Reborn to live the past!

 An awesome year for Bengali movie industry and for movie buffs like me, 2013 witnessed some of the best works.  Following its predecessor’s footsteps, 2014 began with the blockbuster nationwide release of Jaatishwar. This was a movie I watched with my mother after a long time in a theatre in Kolkata. Although both of us keep watching movies now and then and discuss them over, it was after quite some time that we were each other’s movie partners.

Starring Prasenjit Chatterjee as Kushal Hajra, an associate librarian at Central Library in Chandannagore, Jisshu Sengupta as Rohit, pursuing colonial history studies in Portugal and chooses to a Portugese Indian poet as his dissertation subject, Swastika Mukherjee as Mahamaya, a RJ at Radio Mirchi who proudly voices her love for the language and need to reach out to people through songs that are long lost in people’s memories, Jaatishwar was quite an interesting watch for me.

Srijit Mukherjee’s fifth offering after blockbusters like Autograph and Mishar Rahashya, expectations were sky-high from the time the movie was announced. Curiosity peaked when the trailer got released and Kushal Hajra announced, “Ami Anthony Firingi” (I am Anthony Firingi). Now that we knew it is going to be a re-incarnation of Heynsman Anthony or Anthony Firingi in this life, it got added to the list of “have to watch” movies.

Photo credit: Twitter.com

A character lesser known, Anthony in 19th century Bengal had impressed people with his musical talent in Bengali as he learnt the language by reading Hindu scriptures and by understanding the meanings of folk music and lyrical compositions. He participated and won many of Kavigaan concerts. But what made him reborn as Kushal in this era was the question that tickled the mind throughout the movie and the director made a commendable job by revealing the answer right in the end. An interesting method of making your audience stay glued to the scene and not concentrate anywhere else, the idea worked brilliantly.

The next high point was its music composed by Kabir Suman. Some master compositions by the musical genius after a long time, the music got equally lauded alongside the brilliant acting from the actors.

The transition in Prasenjit Chatterjee’s characters of both Anthony and Kushal was unique. To get away from the trauma of living a past life and losing balance in his present life, Kushal narrates Anthony’s life in sequences. 

With movies like these, I do not think there could be any other way of entertaining myself most of the time. A treat for eyes, mind and ears, Jaatishwar gave a good and entertaining start to the year. 

Why we should be on a break at times?

Titled as Vacation vs Work: Why Indians prefer to work than take leaves, The Economic Times had released an interesting report. As the title suggests, it is all about our preferring to work more than taking a holiday or getting busy with work over the weekends rather than catching up on a movie or even just taking a stroll in the park with a friend or family member or even your pet. Not exaggerating any bit, I had the same outlook at the very onset of my career. The reason could be either because I was fresh out of college where studying during weekends was more normal that watching a movie or because, I was more enthusiastic about working and finishing assignments and be the good employee that my seniors would praise. Luckily, I am not the same anymore. I do work at home over the weekends at times, but haven’t made it a normal phenomenon of life.

Photo credit: www.forbes.com

I had recently been on a vacation back home after a year. It took a year for me to visit home for an obvious reason, work commitments and not being able to plan a proper and timely holiday for myself. Although going back home for a couple of weeks isn’t quite a vacation, however, it is nothing less. I tend to behave like a tourist and ask my mom to accompany for shopping and visit places. This is only for a couple of days and then, I am back to being normal! Staying put in a different city due to work doesn’t really leave anyone with time to enjoy vacations and weekend gateways are very rare.

The hypothesis that the study, 2013 Vacation Deprivation conducted by Expedia revealed looked and sounded true in many ways: a lot of Indians prefer to work, putting off or cancelling their holidays. According to the study report:

a.       63% Indians feel that they are deprived of vacations and holidays. India, in fact, has been ranked as the 10^th most vacation-starved country in 2013, a deep slide from its earlier of 4^th in 2012.

b.      38% Indians are known to work at least 41-50 hours per week, way more compared to other countries. And what has been worse is the fact that about 74% have cancelled or postponed their vacations due to work commitments.

c.       Another interesting fact is that about 37% of employees in our country prefer earning money in exchange of the unused holidays, a figure that is the highest in the world.

d.      46% of the countrymen have been found to save their vacations so that they can avail it at some future date. India, in this case, ranks third following Malaysia and Singapore.

e.       59% Indians have responded in affirmative when asked whether planning their vacations depend on their work or not. This figure is, again, the highest among the other surveyed countries.

Photo credit: www.joshdesha.com

The study has undoubtedly got some very interesting findings but those are not very encouraging to me. For all workaholics, this is their life story and they are the people who believe in planning vacations once they retire. For others, it’s either the passion to visit new places and take a refreshing break from the monotony of work life, or it’s about just about spending good time with family and friends and come back with a fresh outlook towards life and work. Vacations act as important healers for a stressed mind that helps you calm down mentally and relax your physical body.

Not exactly a resolution, but taking a break from work and keeping myself away from stress is part of my big list of promise to myself. While stress is inevitable and unavoidable, breaking up with it isn’t a bad and a stressful idea!

Cluttered or clean: Which is yours?

While going through the updates in Facebook like every other morning, I happened to notice an interesting post which led to me another post. It talked about preferring which type of work desk: cluttered or clean?

The reference:

According to study conducted at University of Minnesota, a person who works in a messy environment develops a creative and innovative attitude and are willing to take risks in their lives. It can further enhance your problem solving abilities. In the same time a study shows cleanliness promotes good behaviour among the workers and it discourages them in committing crime and help them to display generosity.

The reality:

If you ask me and take cue from the image posted above (also taken from the website), I have always been a supporter of cluttered desk. Right from the school days, I had proudly boasted a cluttered desk. While my parents would try to find a decent corner in our room to accommodate all my books and that I keep them clean, I would always end leaving the desk messed up with books, writing copies, pens, pencils, etc. An occasional threatening from my mom that she would throw away the books and I would be punished at school, prompted that once in a while cleaning spree but other times, it would be my style.

When we moved to our own little flat, I was allotted a room of my own which, by law and rights, was also to be shared with my elder sister. Since she’s the elder one and had no relation with studies and academic books that time, I filled almost two-third of the room with my books. I demanded new books and my mom obliged, every damn time. She realised that the room needs special furniture to keep my ever growing stuff (yes, books) and got me racks made of bamboo sticks. Even the trolley that was made to keep food was a den for my books. And yes, the dinner table wasn’t spared. All these spaces have been my cluttered desks for years.

I became the sole owner of the room after my sister got married and made it the cluttered room which also became a reason for my mom and sister to scold me about occasionally. While they are strong supporters of clean desk and doesn’t support studying in a messy way, I am the exact opposite. I studied and kept my things in a fashion so that they are in easy reach. When I cleaned the room and kept things in their original places, I failed to remember the simplest things like where else on earth will I keep my pen other than inside the book I was studying last? Yes, I did find it later. It was kept in the pen stand near the computer.

Not that clean desk is bad, it is simply empty. Empty is like loneliness.

Not that cluttered desk is good, it is simply filled up. Like you have company. In my case, lots of company. My fascination for books, magazines and papers still rules my brain and my office desk gets cluttered in no time in this age of digitisation as well.

I really can’t keep myself away from paper and habit of collecting these printed stuff. And therefore, I can’t help but have a cluttered desk and thus a creative and innovative attitude also, may be.