Dear Zindagi - Take 2

Before I start, let's get one thing out of the way. I don't like Bollywood movies in general. They rarely try to venture into making something innovative or daring. However, every once in awhile there comes a movie which tugs at your heartstrings in an unexpected manner and completely changes your perspective. And Dear Zindagi is one such movie. It's the practically the only hindi movie I've watched after Piku, which I liked immensely. And as before, Ashutosh Das & Ankit Sinha were the musketeers who coaxed me into watching this movie.

When we first meet her, the ostensibly sprightly Kaira (Alia), a cinematographer awaiting her big break in the movie industry, is grappling with the shifty men in her life. They simply cannot keep pace with her ticking mind and wavering heart. To add to her woes, Kaira has major issues with her parents who cannot figure out exactly what the girl is up to in Mumbai. At the end of her tether and unsettled by dire thoughts, Kaira turns to Dr. Jehangir Khan (Shah Rukh) for counselling. And what follows is a roller coaster of an emotional journey, which takes us through a perspective transformation.

The way I see it, this movie focuses on two major themes. First being the fact that mental illness isn't taken as seriously as physical illness. The stigma attached to mental illness is infuriatingly still alive and well. Negative stereotypes deeply affect those with mental health conditions and may even discourage them from getting proper medical treatment. This movie addresses a very sensitive topic in a mature manner. Kudos to Gauri Shinde for that, although I would expect nothing less from her after English Vinglish.

The second theme is more complicated to address. This movie urges all of us to love our imperfect, messy and flawed lives to the fullest. It shows us a glimpse of how to deal with different situations of life, relationships and the issues that bog us down from time to time. 

I know a lot of my friends who are going through the same phase of life that Kiara goes through in the movie. Some have strained relationships with their partners and parents, some don't have their career figured out and so on. And my advice to them is this - It's OK. You are going to be OK. Society is going to tell you that you are not on track. And your family is going to worry. And people may give you funny looks and shake their heads and wonder what the heck you're doing. And you are going to start to worry too.

You will wonder desperately why you can't get things figured out. You may feel guilty, like somehow you have failed. And you will search frantically for a plan, something to cling to, something to make you feel as if you might have an idea where you are headed. You will resort to different measures. And eventually, somewhere in your search, you will realize, you are in love with your life. You are in love with every second of every minute of every day of it. You are in love with the challenges, with the new experiences, with learning new things, and you could not imagine settling for a life or a career that does not bring you the happiness you feel now. You won't have it all figured out yet, but you'll know what your life could be like.  And you might not know exactly how, but things will work out in the end. I may have gone off on a tangent here, but this is what this movie is all about. An analogy that hit me hard was one drawn between a chair and a life-partner. SRK's character says that if we spend so much time in choosing a chair, how do we expect to get our life partner correct in the first go? Coming to think of it, that was an idea very well-thought out and executed. 

The only thing better than the ideas at work in Dear Zindagi is the chemistry between Alia Bhatt and Shah Rukh Khan. Both actors’ performances are career best. Alia brings a likeable edge to her role. She may be confused but she’s not clueless. Fiercely independent and equally passionate her portrayal of Kiara is pure firebrand. The perfect complement to her is the cool as a cat psychologist played by SRK. This is the superstar’s best performance since Chak De! India. He’s not intense nor overtly dramatic. Instead he’s just the coolest guy with the most entertaining stories and wisdom beyond Chinese proverbs. SRK’s performance and character is pure cinematic zen.

Dear Zindagi is a lovely picture, made with finesse and heart, and one that not only takes some stigma off the idea of seeking therapy, but -- in the most natural of ways -- goes a long way in making a viewer think of the people who matter most. It floors you with its deliberate pacing, uncluttered simplicity and understated joie de vivre. It is that rare brand of cinema that makes you cry and laugh all at one go.

The Trump Conundrum

Courage is not the absence of fear, it is moving forward despite your fear. It's OK to be scared, and we should be scared. But you will live, I will live. It might not be ideal, but life is never ideal.

Life is usually tough. But it's life and it's worth living. "Better a live dog than a dead lion." It's better to have a shitty life than no life. Because there's still hope. Eventually the tides will turn. Even if they don't turn for us, we MUST continue to fight for those that come after us.

We are never guaranteed love, we are never guaranteed a soul mate or a partner or a spouse. We are not guaranteed a family, nor are we guaranteed health in this life. And for some of us, we are not guaranteed life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness even though that's what it says.
But they can never make you less than human. They can never unexist you. You fucking existed, you fucking exist right now. You are, and that's the important thing.

It's OK to be scared. But you'll get through this, I'll get through this. The strongest steel is forged in the hottest fire, and diamonds can only form under intense pressure. So be strong and shine brightly, even if you have to cloak yourself. Shine on the inside.

Continue to come out, if only to yourself. You do not ever have to be out to anyone else, and in some parts of the country and the world, it's actually advisable to not come out to others. But you can still, no matter what, you can still be out to yourself and only yourself. You owe it to yourself to not lie to yourself. Come out to yourself, if you must put it to voice, look in the mirror and say it. That is more important to do this morning than it was yesterday morning.
Connect yourself to those who came before you, and to those who will come after you. Fight to respect the memories of those who are no longer with us, and fight to make the world a better place for those who come after us. Do what it takes, because we must continue. That's all you can ever do in the end, is to keep on living. To simply exist is one of the most powerful things you could ever do.

