Black Panther: A review

You're rooting for a man duly defeated in combat by a superior opponent, no shams, no tricks whatsoever. The battle is for the throne of Wakanda. You bet that it's not a pretty feeling to be on the losing side, but what's a story without some suspense? That brings me to Marvel's latest hot-cake, Black Panther, and the flick is worth your cash. With that out of the way, let's get into the parts that keep the movie lingering in your mind way after it's over.

Save for The Hulk, Marvel has effortlessly brought alive its characters like Iron Man with the ever-cocky RDJ; the righteous, albeit saccharine Captain America with Chris Evans; the hammer-wielding Nordic thunder-god Thor and his fellow Asgardian trickster Loki with Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston; and the entire Guardians of the Galaxy crew. Phew, Groot!

With Black Panther though, Marvel has taken things up a few notches. So, "What do you know about Wakanda?" First off, I would like to thank Akshay, a colleague from work, who pointed out how brilliantly Marvel has marketed the movie with trailers, social-media jazz, the works! All the promotion, along with Captain America: Winter Soldier, set the premise for Black Panther – prince T'Chala's (brilliant, brilliant Chadwick Boseman playing Black Panther) ascension to Wakanda's throne after his father's death. He becomes king despite the few requisite road-blocks, and there's just the right dose of vulnerability and fun-factor built into all the characters. For instance, T'Chala commands his genius sister to delete a recording of him goofing up with her high-tech toys. But the bits that compel you to don your thinking caps are beyond the veneer of the sexy Black Panther costumes, the menacing Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger, fancy tech, and T'Chala's staunch support-crew. 

The plot dabbles with the "colonisers" forcefully taking all that was dear to the natives, and consequently racial oppression. Now, comics of the 70s and 80s reflected the political sentiment of their times and it's nice to see that trend continuing in the movies without severe filters. Sadly, however, blurring the middle-finger and muting curses are irksome habits that our own censor-board will not give up soon. Another curveball is the brief victory of the villain who plans to avenge his "black brothers and sisters" and take over the world with superior, Vibranium-powered, Wakandan technology. This, again, harks back to the racial oppression theme crucial to the plot but has been unconvincingly dealt with. 

While blurring the lines between right and wrong, Black Panther concludes all too ideally, suggesting how brute strength is no way to judge a leader, that hatred hurts in the long run, and that no one is perfect. Perhaps, that's how comic heroes and their universes were meant to be, a painless, entertaining injection for delivering hope and righteousness to the world. And goodness, Black Panther is an entertainer! Importantly, wait until the very last credit rolls off the screen. Rant over, tada!

Long way home

Traffic jams. Integral, indispensable part of city life. These mystical blockages in the space-time continuum are cornerstones of healthy, everyday commutes. It’s what constitutes of much of your life if you leave for work post 8.30am, and for home post 5pm.

So, the cure seems pretty straightforward. The one and the only way to beat the city folk at what they do best (*ahem* create jams) is to catapult to work before fellow road users wake up from their deep slumber. Of course, to get back home for dinner on time, you’ll have to leave your workplace at 2pm, at the very least. Because, somewhere on the way, one small, little, itsy hatchback will just HAVE to have broken down at 3:02pm. That too precisely where a busy road bottlenecks. That alone would have stopped that area’s proverbial pipes from clearing.

But don’t worry. Even if you are stuck in a 7-hour-long jam, everything’s going to be all right, as long as you’re in the company of your uber smartphone. That you have already checked 76 times at the very least in the past 3 minutes. You shouldn’t worry unless you’re at the helm of an ambulance lugging an ICU patient to the operation theatre. Well, if you are the helm of an ambulance with a serious patient in the back – gasping for breath – and you aren’t worried, then a few, maybe all, of the below are possible.

a) You’re a psychopath.

b) You’re a psychopath.The chap/ woman behind is going to die while you’re stuck in traffic.

c) You don’t care.

d) He/She’s so going to die.

e) Maybe, he/she’s already dead.

If you’re an auto-rickshaw driver, you’re definitely having the time of your life, breathing in the smoke, dust and all that good stuff.  It’s going to extend your life by half of what you’ve already lived but in reverse. And, it serves you right, given how you swerve in front of cars, and cut lanes without ever using your indicator switches (What, you wanted to gift the switchgear to your great-grandchildren?)

