh broke out of the shell, tonight, and returned to its more straightforward story-telling of Week 1 and Week 2 (first 8 episodes). Hopefully, this trend continues and this last week of Yudh leave it at a better position than the previous week.