Of Brothers and Sisters, Letters To A Young Poet, Kai Po Che, and Twenty Six...

The last week has been the saddest week. I have never felt so wretched and hopeless like the last few days. Wednesday was awful, I just couldn't control and yet when mom called I had to tell everything is alright. It is like I am wearing so many masks, trying to hide the feelings from reality. I need to take some steps to help myself and I have to do it fast. Who will help me here? 

First year is over and now second year is going to start. As if there are not enough things to stress about, second year is going to add one more big burden. I didn't feel like going out at all. Since I was supposed to leave on Friday, I called a few friends for lunch on Thursday for the birthday. These are the people that I have now. Other than that I am not celebrating the end of first year like some others. What should I celebrate about? Time will make problems worse and I have started to get a feeling how difficult it is ahead.

I am just watching marathon of Brothers and Sisters. It is not a great show but I don't really like comedy series, so I picked this one up as I love drama. And I am hooked. Weird family with its weird problems. I identify with some aspects of each of them. Justin, Kitty and Kevin are my favorites. It is the second soap after Ally McBeal that Calista Flockhart has done. In one of the episodes, Sarah says to her mom

There is this terrible bruised silence between us...

I could totally feel what she means by bruised silence. I am experiencing it with some people here. Awkward silence with someone here that is stifling.
In another episode, Kevin gifts a book to Chad called Letters To A Young Poet. Chad reads a beautiful passage from it. He says,

Love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.

Kevin and Justin

I couldn't understand it, so searched more on it. So the full passage of the letter is simply beautiful. It says

We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.

It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a long time ahead and far on into life, is: solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances. Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), may young people use the love that is given to them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time, save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough.

Loved it. It says how love is important as it teaches us the importance of solitude and anything that is difficult is a great learning process that we will always remember. Maybe I should read the book too.

And in another episode, Scotty tells Kevin, 

Now you know how hard it is to love someone who doesn't love himself...

Perhaps that is why no one loves me :(

I also saw Kai Po Che. It came on Netflix. And honestly, I was disappointed. I did not like it much. Or maybe the hype did me in. I could not connect with the film emotionally at all. No references, no great dialogues, no great scenes, no hidden meanings, very simplistic treatment. Performances are excellent though..all of them! But I was aghast by the controversy that the movie tried to exonerate Modi's complicity in the riots. Websites, such as Kafila and New York Times, had reported that Chetan Bhagat changed some sequences as his opinion of Modi has become more favorable. But I couldn't find any evidence of it in the movie. In fact, in the movie, Hindu right wing groups are shown to be more aggressive and are shown to attack innocent Muslims. What was the fuss all about really? Back to the movie, I really don't know why it didn't move me? Rajeev Masand says in his review, you’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by the film’s piercing finale. I guess I really have a heart of stone. I was not moved.

Greatbong wrote an excellent review of the movie, which I liked it more than the movie itself. Really liked his analogy of the three friends as the idealist, the pragmatist, and the believer.

http://greatbong.net/2013/03/06/on-kai-po-che/

Talking of not moved, Grey's Anatomy Season 9 ended. This season has to be the most boring one. I did not like it much except for Alex and Jo. Else nothing spectacular really happened. And yeah the flash mob of Matthew proposing April was the sweetest moment. 

Flash Mob for Proposing :)

And yeah it is my birthday today. Twenty six years...thirty is just four years away...I am really really worried.  Time will make problems worse and that is why I am feeling a level of helplessness that I have never felt..Where can I escape? I also have my needs..Don't I want to fulfill them?

So how am I celebrating? By binging on food in my apartment. I moved to Des Moines yesterday for the summer. So as of now I know no body in this city. Set up the apartment today. Have to buy some more stuff. Set up the Internet today. But I guess being alone is not a problem. I am a loner and as Murakami says,

“I’m the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I’m the type of person who doesn't find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring. I've had this tendency ever since I was young, when, given a choice, I much preferred reading books on my own or concentrating on listening to music over being with someone else. I could always think of things to do by myself.”

Anyways more later..

Dialogue of the Day:

तेरे सिक्कों की छन छन से मेरी हवा की कीमत कम हो रही है

 - Ishaan, Kai Po Che