I'm going to say something that might sound flippant, but it's absolutely the complete opposite. Put on Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and fucking dance. Dance for your life. That's what those before you did, because that was one of the only things they could do.

We will survive this, OK?

The Edgy Diaries

A month ago or so, I was gifted a box set of Ayn Rand's books. I read a couple of them, and have started abhorring her in absolute terms. I can't speak for everyone, but I can say why I dislike her. I find her philosophies childish, selfish and arrogant. Her belief is that the self is the most important thing. A person should be 100% self-serving. This doesn't mean you could volunteer at a charity or the like, but that people should only help others if it makes them feel good.

She also believes that people get what they deserve. If they are strong, have power and money it is because they deserve it. She believes those who have no power or are abused they deserve that for not being strong enough. It is very self-indulgent and egocentric. The truth is that if everyone followed this philosophy the world would be a pretty horrible place. I don't like her idea that the suffering of others should not concern you. Her philosophy is often interpreted as 'Those who have power deserve it, and have no need to share it or lift up the weak and stupid'. Classically, teenagers love the ideas because they are in a phase of discovering their identity and separating from their parents, but the general mood is that her ideas do not lead to happiness or a good society to live in. So people tend to see her fans as using her books to justify their selfishness.

Apart from all of the above, Ayn Rand has always considered herself a moral philosopher first and foremost, and an author and political commentator second. Her philosophy is based on an extreme form of heavily idealised capitalism in which individuals operate only on the basis of their own happiness, and eschew altruism if it would inconvenience them. That last aspect is very important to emphasise - whilst there are capitalists who think self-interest is important for a functioning of a market economy, very few would describe altruism as evil like Ayn Rand did. Here's a quote from her on altruism:

"It is altruism that has corrupted and perverted human benevolence by regarding the giver as an object of immolation, and the receiver as a helplessly miserable object of pity who holds a mortgage on the lives of others—a doctrine which is extremely offensive to both parties, leaving men no choice but the roles of sacrificial victim or moral cannibal."

The language is written in extreme, melodramatic and quite graphic terms which is a hallmark of fascist writing. This is something Whittaker Chambers picked up on in a review of Rand's Atlas Shrugged for National Review when he said that the subtext of the book was akin to "Hitler's National Socialism and Stalin's brand of Communism": "To a gas chamber — go!" I personally think that was slightly unfair to Rand - she would have not been in favor of mass extermination of the poor, but I do think there is an element in which her writings dehumanize the most vulnerable in society and ignore their plight. She had a fundamentally simplistic view of capitalism which even the majority of capitalists wouldn't adhere to and as such her entire philosophy is intellectually unsound.

Personally, I remember reading part of Atlas Shrugged a while ago (couldn't finish the thing, I was a 18 year old kid back then) and was surprised at the lengths Rand goes to in order to ignore the arguments she claims to have refuted. I remember reading somewhere a scathing critique she'd written of Rawls' A Theory of Justice, which is probably the most influential piece of political philosophy in the post-war period, and she'd based her entire critique of the book off of a review she'd read of it. To my mind, that's not the approach of someone who's seriously interested in moral philosophy.

Rand also inspired slavish devotion from her followers, and the accounts of her inner circle at the time read more like the workings of a cult than of an ordinary intellectual grouping. Her followers don't just call themselves fans - they call themselves objectivists and base their lives upon a philosophy that tells them they don't need to exhibit kindness towards anybody else and so long as they act as selfishly as possible they're doing the right thing. I think this gets to the other part of your question - many young people (usually men - let's be honest, here) become frustrated with society and turn to Rand's philosophy almost as a piece of intellectual self-help. They usually tend to be first-year university students or slightly younger, and generally grow out of it once they've read a bit further. So it's a point of mockery - the young man proudly waving a copy of The Fountainhead as if he's discovered the key to all life's mysteries - himself.

The point really is not that all accounts of morality or capitalism based on self-interest are intellectually unsound. There's plenty of philosophers like Hayek and Nozick who argued for similar conclusions to Ayn Rand's vis a vis capitalism, but dealt with the issues in a more serious academic sense. Ayn Rand, meanwhile, preferred polemic, battle and above all cultivation of a following. The only reason people really talk about her is because she became something of a phenomenon and her writings have been, popularly speaking, extremely influential.

Also, her philosophical sophistication can be summed up by this story.

At one point the head of her organization started sleeping with her. Both of them were married and this was not some mutually agreed upon open relationship thing. She very publicly flaunted her affair saying it was in line with her philosophy of Objectivism. Despite being married both her and her lover desired to sleep with each other and thus as good objectivists they did. Because who gives a rat's ass about other people's feelings.

Which is literally a core tenet of her philosophy, altruism and selflessness are immoral.

Anyway, this guy start's sleeping with a third woman behind Ayn's back. When Ayn found out she flips and kicks him out of the organization and ostracizes him out of jealousy. And that's Objectivism 101, kids. I can do it because it's my desire and selfishness is good and blah blah blah but you can't do that to me because only my selfishness is good. It's a child's philosophy. It makes perfect sense when you're 15. Which is why those who are older than 15 and publicly identify with her are almost universally:

• High functioning autistics who seem to predominantly make up the fields of engineering and software development and so on 
• Psychopaths who, like the above, can't identify the feelings of others, but unlike the above are also incapable of feeling remorse or recognizing others as living beings with rights