However, there’s some bad news. The chief engineers of traffic jams – Uber and Ola drivers driving their loathsome Dzires, breadbox WagonRs and godawful Xcents – will sit safely in their air-conditioned death traps. Utterly unaware of the shit-storm that they have whipped up behind.

Now, mind you, there’s a cure. It’s called music. And nowadays, you don’t need a phone with 1TB worth of memory to carry all your favourite songs. You don’t need a fancy device with a click-wheel and a screen the size of a postage stamp to carry 1000 songs in your pocket. Because today, you can carry all, ALL your favourite songs in your pocket, without ever worrying about running out of memory. All you need to do is switch on the data on your phone, and sing along. All those miserable moments you’d have cursed yourself for not being able to find a work-from-home job, would dissipate into thin air when Kishore or Marley personally hum their melodies to you. Or is Beiber your thing?

That brings me to an observation that struck me a few days ago. It wasn’t long ago that we used to think a thousand times before switching on our mobile-phone’s internet connection. When the Nokias reigned supreme, GPRS was strictly the privilege of the elite. Slowly, the Samsungs and the Chinese phones stepped in, “Data packs” became more accessible, and we’d be off to grab hold of scratch-cards that would give, what, 100mb boosts of internet usage?

The DOCOMOs, Airtels and Vodafones of the world then turned a little more generous. They slapped on a little data, 250, 500mb, 1GB (if they were feeling particularly generous) into our tariff plans and let us rollick in a few moments of internet bills. However, the moment you’d spend a single extra megabyte of the data browsing your favourite porn site, your bill for the month would skyrocket quicker than the Apollo 11 crew could say “Oh Shit” together.

Status quo stayed status quo for a couple of years after which things got a little interesting. Very interesting. Because. Jio happened, and how. It’s the literal manifestation of Dhirubhai Ambani’s idea of “Kar lo duniya mutthi mein” (Take the world into your hands). Mind you, I’m not getting paid by Reliance to say this, but on a serious note, Jio democratised the internet for India. Haven’t you seen it yet? The service providers haven’t taken a single sigh of relief since Jio became the rage. Their calls everyday go like this….

“Good morning sir, I’m calling from XYZ service provider. We have a plan that gives you 999999999TB of data, unlimited calls, unlimited messages, unlimited roaming, unlimited massages, a Rolls Royce, an island in the Bahamas, and a lifetime’s worth of condoms and 15kg of Malana Cream for just Rs 359 per month. Would you like to port your number to our services?”

Me: Hell yes! But no, thanks.

Why am I saying all this? I don’t even use a Jio number. However, I must add, every time I drive back home, listening to music that’s not stored on my phone, there’s a certain sense of satisfaction that I get. Holy cow, you’re listening to stuff that your device is streaming, literally from thin air. From the stuff you’re breathing. How cool is that! Of course, you have the microwaves doing their mystical trickery, but just imagine. You don’t need to carry clunky cassettes, CDs or even a pendrive for that matter to keep your favourite music/video with you. And that’s pretty much the case wherever you go. Unless, you’re in Ladakh, or something. Only BSNL works there, that too sparingly.  

All in all, this world is a positively mesmerising place, don’t you think? Yes, we all have our daily miseries, the pay isn’t good, and neither is the reception from the cellphone tower near your home. The neighbour has the cute girlfriend, your dog ignores you after devouring all the biscuits YOU fed him, Yankee doodle went to town and you feel bad that he didn’t go to a city, a 3-week-long traffic jam stands between your office and your home, and the list goes on.

Meh, just switch on the internet, pump up the bass and let the music melt your sorrows away. 

A new hope

There's someone watching over you. Not in a 1984-Big-Brother manner, but in a way that mom mentioned when we were kids. There's someone watching over you, someone who's looking out for you, someone who knows what you need, someone who's vouching for you, rooting for you, conspiring to bend and contort the world into the shapes you imagine it in. But it's up to you to submit to this higher power without question or doubt.

Every now and then, you run into someone who changes your perception of how the world works, how your world works. For me, it happened twice recently. First, when I realised that I might have met my monkey mate (more of that in a bit), and second when I made acquaintance with this humble sardarji, who might have pushed me into digging deeper into what this life is about.

