A Poetic Blunder

A couple days ago, my father and I were watching Nazar TV. The description of Nazar TV according to Time Warner Cable is "South Asian Entertainment". However, I find it to be an excuse for some vindictive Indian somewhere to play very old song clips from B-rate Bollywood movies. Some, are quite humorous just because they are so outlandishly ridiculous. For example, in the 90's Amitabh Bachan made a movie called Daweil Hum which consisted of him dressing up like John Travolta and acting out a more melodramatic and silly version of Saturday Night Fever. My brothers found the clip to be boring, they much prefer to watch cartoons. My father on the other hand thought it was completely stupid and was upset that this was being called Indian "culture". I find that, I have to agree with him. However, near the end of the broadcast, they played some classic clips and my father seemed to enjoy these quite a bit. So naturally I asked him why. He told me that when he was a boy, he use to listen to these songs and memorize them to try to learn vocabulary. But it wasn't just regular old words. It was the depth to the words and the way they were used and put together to mean something much more important. He translated some lines for me since my Hindi is a little rusty and than commented, almost nostalgically, that it wasn't a song, but a poem.

And that got me thinking.

What if, the reason Bollywood made all these silly movies wasn't just to make money? But to connect with the general population. To make a statement through poetry. To try to connect everyday feelings of love and loss and poverty and make something more of the world? What if their intentions were pure? What if they had just made a poetic blunder? Maybe all those Bollywood producers had not yet had their vision? Not yet fully realized what they wanted to portray?

But I guess that's reading more into something than there really is. That's just me being nostalgic. Still I can't help but a hope that a little part of the people making all these movies realizes that eventually there won't be much culture to degrade. That maybe they'll stop before it gets worse. This isn't meant as an insult to Indian movies. I've seen my fair share of very very good Indian movies and very very bad Indian movies.I just hope that in thirty or forty years, there's something to be said for Indian movies.

And not just poetic blunders...

Neon, Baby

In my experience with blogs, lots of writers can easily get caught up in their own musings and quickly turn pretentious and come off sounding pompous. Or, they just get plain silly and downright ridiculous. Me, being new at this, have not yet picked a style. I'd like to say that I am capable of breaking all stereotypes and just being me, but that's a really hard thing to do now-a-days.

What does it take to be pretentious? Or silly? Not much apparently. I wish I could say that I've read the Handbook on how to be a good blogger, but I have a feeling there is no such thing. I guess the point I'm trying to get across is that, you, the person reading this, really shouldn't expect that much from me. Heck, I don't even have expectations for myself. Sometimes you get so completely caught up in blogging something cool or interesting that what you're saying suddenly starts to lose meaning. Words are powerful things and that's easily forgotten.

I don't know what to expect from this blog. Is it like a diary? A place for me to vent my feelings? I'm reminded of my diary I kept in elementary school. I remember, I had recently finished The Diary of Anne Frank and I was very keen on starting a diary just like Anne did. So I raced home and found an empty journal and wrote the date. Than I decided to name my diary, just like Anne, and being the creative elementary schooler that I was, I named my diary Kitty. Just like Anne. Anyways, I felt like I couldn't just start pouring out my soul without some kind of introduction so I started some long-winded speech about my name and my birthday and my parents and all my family history. Over the years, I'd had many journals and diaries and every time I started a new one, I always began with a formal "Hi my name is....." kind of thing. I never really understood why either. Why am I introducing myself to a bunch of lined paper? How in the world does that make sense?

Unfortunately, I was never able to be quite consistent with my diaries, and I hope that I might be different with this blog. Of course, if I think about this as a blog and not a diary, I might write more consistently. Or I might revert back to my old ways. I guess I won't really know till later on, but to attempt to ensure success, I began this when I have a lot of free time. So hopefully I won't be a completely lazy person and actually gain some consistency. :P

I can't wait.

Anyways, that's it for now.
It's neon baby.
:)