Philadelphia...

One night, after finishing with my studies, I decided to go to sleep. But since I’m suffering from some kind of insomnia these days, I wasn’t particularly sleepy, and decided to finish watching a movie I was watching last week: Philadelphia.

Its an old movie starring Tom Hanks, and for those who don’t know about it, its about a man called Andrew Becket who is a brilliant lawyer with a great future until his law firm discovers he is gay and is suffering from AIDS, and they fire him, although on the pretext that he was incompetent (which they proved by deliberately jeopardising his work). So he decides to go to the court for wrongful termination. After a long and painful court battle, he emerges victorious, and is awarded around 5 million dollars by the jury. However, he is unable to enjoy any of it, cuz he dies soon after.

After I finished watching the movie, which by the way is extremely well made with excellent performances by Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks (a must watch for all those who haven’t seen it yet), I thought about the underlying message in the movie: about the general attitude of people towards homosexuals and AIDS, which could range from strong hatred and disapproval to apathy, to sympathy to.. And who knows… Even empathy.

But there rose a number of questions and concerns in my mind.

Some of us, including myself, feel that there is nothing wrong in being gay, and that it’s ok to hang around with a person suffering from AIDS. We are educated people who know that no way will hanging out with anyone with AIDS will infect us. Or being friends with homosexuals will change our orientation. We can easily say that we are very sensitive and tolerant etc etc. (as long as no one around us is in that position)

However, I wonder, how many of us have actually come across and personally known a gay/AIDS patient?If we were to meet one, are we sure we would not flinch when he shakes hand with us? Or when we have stay with him, eat with him etc.? Would we accept him as easily as we accept other friends? Just cuz he has AIDS?

And what about homosexuality... would the guys be ok with hanging around such a guy? Or would they fear being branded a gay themselves if they hang around one? Would they really make friends with him, have the minimum physical contact with him? Or would they be afraid he may try to take advantage?

Would we accept that our children are gay, happily???? Would we allow them to choose their sexual orientation? How would we react if we come to know tomorrow that our best friend is actually gay? And he wants to "stay with/marry" his partner? Would we still continue the same relation?Would we really?? (Everywhere one can substitute his with her and gay with lesbian)

I'm not even going into the Indian Penal code which says that homosexuality is a CRIME. There are still many many countries in this world where homosexuality is a taboo and gay marriages are banned. But the awareness and tolerance is rising slowly. However as far as individual acceptance and tolerance is concerned, I'm not sure.

If you ask me, I do not have an answer to these questions. Cuz the fact of the matter is I have never had a very near and dear one suffering from AIDS nor have I ever personally known, seen, talked to a homosexual person. So I don’t know how I would react if someone very close to me was gay and/or had AIDS.

But I do know that we all are glad no one like that is around us. We make fun of gays, we term every pansy looking guy a gay, and we find it difficult to accept 2 guys holding hands. I don’t know what it says about us. Are we tolerant? Or we pretend to be? Can we really tolerate? Or will this expected tolerance fail when we are faced with such a person in reality?

I don’t know. Do u?

A Movie of its kind....(sensitivity disclaimers..!!)

Just this weekend, i was chilling around with some of my classmates.
One turned up late, saying that he was busy watching an EPIC movie.
When he told which movie it was, everyone (3 guys) except me started laughing,
and i had no clue what teh big deal was!
And then one of them suggested: "Why dont we show Fidoe what an epic movie it is!"
And then began the search for the most poetic and ultimate Mithunda movie: GUNDA!!!

We went to DC++, LAN etc... downloaded part 1, and since we could not wait, we
downloaded the right software to watch it while it was being downloaded.
I was advised to watch only the first 20 mins of the movie.... when it is D- grade,
rest of the movie its C grade.

So i began my journey into the world of GUNDA, and what a world it was!!
Every single guy I saw, I had seen before in previous, good, decent, perfectly
respectable movies.....
And here they were, in this stupid movie, in stupid locales and situations,
doing stupid things, acting stupidly, mouthing ridiculous (and sometimes
downright OBSCENE) dialogues.....
but it was worth it, the peotic, rhyming dialogues, kinds of which would put
Keats, Shakespeare, Wordsworth to shame!!!!
Every moment of the first 20 mins was a laugh riot!!

Every character had an entry dialogue.....

"Mera naam hai bulla, main rakhta hoon khulla.."
now, he keeps WHAT khulla, i dunno!! ;))

"mera naam hai chutiya (as in the hindi word for ponytail, not teh abuse), main
khadi karta hoon sabki khatiya"

"naam hai mera ibu hatela, maa meri chudail ki beti, baap mera shaitan ka chela...khayega kela??"

"mera naam hai potey, jo apne baap ke bhi nahin hotey"



Then there are some stupid dialogues like...
"oye neta, kaam ki baat bata, jiske liye tu dilli se billi ka doodh peekar aaya hai!!"




when bulla's sis is murdered, the senti speech of her bro:
"munni, meri behen munni, to tu mar gayi? lambu aata ne tujhe lamba kar diya?
maachis ki tilli ko khamba kar diya? maine tere liye 300 ladke dekhe the..
lekin tu to katela gurda, yani murda ho gayi??




So bulla kills lambu aata to take revenge, and another character tells him...
"bulla toone khullam khulla lambu aata ko maut ke tave par senk diya, uski
laash ko worli ke gutter mein phenk diya!"



When mithun gets the villain arrested, the villain says this on his way to jail...
"tujhe banake maut ke mooh ka nivala... tere seene mein gaad dunga maut ka bhala!!"


Potey is threatening mithun:
"zyada badbad karke apni zindagi mein gadbad mat kar!"


But i think the best dialogue award goes to (pardon me for using the language...)

"Gangwar shuru ho gaya hai... ab laashen aise tapkengi, jaise chhote bachche ki
nuni se pishab tapakti hai... tap tap tap..!!"



It was crazy... watchin these 20 mins.... the rest of the movie is not worth watchin.....
It was one hellavan experience!
Do try watchin it if u havent already... u will know what i mean!!
:)))