As promised, my monkey mate first. About a year ago, completely burned out, yours truly bought a bus ticket to God's own country, Kerala. It was a simple attempt to get far away from the maddening crowd for a good 10 days. Thankfully, my boss at the time didn't bat an eye before approving my leave.

I bought a Friday ticket on Thursday and was pleasantly surprised to get myself a seat without much of a fuss. Thankfully, I had a friend, Deepak, who had chalked out a plan for a little excursion to Coorg with another gang. So all I had to do was tag along. All new people, a clean sheet of paper, just what I needed to unwind. Well, no wait! I knew.... one, two, three... umm four, oh yeah, there was just one from the gang whom I'd never met before. Monkey. The basketball player, or so I thought the first time I saw her. She really wasn't a basketball player. She was just someone who looked goddamn athletic. And *ahem* hot. A bit out of my league, I thought initially. Thankfully, she turned out to be a bit insane. Someone you could peacefully fight with.

Fight we did, this girl and I. So much that the rest of the gang had to pull us apart, do this...

.......... just to keep the rest from tumbling into a frenzied killing spree and murdering all of humanity. Yep, it was pretty intense. But what's a friendship without a fight?

In all honesty, I fought because I never thought that this orangutan would be my friend. Self-defence if you may. Insecurity in reality. She fought because... umm, I don't know, she was playing along I guess. Or maybe she really hated me, which isn't really hard to do. Either way, our gang was fully convinced that this girl and I would kill each other. That's exactly the point where we began warming up to each other. I remember we were in the car, driving through the winding roads of Karnataka. Sitting in the middle seat, I was flanked by my friend Deepak on the right, and this ape on the left. Switchback after switchback, our sleepy Ms. Monkey kept getting thrown around, sometimes onto me and sometimes onto the door. I felt a little bad every time she hit the door. Then, she settled down a little, moved away from the door, and by default, leaned onto my shoulders, and stayed there peacefully. It felt relieving in a manner I can't put into words. I was a little tensed up, but the fact that she was comfortable by my side put me at ease. I knew she was fine there, looking all innocent and drowsy.

Like a lame idiot, I looked at her once or twice, only to see her steal glances at me. That's when I knew, this is one human I could be friends with for a lifetime. You see, I have a hard time making friends. Or, as the Flash says in JLA, "I could use friends."

She throws her weight around, acts all wonky, annoys the crap out of you, throws a fit, acts like a four-year-old, smiles like a four-year-old, ties her hair like a four-year-old. Holy cow, she's a four-year-old. But when you're down, she's got your back, she'll give you company till four in the morning, maybe put you to sleep even. And the best bit? She'll bring you back to the ground when you're flying too high. Monkey, what a splendid creature you are!

That brings us to the second person who made my 2017 better. He's tall, turbaned, and the humblest man I've known in a long time. I ran into him on the very first day at my new workplace. A corner seat in the office meant that he ranked quite high in the pecking order. But, something about his demeanour made him look approachable, someone you don't need to pretend with.

From what little I understand, he knows India, Europe and the U.S of A. like their maps are printed on the back of his hand. He told me something recently that changed the way I look at life. Mom says that we should be thankful for every new day that we get to stay on this beautiful planet. My friend is of a different opinion.

His argument goes like this. Suppose that you have come to a big city from a far-flung village. You're here to prepare and clear an important examination and are staying at a hotel. Now, what would you like to do? Stay at the hotel for as long as possible? Or would you rather crack the examination and move on to seek the next big challenge?

He says that everything we do isn't even close to "We do". It's some higher power working the schemes through us. We're channels through which the world is unfurling itself, second by second. Just like how Jim Carrey recently, and rather scandalously, said "There's no ME". Here's the hard part, and something we all must get a grasp over. Remove the 'I', the 'Me', and the 'Myself' from all equations, and life will become easier. How do you do that, thought? I wondered. Mr. Baljinder said, believe. Believe that you'll do what comes to you, instead of planning and fretting over it.

Unbridled

What you're about to read is an unplugged account of longing, a little bit of hurt, a shameless idiot, a steadfast woman, and hope. All of what lies ahead spawns from the fear that the following words might never see the light of day. Anyway.

