Undone – the hymn of Sisyphus for modern times
There are certain moments in life where everything seems meaningless while we take a look at the final fate of all things and nihilism takes over, especially in the times of great unexpected failure. A crystal-clear philosophy of absurdism can come to rescue in such unsettling moments of existential confusion. When such complicated ideas reveal themselves through a simple, soulful yet philosophical song spanning few minutes, the impact is immense. ODESZA & Yellow House’s song…
Keep reading
Appreciation For the Flow of Life
We, the population of billions round the globe are always trying to create our own version perfect life. What is perfect is purely subjective and thereby has infinite interpretations but there is something very fundamental – common which flows through all of us. It can help us to find the real perfect life. Wim Wender’s masterpiece “Perfect Days” shows how we can appreciate the inherent imperfections that life has and how to appreciate the life…
Keep reading
Dune: Psychology in Science Fiction
Our identity is heavily influenced by the surroundings we live in. A healthy understanding of the gap between ‘labels given to us by our surrounding’ and ‘what we consider ourselves at core’ defines how we perform, how we behave in given situations. Frank Herbert effectively used these ideas of human psyche in his Dune Saga. The antihero story of Paul Atreides indicates psychological ideas of cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, and Pygmalion effect. It is interesting…
Keep reading
Dune: Philosophy in Science Fiction
The focus of Dune saga is on the ill-effects of hero worship. Frank Herbert warned his readers about the life altering consequences of granting too much power in the hands of a person who refrains to be questioned by his followers. The character arc of Paul Atreides depicts a moral dilemma. It also shows how power and aesthetics play a vital role when one is justifying actions, character and intent.
Keep reading
The Model Millionaire – Attributes of True Wealth
Oscar Wilde’s short story “The Model Millionaire” is a story depicting the boomerang of kindness. It also tries to fuse the importance of tangible assets like money and intangible/ non-physical assets like kindness/ love/ art in our lives. It shows how the balance between these separate attributes can create a true rich life.
Keep reading
Lifelong freedom for an hour
The societal construct, the men and even the women in society have created certain conditions where other women receive false freedom. This false freedom facilitates women to deliver benefits to society but somehow the society is not liable to return the favor back to these women. That is exactly where feminism becomes important. Kate Chopin’s short story called “The Story of an Hour” gives us a glimpse into what sacrifice and freedom means for a…
Keep reading
A Story of the Fly and the Grieving Men
Katherine Mansfield’s short story called ‘The Fly’ shows how the loss of loved ones, especially young men in World War created a deep feeling of grief and loss among the surviving people. On surface the story may portray the melancholy of the loss of young generation but deep down it is the story of how ‘manly’ men always bypass the stage of crying out loud to express that grief. This grief brewing inside men is…
Keep reading
A Bet Called Life
Anton Chekhov through his short story called ‘the Bet’ establishes important gifts life grants us. The real freedom is to neither let go of life with an escapism/nihilism nor degrade it through materialistic exploitation. The real freedom is the harmony between time, resources, practical curiosity and most importantly people around us. Life has possibilities to offer, it is up to us to live our lives on the spectrum rather than polarizing them to an ideology.…
Keep reading
Time in a Bottle – Making The Finite Life Last Forever
The moment we realize that we are in a possession of something truly valuable is the moment when we start fearing for its loss, even the idea of losing it haunts us. The urgency created by the finiteness of our lives is the reason why we could and should truly appreciate the people and things around us, it is the same urgency which pushes us to dare to live the life we want. Jim Croce’s…
Keep reading
Bedshaped by Keane – On Yearning, Melancholia and Intimacy
We are really great at understanding our happy, feel-good emotions and we are masters of enjoying such emotions but when it comes to the negative, grievous, melancholic emotions we fail to acknowledge them. Sad moments involving the loss of loved ones are incomparable to anything, anyone in the world. But awareness, acknowledgement, acceptance of such emotions can surely help one to justify meanings to their lives in newer ways.
Keep reading
Suzume no Tojimari (すずめの戸締まり)- The Net Worth of Our Memories
Suzume no Tojimari (すずめの戸締まり) is a story carefully woven with the tales of memories and loss of loved ones, sacrifices, unconditional, selfless love and realistic optimism. Our memories – good and bad carry equal potential to cause either loss or profit.
Keep reading
Mr. Toot by Ylvis – What makes an art and its creator successful?
