Middle age – Here it comes!

If you are in the threshold of middle-age, then here are certain things you need to ponder.

1. You don’t have much time to live. You would have realized by now that you cannot carry anything along with you when you leave this world. Thus there is no point in saving much for the future. If you have to spend the money, spend it. If you have to enjoy your money, enjoy it. Whatever you do, don’t leave all your money to your children or to your grandchildren and make them leeches and vultures.

2. Agonizing yourself about what may happen after you are gone won’t help much. You will turn into ashes and it won’t be any of your concern whether people rave or rant about you. You no longer will be able to enjoy your wealth or your worldly life.

3. Torturing yourself about your children may not help much since your children will follow their own providence. Don’t become your children’s bondservant. Give them a good education, care and love them – but enjoy your money while there is still life. Life is not working throughout your life from the ‘being born’ to the ‘being burned’. By now you would have realized that expecting too much from your children would be a folly. Your children would be too busy with their jobs, building up a career, family, house, asset, name, fame and commitments. They may also be busy fighting over your assets even when you are still alive wishing an early death so that they can inherit your properties and possessions. You may have no claim to their money – but your children think that they have all the rights to your money.

4. Now is a good time to stop working. Don’t do transactions with your health for wealth. But then when do you stop making money? How much is enough? Rs. 50 Lacs? Rs. 1 crore?. Rs. 5 crore? Rs. 10 crore? How may flats do you want to possess? How much land is good enough? How may villas will satisfy you? At the end you need only a bed to sleep and some good food (if not friends) and whisky to see you through!

5. Are you after name, fame, position or you are after happiness, health, pleasure, quality and longevity of life?

Some Thoughts

Q: Who am I?
A: No-one!
All right! I am alive! Does it matter?
For most of us – We don’t live life…life lives us.

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If you are able to spend your life in your own way – now, that is SUCCESS!!!!

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Cinema gives you a glimpse of the past. You then realize the present and think of the future.

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Americans seem to be obsessed by god and money.

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Searching for the elusive.

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A Place in the World "Un Lugar en el Mundo" by Adolfo Aristarain is a strong and powerful Argentinean movie about human lives and the place they dwell in. It shows that the rich always wins and that your dreams, ideas and visions however strong, need people to execute - and the people always ditches you.

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De América soy hijo... y a ella me debo is a documentary by Santiago Álvarez covering the visit to Chile by Cuba’s Fidel Castro in 1971, just before Chile’s President Salvador Allende was overthrown and a Military junta was established in 1973. Good visuals.

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Nobody will tell you not to do a thing. Nobody will tell you not to become someone, or somebody. Everybody will tell you to become a doctor, an engineer, an architect, a pilot, a business manager, a banker, a stock broker, an economist, a police officer, an income tax officer, a bureaucrat, a diplomat, a politician, a psychologist, an archeologist, a software engineer, a lawyer, a brand manager, a financial manager, a sales and marketing manager, a journalist, an actor, a director, a sportsman, a chef, a singer, a video jockey, a choreographer, a musician, a photographer, a mathematician, a physicist, a biologist, an accountant…the list goes on!

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Most conversations start with pains and aches. The discussion goes on with what ailments one suffers medically along with what holds the Bengali community at bay. How the Marwari community, the Biharis and the Muslims along with the Central Govt., the rival political party and American Imperialism have conspired to make the Bengalis suffer!

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While we are here on this earth, we like all past generations, keeps asking that same old question: Whether we human beings are free to decide and act or whether our decisions and actions are determined by external forces: heredity, environment, history, fate, Microsoft, Intel, Google, Twitter, Face Book, iPod, Smart Phones, Internet, Drones, Televisions...(and heaven knows what other miracles and magic are to invade us).

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Stellan Skarsgård

Discovering Stellan Skarsgård in the 2011 film – “A Somewhat Gentleman” was a pleasant experience. Having seen him and not recognizing him in The Red October, Insomnia, Pirates of the Caribbean, Angels and Demons, Dogville and Melancholia now causes a great regret.

Skarsgård was brought up by humanist parents and had an atheist grandfather and a deeply religious grandmother. According to Skarsgård, this never led to any problems because of the family's mutual respect for each other's opinions. After the September 11 attacks, Skarsgård set out to read the Bible and the Quran, both of which he condemns as violent. Skarsgård is also a critic of religious independent schools in the Swedish educational system. Skarsgård has said he considers the notion of God absurd and that if a real God were actually so vain as to constantly demand worship, then he would not be worthy of it.

In 2009, Skarsgård, along with other non-religious artists, authors and entrepreneurs including Christer Sturmark, Björn Ulvaeus and Christer Fuglesang, wrote an article in Dagens Nyheter stressing the importance of secularity. The group also criticised the UN for its stance on blasphemy laws.

His views on religion as published in the Wikipedia was :

After 9/11, you read both the Bible and the Qur’an. What did you learn from that experience?

It’s frightening. Everybody says that all the ideas of goodness in the world come from the Bible. That’s absolutely bullshit. The Sermon on the Mount is a very nice piece about being good, but most of the Bible is a very revengeful, childish, brutal God. It’s fantastic stories, but there’s no rational reason to believe anything in it. I didn’t care about religion before 9/11, but I thought I should take a little look at it, because not only did the people who flew into the World Trade Centre claim they had God on their side, but then George W Bush stood up and said he had God on his side as well. So everybody who is religious has God on his side, which is terribly dangerous. And nobody should be sure they have God on their side.

Is there anything you have taken from it?

If you read the Bible, you realise that it’s actually good not to cut off the foreskin until it’s necessary. God came to kill Moses in the desert and Moses’s wife saved him by cutting off the foreskin of his child and rubbing it on Moses’s body and then God didn’t kill him. So always have a small child with a foreskin nearby so you can protect yourself against the wrath of God.

Shriveling Interest

The interest withers away.
With time and age, things pass by.
Believing or criticizing a philosophy fades away.
Religion becomes meaningless.
Films no longer enthrall.
People become repulsive.
The pleasure of listening to jazz and classical music dies away
The urge to say something goes away.
You said your piece - there is nothing much to say.

Barbet Schroeder’s “Our Lady of Assassins”

Barbet Schroeder’s Colombian movie “Our Lady of Assassins” (2000) gave a good experience of how the City of Medellin in Colombia goes about with its everyday life. There is a gay brothel, anarchic violence in every corner of the city, drug addicts and dealers, a reason to live and a reason to die, whores, poverty and where the institution of the church has completely failed.

It is not a movie for everyone – but a must-see for the few who bothered to turn the stone or took a different path. There was no room for any optimism in this movie. In times to come, this may well turn out to be a cult movie.

The Jazz Singer – 1927

The Jazz Singer, termed as the first talkie, as it progresses, drains you out. In and around the 45th minute, one of my favourites, the earliest form of ‘Blue Skies’ written by Irving Berlin in 1926, is doled out by Al Jolson.

Blue Skies have been performed by many artists, notably Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Ben Webster, Errol Garner, Count Basie, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Art Tatum, Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Dinah Washington, Doris Day, Ella Fitzgerald, Jim Reeves, Willie Nelson, Eva Cassidy, and Rod Stewart,




Irving Berlin

E-keer Me-keer Charm Chi-keer

E-keer Me-keer Charm Chi-keer

Chamer Kata Mozumdar, Dey a-low Damodar,

Damo-daarer Haari-Kuri, Di-low bo-say chaal kuri,

Chaal Kortay holo bela, Bhaat khaye say dupur bela

Bhaatay porlow Maachi, Kodaal diye chaachi

Kodaal holo bhotha, khekh shayya-l-er maatha