Gorgeous woman, 

How happy I feel when I talk to you, I cannot put it into words. I cluelessly throw jabs at starting a conversation with you. and you being a cultured soul, respond wearing a smile on your face. Here I am, wishing that some part of the chat struck a chord with you, my brain being fully aware that none of it did. Yet, the heart doesn't agree, and digs for every topic that should, could and would elicit a response from you. I know, it's called 'lying to myself' when I think that you chatting back is a sign of your agreement.

I'm also lying to myself when I discuss the Led Zeppelins, Welshly Arms, the Radioheads, the Myles Kennedies, the Brian Johnsons and the Amy Adams of the world with you. Because in reality, all I want to tell you is how incorrigibly smitten I am with you. It's like this. Your presence engulfs me, your absence eats me alive, and fortunately or unfortunately, I want the world to see you through my eyes. I'm a bit scared of this death wish of mine, too. Because if everyone got to see you for how splendid you are, well, I don't even want to imagine what will happen. 

It hurts, more than I can describe, when you frown upon my fruitless attempts to woo you. But, nothing, hurts more than not trying. It's a bit like waiting for your bus to come at a bus stop. The bus is taking too long. And so, you decide to walk to the next stop, hoping that the bus will arrive by the time you reach there. For all you know, the bus may not reach even after you have arrived at the next stop, but at least, you've moved a bit. Better than standing and waiting at the same spot. That philosophy could get kicked in the nuts if you are midway to the next stop and the bus passes by. Because maybe, the driver is not interested in stopping between stations, and that could spell disaster. 

In essence, I can't stop myself from trying to strike a conversation with you. I can't stop myself from wanting to tell you how fascinating you are to me. Not for a minute can I stop admiring the way your hair bobs and bounces about, the spring in your step, the two kinks that form below your eyes when you smile, or that button-nose of yours that can hardly hold those Saturn-sized specs in place. 

Of course, I wish I could be suave, capable of saying all of this out loud in a manner you like. But, more than wishing for useless skills, I want to be as lucky as your dad, who won the woman he wanted to be with. For that man, and the woman he loved are the reasons I get to write this today. 

You know what sucks the most? Anyone with half a brain could string together sentence after sentence to sound love-lorn. But, how do you convince the world, or the one who matters most, that there isn't a single false word in what you've dished out?  Do talking lessons work?

Learning the walk again

What do you do when you have three songs fighting for the title of 'Earworm' simultaneously? The contenders are....

Bohemian Rhapsody
It's the song that introduced a lot of us to the band called Queen. AND I WANT TO MAKE EVERY SINGLE HUMAN ON THIS PLANET LISTEN TO IT ON A UNIVERSAL LOUDSPEAKER, RIGHT NOW! In fact, I want to play this sound so loud, that it reaches all forms of extraterrestrial life, so even they wonder: Blimey, what a fucking amazing song! Why, you ask? Because of so many things. I think of mom every time I listen to it. It's the song that makes me feel that life is far too short to keep your shit bottled inside. Finally, which other song tells you more convincingly that nothing really matters?

Hurt (Jonny Cash's cover)
Thinking of the movie Logan? Look, now, I'm not the most musically literate around, but boy do I long for brilliant soundtracks, gems if you may, that come as part of good movies. Because honestly, it's plain excrutiating to run into good music all by yourself. Luckily, I know a select few who have exceptional taste in music, so they let me in on new stuff from time to time. 

Cash's version of this song by Nine Inch Nails is a lot more about the no-frills sound of the acoustic guitar than anything else. The baritone vocal parts only add to the tiresome warmth. But it's one of those songs that you won't rush to dig the lyrics of. Instead, it's the kind which you want to listen to in a quiet room, with your eyes closed and no one around.

Learning to walk
I know a smart, little bastard. His name is Deepak, and he's the one who first mentioned the name Foo Fighters to me. When I first heard the band's name, I was like Foo what? Fast-forward four years, the band is easily my favourite, the prime reason being Dave Grohl (the band's lead singer/guitarist) and his lion-like voice. Learning to walk is perfect if you're stuck in a rut, fighting the world in your head. It's capable of inducing in you a sense of despondence that you haven't known before. Moreso if you're stuck in a traffic jam, swearing at a sea of red, car taillights in front of you. 

