Love for Hrithik-Roshan !!!!!!!

 My youngest has joined the Hrithik Roshan bandwagon.....Yay! I now have company in wanting to see his songs (who has the patience to sit through movies these days? or the time?) ....of course, she is 4 and her appreciation for his face and dance have a completely different emotion attached to it, but still.....Yay!!

Accepting what is...

People just don't want to think logically. And people don't want a peaceful existence. Seriously, all I have seen is that people love drama. Okay, this is not true of all people. Mostly, I am talking about young people. And, yeah, they are into pity-parties big time as well.

I am around a lot of kids in their early twenties from non-tier-I cities. These are just out of the clutches of their family-social-settings. And ideally should be beginning to think before they leap. Think before falling in 'lurveeee'. Or just think. Period.

Guys and girls fall in love. This is natural, or so I have been told. Sometimes it so happens, that the person you love doesn't love you back, or doesn't love you back enough. If it is the latter, then please go and see He's just not that into you. If you are a guy, that doesn't matter, the point still applies. A girl might be into you, just not enough.  (Guy or girl, kindly ignore the filmy ending. The film defeats its purpose by doing an about turn at the end. Just like Love Aaj Kal. )

If it is the former, where you are majorly into someone, and they are not, then I have news for you. It is not their fault. Stop abusing them, their fathers, mothers and their ancestors. Not their faults either. Put yourself in their shoes. If someone is majorly into you, and you just don't fancy them, is it your fault that you cannot reciprocate their feelings? Then why is it his/her fault when He/She doesn't like you? It just means that He/She cannot see you the way you would like them to see you. What you perceive as chemistry, might not be, in their eyes. You think you have a lot of common interests but, may be they are looking for something else. You think you are awesome, they don't. As simple as that.

That is how things are. Accepting how things are is a big step in growing up. ( I think I saw a self help book somewhere with the title, Accepting what is. That is what spurred this rant in the first place. Plus I have a younger friend who is deeply in depression about a girl who is not interested).
I have been there, all angst-y, and cursing and being childish in my early twenties, when my ardour was not returned, and put it in devdas terms, ' I had a couple of lurvveee failures' and moped about for weeks, even months.

 Then I started thinking, when my moping lessened, I actually started thinking. Back to the time when boys 'proposed' to girls in school yards with roses and greeting cards on valentine's day. I have returned roses and cards, when accepting a card meant returning/or accepting the 'lurrveee'. I just didn't see myself with those guys. I grew up a little. The scenario changed. It was college campus, and it was a little different. I have turned down 'lets have a coffee' if I knew the guy wanted more than casual friendship and I did not.

And over the years, after dating a few guys, it was turning down invitations to dinner. With some guys, it was turning down one-night-stands. With some it was visiting their mother. (That was downright scary!)

After being the rejected one, and some realisations about the equations between people, I was much nicer about refusing/rather, saying, Thanks, but no  thanks, instead of being harsh/curt.

The realisation that people who reject us are not all that bad took time in coming. I would like to spread this wisdom :-), but have no forum. See, because young people do not want to hear all this wise crap. I certainly did not when people a few years older and wiser told me to take any rejection with a pinch of salt and not give it undue importance.

All I want to ask the kids of these days is :  How is it that when we are the reject-er we are fault free, but when we are rejected the opposite party is a villain?

Love, life and ...

Love, life and all that jazz.
Love, life and the beer can!
Love, life and dream on...

These are all titles of desi english novels or 'Indian Writing' published in the last couple of years. Why this fixation on naming their books with 'love, life ...' (Duh, that is what most 'serious' Indian authors do, we are adamant about being literary, which is writing about love and life, at least a part of us thinks that is the best kind of writing there is...about life....that is not the issue here, I love Ghosh, Roy, Verma,Bagchi, you name them) when other authors have done just that, that too recently enough to stay in people's memories.

Ideally, you'd want your book's title to stand out! grab attention! etc etc, and if you really really want the title to resemble something familiar to hook the reader browing at the book shop, which might entice them to pick it up - you call it 'Non-twilight', or an 'Unsuitable boy'. But why this fixation on "love, life...and three more words', I just dont understand.

Okay, will tell you why I'm ranting about this - I was at Crossword, Chennai two days ago, minding my own business and looking sadly at all the books I cant really afford to buy, and accidentally was recruited to attend a book launch thing that they were doing in the cafe they have on the upper level.

It was for 'Love, life & all that jazz' by Ahmed Faiyaz. Now, I have attended book launches as a reporter and enjoyed the experiences. But now I saw them from the author's perspective, given that it might be me doing the same thing at some point.(Fingers still crossed about being accepted for publication, signing contracts etc, but gasp, gasp).

And when the event began, the room was quite empty and it was really sad to see the plight of the organiser lady and the young author (relatively young among authors, probably a few years older than me) looked a bit lost as he scanned the empty seats. (I'm already dreading the situation, I'd probably go and hide if it was me- if I didnt have an obligation to myself and the publisher to sell as many copies as I could :-( which was what was making Faiyaz sit and continue. (reluctantly, you can conclude.)

The event began 45 minutes after it was scheduled, with about 10 poeple, but thankfully the seats filled up a little by little, and by the end of the event 3/4ths of the seats were occupied. I could actually see the author get more confident when people started arriving randomly from the floor below after hearing bits of reading he did.

I liked what I heard, and the book was reasonably priced, but I hadnt carried cash in hand that day, so stopped by landmark today to see if I could grab a copy. That was when I figured there were three books with similar names, all published in the last coupla years.

And hence the ranting. Can't we be a little creative? Atleast google titles we like to see if there are matches, and if there were some, whether they were recently published, things like that. I'm still going to read the book, but this is just making me think of why we find titles and want to stick to them, though they might work against us. I mean, if there was Swarchkopf, and Schwarzkopf, some people might buy the wrong one. Okay, that was a bad example, but you get the drift.