Battle zone : Internet.

Not much long ago, a very uncalled for thing happened with me. Its exam season, and with stupid exams comes a heap load of disappointments as most of us know. P.s. the ‘us’ does not involve, those who get through the exam with anything more than bare minimum.  So, scorched by the pressure of bringing a bad name to my family, I had gone under depression, which I imagine as a grave in my mind.

                     

Just to put my mind at rest, I was infinitely scrolling on facebook , as I tend to do most of the time nowadays, owning to my inactivity in life.

                  

And I updated a status, as I upload everyday out of habit. It was a sarcastic acknowledgement of the fact that my results are taking me nowhere but being appointed as a maidservant. 

                     

Two days later, when I checked the post, I found that a guy, who was about four years senior to me in school, had commented on it. At first I was overcome by bliss to see the notification because, it had been a long time we hadn’t talked. And the excitement of seeing what he wrote bubbled inside me as the site loaded at sloth speed.

But to my utter surprise, he commented something rude. I was not in mood to fight, so I jovially asked him why he was he being so rude to me. To that he replied pretty offensively telling me that he is not rude and I should get off the net and stop putting up posts about EVERYTHING! And that was it, it started cyber warfare!

He was almost making me seem guilty over the fact that i publish about ‘EVERYTHING’.  However it seemed completely dumb and invalid a point to me. For he is a kind of person who likes and comments on the pictures of other girls who change their profile pictures at a rate of 24 per day! And a tiny harmless post of mine, made him go absolutely psychotic? Well, that’s obnoxious!

However, I dint go there, just as yet. I told him, that’s what people do on social networking sites. Give out their views and pictures for free and scale their popularity based on the number of likes. I’d never get the logic behind that though!

 And he spontaneously commented back that social networking sites are not about talking and telling everybody every damn thing that you do every second of everyday... it was invented to keep people connected. I knew he was right.

However, now, the scenario is completely different. Instead of bringing people closer, social networking sites are making them drift apart. Outing with friends has been replaced by group chats. Instead of keeping good memories, we have become more interested in getting good photographs. And through our incessant efforts all we are trying to portray is that we are really having a good time. Now one question... if you were really having that much of a blast as the picture reveals, you felt like putting everything on pause, just for a photograph? Weird.

                 

Facebook has now become, a high school gone online, almost like living life over the internet. And your every move is being judged. Some come out of it pretty good, for other’s there’s always Picasa. ;)  

                      

Is AVATAR a remake of POCAHONTAS?

Last day I was watching this absolutely mind-blowing movie Avatar by James Cameron . And am sure, most of you have watched and enjoyed it.

As for myself, I did not like the movie as much as I had thought I would after watching the trailer. I should mention here that I am an ardent lover of the idiot box and a movie buff. As is obvious, trailers are montage of the best scenes of the movie- a great marketing strategy. However if you don’t like the best things about the movie, you normally aren’t interested in the rest of it either. Especially if you are on an ‘only one movie’ diet, with ten movies premiering every month!

None the less due to an overwhelming amount of suggestions, I finally watched it. And ever since, I have watched it many times until it suddenly hit me that “oh my god, it’s so much like Pocahontas!!!” And I was absolutely blown away by the fact. Pocahontas is a movie I watched often when I was young.  

Long ago, just when the movie Avatar had released, my sister and I were discussing the movie during one of our precious phone calls; precious because they’re infrequent and the only way of feeling each other’s presence since we live at the two opposite ends of world. While sharing her opinion of the movie she said “I felt that it was very similar to how the colonial rule was established in countries like Africa and India. THE colonial rulers were alien to the way of life, language and beliefs of the natives.”  Back then, I couldn't really appreciate her point of view, but now she seems to be so absolutely correct!

In the story of ‘Pocahontas’, some white voyagers come to land on an island while searching for gold. Among them was a man who left behind his party and started to wander about the island. He accidentally comes across a beautiful Red Indian girl Pocahontas, who is daughter of the tribe chief. When the tribe comes to know that he is not a threat, he is familiarised with the customs, rituals, ways of life and the speaking ‘grandmother willow’ who guided people who went to her seeking help. He is accepted as one of their own. He gradually falls in love with Pocahontas but she had been already engaged to a warrior of their tribe. Eventually Pocahontas also starts to feel the same way for him and goes to the tree to seek advice. When she was coming to confess this, the voyagers discover the two lovers and considering her a savage, shot at her. Trouble was already brewing between the tribe members and the voyagers over the ownership of the gold and this incident heralded a war between them.  Seeing the brutality of his own kind that was using guns against the natives’ bows and arrows, the man sided with the natives and drove his own kind off the land. The tribe, led by the out-lander won and the lovers continued to live happily in the wilderness.

 Now tell me you found no similarities between the two stories! A few minor changes and lots of detailing is all that made it a new movie altogether. Even that is a remarkable achievement though. 

  

Few days ago, in a ‘about the movie’ shown during the breaks of the movie, I read “the Na’vi people were made blue inspired by the Hindu god of destruction Shiva.” Well, that’s no travesty of truth. India is a tropical country which is very close to the equator, so the colour of the inhabitants’ skin is generally brown and its darker shades. But gods are superior being; so when they are imagined, they are imagined in a more mystical, somewhat a more superior shade, blue. But plainly put, Shiva has dark skin so do the Africans and Aboriginals. However, the mythological reason of Shiva being blue is very different. In The Puranas, we find that during ‘Samudra Manthan’ Shiva drank the poison that emerged along with Amrita, to save the other mortal & immortal beings from getting poisoned. This poison got stored in his throat, turning it blue. This myth has been used by artists to portray Shiva as the blue skinned one, instead of just ‘Neel Kantha’ or the blue necked.