Somehow, it still has a calming, almost elating effect, the kind that makes you feel stronger because of the challenges you face in your head. Who knew music could make you feel so much?

This song left me with a lesson just today evening, and no it's not because of its lyrics. Enjoy your conversation. Don't worry about whether it will give you the end-result you want out of it. Enjoy it, have fun with your words, because maybe, you might end up saying something magical.

I fear I'll have another earworm, this time from this band called Alter Bridge. But this band requires a dedicated post because of who and how I came across it.

About the above-mentioned songs, picking between them is pure sacrilege. They make you wish that someone stick their fist inside your chest and rip your heart out. That's how much they hurt at times. You feel like a naive, little kid who knows little about how the world works. You wonder why it is such a task to get your feelings reciprocated. You feel reckless in your sorrow and think "How does it matter to be prudent when you're not going to get what you want anyway?"

Somewhere, your wiser self steps in, telling you to get a grasp over yourself. "I'll get you across this sea of shit. Just hold yourself together."

Now, I don't have a moral of the story. Yes, listen to awesome songs, and please share the ones you really like. There's always someone out there looking for great music. Crucially, listen to your inner self, or your inner instinct. It's the higher mind in each one of us that knows how to deal with all the bollocks in the world. It's also the part of us that is eternally hopeful of something positive. And sometimes, a little hope is all you need.

Wondering

Wondering, it's a luxury that the lucky ones among us get to indulge in. It's that blissful time when you get to empty your busy, little space between your ears, and let your squidgy, neuron-infested brain take a nice walk. Let it revel, jump and bunny-hop even. Phew, what an ability, what a gift!

It's what keeps us occupied in ourselves, helps us create the miracles we do. The paintings, the lyrics, the music, the art, the food, the cars, the wars, the works. Why are rains so calming? Why does friendship feel like a warm blanket? What induces respect, and what retains it? Why are some so hideous, why do some never wish well, or maybe, it's just yourself.
Why's that woman you admire all day so heartwrenchingly captivating? Why is it so easy to run out of adjectives for 'gorgeous'? And why does the word 'beautiful' feel so generic and unimaginative? Perhaps, it is, that's why.

I was standing on my balcony, looking far into the rain. A drenched pigeon came flying in,  looking for a dry perch, and I heard the sound it made. I tried spelling the sound that emanated from the bird; not the first time I'd heard the sound of a pigeon. I couldn't.
Ever wondered what sounds birds and animals make? Sure, the lion roars, the crow 'kaws', the monkeys chatter, and blah, blah, blah.... Except, they don't. In fact, if animals ever realise that we have names for the sounds they make, they'll positively die laughing.
No, really, pigeons never 'Guttar goo', dogs never 'bhow-bhow', and neither do cats 'meow'. The kids are being fooled, RIGHT from Kindergarten.

All the sounds, words put in place to represent sounds, are useless. They are all instruments placed for us to somehow feel that we've understood what's around us. Do we understand what the sounds these creations emit? Nah. Even our own languages are a lot of farce put together. Do we understand each other? Some of us do. The rest, well, we need to make note of the insinuations. I wonder whether those notes are useful.

Wondering is a wonderful thing. A bit abstract, but splendid nevertheless. And, it's strange that a good chunk of us wonder in a very narrow spectrum of things. Classic examples? Work, people, the gorgeous woman, books, music, more music, the little car, world domination from time to time, the likes. Maybe add in whatever you feel like into the list, but you get the drift.

That's probably why an Elon Musk is so fascinating. Their whole realm goes way beyond themselves. How do they wonder about things so much bigger than themselves? Colonizing Mars, bullet trains across the Pacific, teleportation, man-machine bonding maybe, who knows. Night after night, they work on pet projects, when the world is snoring away. Each morning, their dream coming a step closer to completion.

Staying up late comes naturally to a lot of people I know closely. They are all the creative kind, scratching away at some itch, and it's fascinating what keeps a good lot of us up and running till the sun raises its head. Maybe it's the wonders of the world, all that's left unseen, unfelt, unread, and the pain of going away without having experienced any of it. That sense of wonder is what probably has us snatching more hours from the day than our allowance.

What's before the starting line?

XYZZYSPOON "Shift+1", that was the definition for BAD MOTHERFUCKER till someone came and introduced expletives, and more importantly, Pulp Fiction to a good lot of us.

