Henry David Thoreau: Wisdom!

I have been following quotes from Henry David Thoreau for a while and now my reading has reached a critical mass for a post here! Without further ado, here are the quotes that I could relate to the most:

About Money/Wealth
1. A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
2. That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.
3. The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

About Living
1. Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
2. Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
3. Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality.
4. Be not simply good; be good for something.
5. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
6. The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

About Solitude
1. I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.
2. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.
3. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

Of course, I will keep updating the above list when I come across more of quotes from the master.

V Day ...

... meant Visa interview for me! But anyway, shouldn't let the day pass without dedicating some words for the pretty. And the beautiful thing is that these words are from the pretty - Gabriela Anders, am totally in love with her smooth jazz vocals. ;-)

You go to my head and you linger like a haunting refrain
And I find you spinning 'round in my brain
Like the bubbles in a glass of champagne
You go to my head like a sip of sparkling wine
And your smile makes my temperature rise
Like a summer with a thousand Julys
Don't have a ghost of a chance in this crazy romance
You go to my head
Don't have a ghost of a chance in this crazy romance
You go to my head

You go to my head and you linger like a haunting refrain
And I find you spinning 'round in my brain
Like the bubbles in a glass of champagne
You intoxicate my soul with your eyes
I only hope I can make you mine
You go to my head
You intoxicate my soul with your eyes
I only hope I can make you mine
You go to my head
You go to my head

Don't have a ghost of a chance in this crazy romance
You go to my head
You go to my head
Don't have a ghost of a chance in this crazy romance
You go to my head

You intoxicate my soul with your eyes
I only hope I can make you mine
You go to my head
You go to my head
You go to my head

I can make you mine
I can make you mine
You go to my head
Like the bubbles of champagne

Color de Brillianti

I was just about to skip watching Rang De Basanti, like I allowed myself, in the recent past, to miss other (potentially) good movies like Amu. That didn't happen though because a friend strongly suggested I go and watch the movie, more so because "... that guy who plays Anupam Kher's son, I forget his name, his eyes and mannerisms are quite like yours...". Intrigued as I was, I did end up watching the movie. And this is what I wrote to my friend:

... now, thanks for recommending the movie. I LOVED IT. I think such movies are made only once in few years. I liked almost every bit of it. Yes, I agree the end could have been a little less dramatic, but the sheer brilliance in most of the other parts of the movie was enough for a cynic viewer like me to forgive the drama. So, I liked it, will watch it again [I did infact watch it again], highly recommended to anyone who has not seen it. I liked several things, particularly:

1. At a subconscious level, I have been a proponent of delivering content (in this case the script of the movie) by having two tracks. For example, in the movie we had a story from the early 1900s and a story from the early 2000s. I think this helps gripping viewer interest/concentration and the parallels that can be drawn, interspersing fundas from the two stories can be brilliant. I subconciously made several attempts doing so in my blog posts, an example is http://zombieworld.blogspot.com/2005/07/bad-times-good-spirits.html (the backdrop is a ghazal, which I totally love, and in the normal course I am talking about what my colleagues and I went through).
2. I like the subtle attempt at introducing religion [at the least an attempt at understanding what it stands for] to the youth. I was fortunate enough to meet an uncle of mine who said something similar. Read http://zombieworld.blogspot.com/2005/09/being-spiritual.html. Co-incidentally, this is the same Paath, which is in the movie. A post of mine which attempts to combine 1 (two tracks) and 2 (religion) is at http://zombieworld.blogspot.com/2005/11/humorous-interpretations-of-god.html.
3. I have been personally pained by the crash of MiG 21s. Living in Chandigarh, one can read about a crashed MiG more frequently than one cares to. So I am kind of satiated that this has been brought to the fore.
4. I had a chance to be at several funerals of army men, mostly young lads, who were brave enough to stop thinking about themselves and capture a hill post for the nation. I have friends in the Indian army who at 20 something are sitting in Arunachal Pradesh and guarding the Indian border from the Chinese. These are the real men of honor, we are sissies. I could totally relate to the rage of the junta at seeing a young and handsome one of theirs die - go to a place where no one comes back from. The sequence in the movie is still a peace time army man funeral. During war time - like the ones I witnessed while in Kasauli during the Kargil war - are a time of enraged emotions and very moving.
5. Like any other 20 something, I am also clueless about where life is heading - this is fairly a no-brainer.
6. The sequence towards the end in which the youth of the nation are shown enraged at the "death of democracy" is just brilliantly done. I mean not for once did any of the about 30 characters in that sequence seem to be acting. Not their dialogues, not their accent. So the correspondent in Calcutta was with people who had a genuine Bengali accent, and so on for Kashmiri, and others. The role of NDTV was integrated really well into the movie, I haven't seem any comparable integration of the depiction of "media" into a Hindi movie. Of course, several English movies exist with such integration.
7. The notion of holing up of "terrorists" and commando action such that "there should be no survivors" is too real. Growing up proximate to a terrorist affected Punjab, I have seen instances where the police never made an attempt at determining if the hiding youth are actually terrorists and made sure that after the "commando action" only bodies are brought out. For if any of the "terrorists" survive, the Human Rights Commission will make KPS Gill's wishkey unsavory. Some of the enraged Sikh youth during the Punjab militancy days did not choose the gun because they wanted a "Khalistan", but because they were too fed up to take the police's attrocities any more. Maachis, the Gulzar movie depicts this well enough. I am not too aware of the Kashmiri situation but I guess there would be a component of police/army atrocity enraging the youth.
8. I made every attempt at finding similarities between the look of Karan (Anupam Kher's son) and myself and miserably failed. I think you forgot how I looked [sic]. You are going to be mighty disappointed at meeting me if you thought that Karan looks like me!
9. Soha Ali looks wow, really wow. I think I will ditch my plans of never marrying and add her to my matrix that determines the ideal match!

I am sorry the above will not make you laugh, but you know what, laughing is just one embodiment of bliss and a satiated self is also blissful. If you shared any of the above thoughts (I know you don't share my views on Soha Ali) you will feel blissful at a subconscious level and thus be happy.

Have a good day ahead.

Acappella!

The new Honda ad is awesome! I have made several not-so-popular attempts at Acappella while at school and Infosys. The latest one was in anticipation of a wild new year's party this year, for which my friend and I had prepared a muscular-movement-cum-acappella-background-music item! The eve turned out to be disappointing, Daman ain't too cool a place. But yes, I'm a fan of the genre.