It can be also said that, Avatar is the version of Pocahontas where the male lead narrates the story. However, that could not conceal the similarities like going to an unknown land and trying to procure something very valuable from there, he destruction of Ewya which is the spiritual core of the people much like the old willow from Pocahontas and the use of machine guns against bows and arrows ; almost the same story, is it not?

Most of the movie has been shot in the woods with overgrown trees and the animated sculpting of them was outstanding. In one particular scene, one of the actors comment “we gave them schools and roads but no they want to run bare feet in the mud”, doesn’t the statement evoke images from movies where Christian missionaries try to make roads into ‘Pagan’ communities? The packaging may change, but the story narrates the very basic and repetitive theme of the west trying to conquer the east, the apparently more civilized trying to tame the savage. The Next time you watch the movie, be sure to observe, and tell me if you differ in your opinion.

If you agree and want to add anything more, do leave your opinion in the comment box. Keep an open heart and an alert mind and the spirit of TEENAGE flowing FOREVER!

Thank you for reading my blog, hope you’ve enjoyed it. Leave a comment letting me know your thoughts, See you later... till then, have an awesome time at the theatres. ;)       

All About Me.

Hello readers, well, this is my very first crack at writing a blog. So I thought it'd be the best to start by giving everybody a heads up about what is this going to be all about. To be frank? Even I am not sure because there’s too much to talk about and too limited time to make it reach out there, to everybody. Also the second problem is, where do I start and how do I go about the vast reaches of all the unspoken thoughts, so that I reach the very end without losing the focus. Yet am going to give it an honest try and would wish that all of you support me throughout!

Well, let’s start by introducing myself! Who am I?............. Heya, this is, Srijita Saha, an enthusiastic teenager who freshly turned eighteen. Just got finished with my school-life and awaiting appointment with life! I absolutely love singing, dancing, listening to music, travelling, writing and in all the time that’s left after all of this, watching tv or scrolling on the fb page!   Yes, the same old, same old everyone’s life!!! As must be obvious, I live by pretty much the same rules that govern every other teenage life. Happiness, sadness, jealousy, infatuations, anger, frustration, all stirred up with lots of fun to make each day of life a fiesta!!!

The next thing... What am I going to talk about?............ well about everything that can be. I would talk about human behavior, beliefs, myths and legends, culture, places where I go to, personal experiences, reviews on movies, books, politics and current affairs. And also a lot of content is just going to be about me and the magical world filled with strangeness of all kind that I traverse through every day. As they say, everything and beyond! And also I would love to talk about things that are of particular interest of my readers. All you need to do is leave me a note in the comment box!          

This one is for both you and me... Why Blogging?....... well I have asked many bloggers this same question and all have come up with their own personal motives which were all very intriguing. Some say, ‘they want to be heard’, whereas to some ‘it’s just a way of recreation’ and yet to many others it is ‘I just like writing, so why not letting people know of my opinions?’, some say ‘just an aid, to the people going through similar situations’, and yet there are many on the fraternity who just want to be a little famous, well who doesn’t want that? Everybody does and all those people who’d be smirking on the last revelation or maybe feeling embarrassed, don’t be. Desire for fame is the most common epitome of human nature! Whereas to also a great mass, it is an effort to influence the society with their opinion!... Getting back to where we started, yes when the same question I asked myself, I just came up with one explanation ‘I am a chatterbox, so why not channelizing the chatter effectively and seeing if can find a flock who take up on my feather!’  It’s actually amazing how people leading absolutely isolated and different lives can actually posse very similar thought processes!

And the last thing... Why did I name my blog TEENAGE, FOREVER?..... If you’ve actually read till here, that’s a great enough compliment in itself for me! , I am honored to know I could hold your interest and patience long enough! , thank you so much, I love you already. Well, if you have been wondering whether, all I am going to talk about is only teenage gibberish and nothing else whatsoever. That’s not the case. I define ‘teenage’ as just a state of mind. Every human being is born with intelligence and consciousness, as we all know from our biology books. It is just that, we just gain the sense of application through exposing and exercising them over experiences throughout all our living years. Nevertheless, it is yet impossible to gain the perfect balance over the proportions of the two used every time. It absolutely has no relation to what grade we earn in the exams but how efficiently and amicably we handle circumstances in life. ‘Teenage’ is just that state where we don’t let the concepts of realism, responsibility, consequences and logic sink much into our deciding mechanism. And some people suffer from this state of mind for more than just the teenage years, that’s what actually made me consider it as a state instead of time-period in our lives. But that’s not what is plausible about this state. It is the capability of ‘free thinking’, the urge to ‘make a difference in the society’ and the dream of ‘creating a world enriched with goodness and possibilities around us’, that drives the ‘teenage’. I want myself and the world to feel that freshness and drive not from the age of 13-19, but forever! And I am sure, when this concept fits into people’s equation, society would be ridden of most of the evil that prevails now. So here I am to spread the spirit and to try and hold onto the richness of imagination that wants us to see a new sun every morning. Keeping the TEENAGE, FOREVER!!!  

Hope you enjoyed the piece, do leave a comment and let me know your takes on my blog! Thank You. Do Stay in touch for more! J Till then... Bless and Be Blessed!