Changes

Changes
Originally uploaded by Ms Ladyred

I liked what was written below the photograph...

"If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies..."

It was soothing as I am experiencing my first dash of job-change...

'Kimi ni shika kikoenai' / 'Only you can hear me'...

If you wish me to comment on the drama in one line, I would say that it is a love story woven through telepathy. Literally translating, the title means 'none other than you can hear me', the story is about a teenage girl who has problems talking with people and she is very lonely, lacking in confidence. The boy cannot talk or hear, but he communicates with this girl via telepathy. Finally when they plan to meet, the boy dies saving this girl from an accident, and after this she does not feel alone, for she has met her own self from the future via telepathy and she has more confidence of being alone. The drama ends with the sign language of him saying that you and I are not alone...

The drama is excellently enacted and portrays the psychology of people in such circumstances.The last portion was a little bit confusing. What I liked was the concept that was never heard of and the excellent background music and tracks. The drama is little more than hundred minutes long and the sub-titles are in sensible english...

Originally written as a short story by 'Otsu-ichi', it has been adapted into movie/drama, kids-series and as Manga-comics.

The drama can be viewed online at 'My-soju'

Prayer...

Prayer...robs your ego and drives you into meditation, a conscious state of existence. Put in other words, when you are experiencing latter, you are in a silent prayer. In this conscious state, your performance is at its fullest potential and tiredness is at bay and it benefits your surroundings as well. For many cooking is a daily prayer. Be it performing arts, or designing, or nurturing your pastime hobby. Such prayers bring in clarity of thought in the long-run.





I was stupefied seeing a middle-aged woman at the temple today drawing a 5mx5m kolam (paintings on sand using rice powder widely performed in Tamil Nadu). The way she deftly drew the kolam left me dazzled: she finished the whole drawing in less than twenty minutes. She was in fact praying...a silent prayer coordinating the mind and hand movement with the maths involved. She spread the virus of joy through this silent prayer.


If this is the case, then why have separate religious houses to pray? What I feel is that any religious-house is a congregation of the masses: we are bought-up in such a way that we pray when we enter such places thereby attaining the benefits of prayer.


There need not be any particular rules to pray and no one has the right to force people to pray in a specific manner. We pray for our own selves and not because people are watching us.

...of tapes, reels and spools...and of zeroes and ones...

Twenty years ago, having a tape-player / recorder at home was very rare. I still remember my early childhood days when we had a JVC player and a dozen cassettes. We still have 5-6 of those tapes (26th Grammy, 30th Grammy, two 90-min selectively recorded collection in Tamil and Hindi, Michael Jackson's thriller and one English rock) and hearing to them is a classical experience which any digital surround system cannot provide.

Anything materialistic in this world should wear off with time and so is our aging process and anything that is opposite to this rule is not relished to its core. Had we been youth all sixty-seventy years, life would be boring isn't it? Those that do not wear with time cannot have an emotional quotient attached to them: we all say 'sweet sixteen' as those days cannot be re-lived.

We are experience the digital-wave which empowers us to store huge chunks of data and provide easy and efficient access to them. In this era, we are surrounded by a wild stream of information that forces us to ignore and not to appreciate the real content. In fact, this wild data is hazardous. The computer monitor is ever bright, the FM stations are vibe with energy round the clock, the internet lines are buzzing with data streams but we should not forget that it is hazardous if we enslave ourselves to these.

Swelling in silence...

Nicely composed and timed, this frame is the recent portrait that I relished on. Be it the costumes, backdrop, lighting or the mood imparted by the actors is dazzling. Light yellow, grey and caramel-white and red on a dark wood backdrop is simply amazing. Side lighting gives reality to the frame. In a moving film, we tend to miss the finer details like the white sweater or the simple satin necklace.

This frame is a still photo frozen in time, yet it speaks...it speaks what the director wanted to convey. Kudos to the camera-team and the actors. I am not sure if this frame found a place in the movie 'Vinnai thandi varuvaaya', yet this expresses that one can communicate a lot in still photography. In a different perspective, a lot can be privately communicated in silence. (The path to silence)

PS: The make-up team could have put little more attention. The girls nail-colors were little bit out of sync not only in this frame but in the entire movie. The guy's make-up was a little bit heavy and the girl's make-up was very light and soggy in certain places and it felt in close-up shots; the movie deals with a lot with close-up-shots.