Even though “the best” art creations in the world are better than the average creations as in they stand out of the rest creations thereby making them highlighted, it is also very difficult to point out or to predict what makes these things stand out. It is some sort of paradox. But that is what also reveals what an art really is. This paradox actually restores the uniqueness of every creation. That is why you…
Keep reading
Hometown by French 79 – The song of evolving patterns penetrating through chaos
Patterns and their awareness are one integral part of our daily activities and are deeply rooted in our personality too. Most of the time their influence goes unnoticed. What could be a better example than a good song to highlight the significance of patterns in our life. This is about a special song which may highlight the significance of creating new patterns in every instance of life that we live. This is about a song…
Keep reading
The American Scholar – Man as a University
Part-3 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous speech called “The American Scholar” was delivered in 1837 in front of the American youth. Emerson wanted the youth of that time to understand what it takes to create new knowledge and breakthroughs. The origin and legacy of knowledge, importance of past knowledge through books, importance of bringing and testing ideas into the reality to find the absolute…
Keep reading
The American Scholar – The Books, The Actions, Intellectual Humility and The Dictionary of Life
Part-2 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay called “The American Scholar” made an attempt to move people out of their immediate achievements of separation from the English Government and inspired them to create something new, create and value the processes for building strong future generations and deep knowledge of nature. Even though this essay was more relevant for the American generation which was largely dependent…
Keep reading
The American Scholar – The Scholar, the Nature, the Origins and the Legacy of Knowledge
Part-1 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World The success of any society can be easily attributed to the success of its young generation thereby the institutions that develop them. There will be some moments in everyone’s life where we might have questioned the failure of the education systems from where we “passed out”. We realize at these moments how mechanical the systems have become. Even after realizing this fact,…
Keep reading
The Last Lecture – How to break the cycle of birth and death?
Realization of the limitations of life Here is a quick question- “What will you do when you realize that you are going to die within few weeks, months?” The question is really difficult to answer for everyone but the most basic answer would be to live the moments you have to the fullest. I have realized through the experiences and examples around me that the awareness, the realization of death itself is a new birth.…
Keep reading
Music of a painting and portrait of a song
Can we extend our experiences beyond the limitations of our senses? A picture is worth thousand words, they say. You try to explain something to your friends and they get confused then you show them the photo/ video of the same thing and the need to explain things disappears. Visual media is literally ruling over all other types of media. This also highlights our dominant way of consuming information, any information. Hence, we can definitely…
Keep reading
Kantara – Breaking The Illusion of Materialistic Possession
Almost everyone is aware of the impact created by Rishabh Shetty’s blockbuster “Kantara”. The movie is an epitome of the huge power that cinema holds. Not only content/ story-line but the whole ensemble Kantara carries is a lifetime dream of every true movie maker. The movie stands out on cast, characters, cinematography, music, action, emotions, the balance between fact and fiction and what not. Not only as a great entertainer but also as a conveyor…
Keep reading
The Afterlife of Love
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” – Aldous Huxley Everyone carries their own treasure while being alive. Interestingly, this treasure is not filled with things, materialistic objects (and far from gold, diamonds, platinum) rather this treasure contains the feelings which you think are totally exclusive. These are the feelings and experiences which you think that they belong only to you. You don’t want anybody or everybody to discover it.…
Keep reading
The Green Knight – A Story of Killing the Boy
Many people who have had a near-death experience tell that their whole life flashed before their eyes. Although, it is difficult to try out and experience the reality of it, experience shared by such people is interesting and indicates what it means to be a conscious human being rather a living thing. Many of us would have also seen drastic behavioral changes in people after they have gone through a difficult disease or after…
Keep reading
The Cost of An Apology
I recently watched a movie by R Madhavan called ‘Rocketry- The Nambi Effect’. The movie is about the ambitions and the hardships of an Indian Aerospace Engineer to put his nation in the front-seat of rocket competition and the struggles faced by him due the false accusation of espionage and defamation caused after that. The movie has made a successful attempt to develop the feeling of proud for Nambi Narayanan in the first half and…
Keep reading
How to fail? – Ankur Warikoo’s Failure résumé
“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan Recently, I came across a book called ‘Do Epic Shit’ by Ankur Warikoo. I actually bought the book for my younger brother so that he will get exposed…
Keep reading
KGF and Plato’s ‘The Republic’
“There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.” – Plato, The Republic KGF Chapter 2 was one of the most anticipated movies by Indian audience. The movie is filled with some great moments, a good performance from the whole cast especially the superstar Yash and most importantly the story line and characters have created significant impact. Obviously, the…
Keep reading
The Batman- The superhero who ‘unlearned’
Journey of a person through cognitive dissonance The Batman by Matt Reeves is one of the most important and influential movies. It is important not because some profit expecting comic book franchise is trying to reboot their most valuable asset in order to establish the character so as to drive the future narratives of the stories which will be getting introduced in the near future but it stands important because of the fact that it…
Keep reading
Battle Symphony- The anthem of emotional support
Battle symphony serves as the best personal encouragement song for all of us fighting their own battles. It also highlights the importance of emotional support to people around us who need it the most and are unable to express themselves at such critical moments. Linkin Park is one of the most loved music bands in the world. I will take this opportunity to highlight the importance of one of their songs called ‘Battle Symphony”. This…
Keep reading
Metamorphosis- Anatomy of mental illness
Metamorphosis is about ‘Valuing a person for who they are’. The goal is not to understand him/her, the goal is to accept them for who they are. Metamorphosis shows what will go wrong when we lessen the value of everyone as an individual person for their motivations, drives, ambitions, expectations in any structure. It can be social, financial or personal. As a reader you will hate Gregor’s Family. This will also happen with every system…
Keep reading
Everything at once
The anthem of innocence and ambition Songs and long roads is the match made in heaven. This pair is like boat with a sail to reach to destinations of new experiences, discoveries and revelations. There is a reason why some very deep meaning songs from movies are shot while our protagonist(s) are traveling. I experienced such moment once while traveling by bus. The bus was obediently tracing the road lines. I had this playlist going…
Keep reading
Parts Per Billion 