Saturday, April 18, 2009

Blood diamond Vs Slumdog

I am right now watching blood diamond movie for about nth time. I absolutely love the movie for it's story, performances and presentation and great dialog delivery by D'caprio. But that's not the main subject.

The movie tells us about the domestic war which was enraged in africa in early 90s as a result of diamond mines in a small country called Sierra leone. And how some rebels destroyed thousands of families just to stay in control of the diamonds. The movie exposes us to a very disturbing face of africa.

When i was watching some of the scenes in this movie, I suddenly remembered the whole big deal made out of Slumdog where we (most of us) felt that it just showcased the negative parts , the poverty and stuff like that. And foreigners like to see india as a rotten land. Or some of us felt that it wasn't such a great movie at all even if we choose to ignore other things about it.

So what should explain the fact that slumdog was so well appreciated by everybody (except in india) similar to how we appreciated blood diamond ?

May be we just love to hear or see facts which make us superior than somebody else. May be we couldn't appreciate slumdog because for once we were at the receiving end.

Also the fact is whatever was shown in slumdog is not fiction in any sense of the word. We all know that these are actual facts which we try to turn deaf ear to. May be we know these things too well to appreciate a movie made on the subject :)

I am sure, most of the south west african people know the history of conflict diamonds. Chances are that they would have felt the same way about blood diamond what we felt about slumdog

So the whole point I think is, we should better accept the fact that there are people who enjoyed watching a boy jump in a shitpool or little children hanging on a train roof just to steal food.
May be if this isn't stretching it too much we should ourselves not be too ignorant about it to even not notice it when somebody else is showing it to us because Just read following dialog from a brilliant scene in black diamond

African man to journalist : "You are writing about what is happening in Africa ?? "
Journalist : "Yes"
African man : "So when people in your country read this, they will come help us, right?? "
Journalist: "Probably not"

Thursday, April 2, 2009

English isn't english anymore...

Yesterday, a friend pinged me on messenger and said "hru?". And then after giving it a long thought, i knew that i was supposed to understand this as a "how are you?". I told her about the assessment test that i am going to have in next week for five hours and she said "OMG !!!" Again i blanked out for moments and then realized that it was "Oh My God !!!"

While we were having the conversation, i felt that i was playing some weird code game. It wasn't english for sure !

My dad has been an english teacher for more than 30 years and I have tried to learn alot from him about the language. May be that's why i feel compelled to think about it. If somebody talks to him in this manner, he will probably swear all the english names he knows at him ( they are plenty and they won't be in short forms !)

"FYI" or "PFA" or "FYR" or "OOO" "GOTCHA". What's with all these shortforms ? Before we know, these codes will become words which most of us will use while talking to each other (like "I was triple O at that time" or "It's just an "FYI" or "I was WFH" ).

Words are also getting shorter along with keypads it seems.

If this is how the language is evolving, then i will take pleasure to be a primitive caveman.

P.S. If you don't know any of the short forms used, don't worry, it will get you.