It’s nice to write again after quite some time and I have a reason for not doing so in so long. I wrote some things and then deleted them for I didn’t find them suitable to be posted. But here’s something I’ve been feeling very strongly about for quite long.
WARNING: I might sound like a forwarded e-mail, but you know, I’m writing this because I’ve begun to feel it beyond those e-mails, for real.

Movies. We watch them, love them, hate them, criticize them, and publicize them. But of late, I’ve been doing something that we seldom do (for the easy fact that some movies aren’t worth it). I’ve begun to feel them. It may sound funny, but before you laugh it off, listen to what I have to say. I watched a few movies recently (well, yeah, during the exams) and some of them have touched me very deeply. I don’t know if those movies did well, nor do I care. I don’t know if the actors are famous or not, I don’t know their names nor do I know when those movies were released and I don’t know whether they are classified as good movies or not. But the fact remains that they have penetrated me and have changed the person that I am.

I don’t know what you watch movies for, but as for me, I know I watch movies for anything the movies want to tell me. And most movies I watch tend to teach me something abstract. It is extremely like telepathy, something that is understood and cannot be explained by words. I’ve begun to fall in love with characters that make me feel life is good and hope that I meet someone like them for real. I’ve begun to appreciate life’s irony that is conspicuously hidden in these movies. I’ve begun to understand life and people much more than I’ve ever done in my life. I’ve found new meaning in my life after quite a few years of being absolutely disappointed. I’ve come to introspect and realize that things that I paid importance to were insignificant. For instance, all these years, I thought (out of innocence, obviously) that I am supposed to respect age and older people. But now I respect traits like creativity, humility, intelligence and charm more than age. I valued artificial applause more than heartfelt criticism. I valued those numbers on the report card more than what I learnt. I valued extraordinary-ism (if you know what I mean) over normality. But now I understand anything normal is equally extraordinary.

Yesterday, I watched a movie that stands out. And for no technical reason whatsoever. It stands out because it made me love it. It made me think about whether I really love the ones I must. The movie is called ‘If Only’ and it’s about how a British man in love with an American violinist has a dream about having broken her heart and she, after their verbal duel, gets into a cab which crashes at the very next junction in front of his eyes. It is this crash and her death that make him realize that he needs to love her more. And surprisingly, the entire dream becomes his next day. Everything begins to happen the way it did in his dream although in a different order. Which of course means that the cab she would be in would crash. So he does all he can to make her realise how much he loves her. Well, it might be very immaterial a thing for you to relate to, but I don’t know why, I could sense the intense emotions flowing between the lovers. I could feel his helplessness at knowing that the cab was going to crash. And in it all, he does all he can to make her day, her last day. The thought of knowing death so closely, the thought of facing it, the grief, the sadness, I could feel everything.

I’ve learnt to sink in heart-shattering things like defeat, frustration and death. I’ve learnt that they are the realities of life and the triumph of coming out of them is ‘beautiful’. Innocence and not ignorance is bliss is what I think. I think we must spread as much happiness around as possible. We must spread prosperity and (if you won’t laugh) must live a ‘feel good’ life. There are people in our lives all around, who come into our lives for a purpose. Our parents, siblings, friends, teachers and even people walking by us on the street – they’re all there to give us something, and we better take it if we think it good enough.

Most importantly, I’ve begun to understand that thing they call love, at an age when it is easy to misunderstand it. Things have been said about love, and repeated so many times that we fail to take notice of them – of it not being bound, of it not being discriminative, of it not being only sexual. But now, I think I am grasping the gravity of all this. In most Indian movies, love is shown to be a sort of madness that sparks up between two people at a bus stop and ends up in their fighting the society to prove its truthfulness. But truly, love is much more conscious, it is more calm and more intelligent than any other emotion. Its very existence is divine AND it is not necessary to prove to the world that you’re in love by jumping off buildings or doing mad things.

But hey, why am I telling you all this? There is a reason.

We’ve been studying these things about how life must be lived fully in the present and we must spread smiles around and all that stuff in English textbooks. But it seems they’ve been ineffective. Because we hardly remember them let alone put them to use. And perhaps I know the reason why. Because they’re not told as subtly as in the movies. These things are taught to us like E is equal to m c square. But I think they’d be more effective if we were shown visual stimuli that could generate natural and passionate feelings about life. And these visual stimuli could well be movies. Whatever we’re watching in those one-and-a-half or two or three hours is much beyond just entertainment. It’s developing us every moment. And after all, all education seeks to develop the body and the soul. Another reason for telling you all of this is that if we all harbour an attitude of trying to learn from these little things in life, how wonderful everything would be. Because it is in these little things that life’s most intrinsic secrets are hidden.

I’d like you to give it a serious thought and tell me what you feel. If you think this post is trash, so be it; if you think it’s worth a thought, please give it one. And then tell me what you think about the same, about learning our lessons (in life) from something so ‘routine’ as watching movies, or any other thing, like observing a small child or the skies or anything.