For those who didn't get the cypher at the start – sacrilege if you forgot what it is – XYZZYSPOON "Shift+1" is the cheat code with which you got NOS on Road Rash bikes. Now, NOS is the magic ingredient that made the bikes mad fast, and more often than not, helped you win the race, especially if your ride sucked.

It just happened that this movie "Dhoom" came along the same time that Road Rash was turning into a cult of sorts, at least among the bourgeoisie gamers. And yes, they used NOS in Dhoom, which was perhaps the first time we young ones from the '90s saw the ballistic effects two atoms of Nitrogen and one of oxygen; hence the chemical formula N20. And the pleasure of being able to control something similarly quick by pressing a button, on your own computer, was awesome!
But, as usual, there's always a but. Ever wished that you could go all over Pacific Highway, or Nappa Valley, and just let the remaining idiot bikers and the cops screw along the regular route? Ever felt like turning left along with the taxi that you barely missed thrashing your bike into? Or even better, ever wanted to turn the bike around and go back to the starting line, probably explore what the whole fuss was on the other side of the start-point?

The early Need For Speed games came as a welcome change to the relatively two-dimensional world of Road Rash. You could turn around, crash into the cars that were about to lap you anyway, bash into the fake taxis that moved around as part of the traffic on the tracks. Oh ya, one thing. As a kid, playing NFS II SE, I used to wonder where these taxis and buses went. When you completed a lap around the circuit, would you be running into the same brown car that you saw on your previous lap? What about the ones that you crashed into at full speed in your FZR2000? You saw the 'traffic' car flying away, toppling and tumbling. Who cleaned up the crash site before you finished another round of the circuit?
What was also a bit of a downer is that your car never bore any battle damage, at least not until NFS IV. And that means, the earlier games lacked that crucial sense of realism (Agreed, in a game that costed all of 250 bucks, that's nitpicking). However, there was one game that allowed you to go anywhere and everywhere you wanted, and smash and squash the car to smithereens. Mid-Town Madness (MTM), heck I loved the game the first time I played it at a friend's place. However, it was some time before I got hold of my own full-version CD of it. It felt like meeting a long-lost love, save for the fact that I'm neither old enough, nor experienced enough to have met a long-lost love for real.

MTM is, in all probability, the game that etched the landscape of San Francisco into our minds. Imagine, a game could do that. Anyway, in the free-drive mode, you pretty much got to drive around absolutely anywhere, in anything from a VW bug, to..... I don't know, a fire-truck or what. But again, you started out in the middle of nowhere. The game literally began with your car being gently dropped at the starting point. You could go around driving on and on, see the Bay area and the Golden Gate bridge, the China Town area, the cable cars going up and down the sloped areas, even drive your car right into waters around the Exploratorium, and drown them of course.

Mind you, I've never been to San Francisco. But. relentlessly driving around the simulated city got the better of me. I got bored of the game. The Mustang wasn't fast enough, thrashing cop cars wasn't much fun either, and the people on the footpath would just pretend that they were scared when you drove onto the curb. After you passed, they would start walking normally, as though nothing happened. But bloody hell, they had sharp reflexes.

Gaming never fascinated me after that, save for bouts of Sudoku, or an odd game of scrabble (I haven't completely figured out the ruled of the latter yet). It's been two years that I've begun earning my own money, and the to-and-fro that I grind through daily feels a bit like Road Rash. It was very much that when I started out, traveling in trains. Side blinds and all, Jogeshwari to Elphinstone Road and Elphinstone Road to Jogeshwari was an inevitable part of every day.
Then, I managed to get my grandfather's car, which allowed me a few more degrees of freedom. I didn't have to "Have to" use the same turns and same streets day after day. I could turn around, go back home, or go in the opposite direction from home when I got out of work. A bit like Need For Speed. No, actually, I kind of figured it out early on that if you go full blast into an oncoming "traffic" car, you will bear battle scars. And an eye-watering repair bill. More Mid Town Madness, then.

But, then I feel, what next? Why not a few more degrees of freedom? Why be locked within the city? No one's stopping you from taking that right turn, which heads to some place far off, someplace unfamiliar. And for that, I probably don't have to install Flight Simulator, or worse, Sims.