Old smell...memory forever!

How it feels when you suddenly come across an old smell? Be it your mother's hair oil or the smell of known perfume which your first girlfriend used to use on special days; they are living in our deep down memories, but comes afloat only something reminds them. When the smell of the warm earth comes with the first rain, my bloodstream gets a shake! It reminds me the childhood, running bare foot from one field to another, playing with friends and I used to inhale deeply the smell of just-wet earth.

Smell of the Chatim flower (flower from the Devil tree) on a full moon night used to make me think of the neighborhood girl, perhaps I was in verge of completing a decade on earth by then. Today when I get the same smell, I remember that full moon night when I first encountered it; but time has washed away the image of that neighborhood girl...now it's just a soft shape all together.

Smell of chicken being cooked on the Sundays was another feeling of happiness. Even after thirty odd years, that smell tells me, it's Sunday! How we identify each day, event, person using one or all of our senses. Neither the day, nor the event or person stays, but the smell stays back with us till we die.

Amadeus

The story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is not just told in this movie (1984), but actually felt the pain, laughter, love & dejetion of the artist so well that viewers can connect to it easily. It's an exceptional movie which could go beyond just a life-story and made it a movie to remember, thanks to the script of Peter Shaffer and direction of Milos Forman.

Surprisingly the movie starts & roams around with the character which hated Mozart to the greatest extent, Salieri. Being a mediocre composer, Salieri used to envy Mozart, but he knew its the music of Mozart that reveals God, not Salieri's. The entire movie is the confession of Salieri who's old and now in an asylum and confessing to a priest.

The movie only showcased the 10 years of Mozart's life that he spent in Vienna (1781 - 1791). Awesome representation of their characters by Tom Hulce (Mozart) and F.Murray Abraham (Antonioni Salieri). The other most important character which actually was the most powerful but invisible is the music of Mozart. It just flowed from one opera to another and viewers just became ecstatic with each movement of the tunes.

Amadeus is not only treat to the eyes, but also a great treat to any music loving mind!

Recommended: Director's cut (3 hours)

Settled, are you?

The question of when one can call himself ‘settled in life’, disturbing me for last few weeks. At what point? When one gets a well-paying secured job? With a sustainable balance in the savings account? With a happy married life? After having a bright kid or two? Or when the children are educated enough and they have a handsome job and their own house?

Staying in the business capital for almost a decade with good jobs in hand coupled with a satisfactory family life, can I call myself ‘settled in life’? Not really, I guess. Not a guess, but surely I’m not settled. I hear the call of the mountains from Ladakh, I can see them coming to me to take me with them if I don’t reach them myself. I can literally hear the call of the sea on a full moon night and can feel my body is getting wet with the salty water. Someone says within me to leave everything right away and rush the mountains, to the sea or to some dense forest that I’m yet to visit.

Escapism? Not really. It’s the wish of re-birth, and this time I’ll decide to choose the place, parents and school. And once I’m grown up amidst the nature’s school reading the best poetries, painting my heart out on a canvas and die on a snow-clad mountain, surely that day I can call myself ‘settled’.