Avatar!!!

" If Grace is with you and if you can look back into her memories, look at our ancestors and see what have we done to our green... we have destroyed our Mother"..
- Jake Sully to Eyma tree in Avatar...

- Saw Avatar today...
- In 3D...
- Awesome Experience!!!!

But the above statement stuck with me long after the subtitles ended... long after I had moved out of the IMAX Dome...

James Cameron is a master in his work.. He has proved that already... but Avatar was more hyped for the time it took in making... for its animation, effects and the humanoid blue creatures...

But I don't think that was the director's only point of view when he started to make it...

- Avatar is not about the $320 million pumped in..
- Avatar is not about the 1000 or so CGI effects and graphics and a "cast" of around 800 animators...
- Avatar is not about the alien world..
- Avatar is about our Earth!!!!!
- Avatar is about a few money and power hungry assholes who think they can conquer anybody and anyhow.
- Avatar is an "Awakening"...
Most people are viewing it as an awakening in terms of technology, effects, animation etc.

But what about the subtle yet strong message that is lurking in behind?

- Avatar is about an indigenous civilisation who are deeply and truly connected to their roots... and not just metaphorically...
- Avatar is about a few good men and women who see through what a skewed viewpoint we have thanks to our technological advancements...
- Avatar is about what our future may look like if we don't stop cutting the trees and wasting our natural resources...

Sadly no body has woken up to this fact. We have been talking about climate change, green hour etc... but we have been doing just that ... only talking...

Its time we should wake up to what Avatar has been telling us...

Its time we should be more responsible and stop waiting for some "Kalki" to come up and fight for us...

Its time we should take the Avatar!!!!!!!

Cosmopolitan "Me"

The title reads "Cosmopolitan".... so before you girls get any idea about the shiny, glossy stuff and you guys imagine it to be something you sneak out of your mom's drawers .... it also has a me...

I use the word Cosmopolitan because in 26 years of my life I have been associated with 5 different cities, not minding the numerous others I have visited... I can start of with "Thavvades" and "Tussis" while speaking to friends from the capital as quickly as I can shift to the accented hindi of the south. I can understand the bundelkhandi and brijbhasha... as also the twang of malvani and konkani... I have been taught some "khalis urdu" words just to help in showing off.... Sadly though I don't have any encounters with the southern languages... And I boast of retaining my mother tongue as pure as possible..

I am proud that I know far more about Jainism than other non-jainis... thanks to my roommates... I have been taught about the five zakats of Islam by a dear friend... Apart from the fact that I love the absolute intricacies of my own religion..

My social network is filled with people from various states of India. Sometimes while conversing I switch to a different language all very subconsciously. And that too after being capable of only 3 languages. I love literature and music in all the three... All in all, I have no problem whatsoever regarding linguistics and conversations...

But where does that leave me??

A lot of times in my life have I encountered this feeling where I don't have a sense of belonging. That sense of belonging what people say is associated with the "Mitti ki Khushboo". I do have that ..... but then is that of Nagpur, Mumbai, Delhi, Indore or Bhopal. The peculiar expression that can be seen on somebody's face when he/she reminisces about a particular childhood destination. That belonging when at random third city I meet a person who has been to one of mine. Yes, I feel attached to that person all at once... But again what about me?

I am like a nomad, bitten by wanderlust where I don't know what my next destination will be. Even though I manage to survive dexterously, I still don't know what to make out of my identity...

My identity where.... I was born in a different city and brought up in another... graduated in another and matured in yet another... I have friends who also face the same problem. Friends who have been living in different cities rather than their own ... How do we survive then... by learning their language and trying to get assimilated or to shift to the language we all take pride in knowing... English...

However, English doesn't help me when I try to explain a non-marathi person what a particular verse in that extra ordinary poem means... English doesn't help in bridging the gap between a friend and his girlfriend. English can't satisfy the urge for mother tongue. English can help me in talking but not in conversations....

Sometimes I truly feel jealous of the people who are born and brought up and still living in the same city...

At the end of all this blabbering...

Where does that leave me???

Am I a maharashtrian only because I am born in one?

Am I a hindi speaking person because I can converse deftly in chaste hindi?

Or am I a cosmopolitan in the sense that I don't belong anywhere but everywhere!!!!