Cinema Woes

You know how there’s this movie that you wait ages for just so you can drag a friend all across one city & into the heart of the other, grab a large basket of popcorn and cozy up in an air-conditioned hall to watch it on the big screen.

& you know how there’s always something that messes plans like these up?

Yeah, well, I know that feeling all too well. I couldn’t watch Thor in the cinema because one of my friends ditched me. I couldn’t watch The Avengers in the cinema because two of my friends decided they couldn’t possibly do a “sista” a solid and pick her up. And finally I couldn’t watch Fast & Furious 6 in the cinema because a friend thought it would be great to go for the after-midnight show – which just happens to be past my curfew!

Keeping with the theme of cinema-related disappointments, today we went to watch my first ever Bollywood movie in the theatre (Initiation time!!). It was going all too well – a little too well to be true. & then suddenly it did turn out to be a ruse when the movie (and the lights and the AC) didn’t come on after the intermission. The generator had failed and everyone knows the electricity situation in Pakistan. (Grrrrrrr.)

The only saving grace was the 100% refund.

But I still don’t know what happened in the second-half of the movie! This is just not fair! How can they do this to me?! x@

But the OCD-ish side of me is consoled by the fact that I was not the only one & the house was full for the movie and everyone else who was there is right now at home & is just as annoyed by the fact that they don’t know what went on in the second-half. (Evil laughter.)

Do you have any cinema-related woe stories? Please offer some consolation.

"To be Indeed A God!"

“There is a tide in the affairs of men.”

I’ve always stumbled on great wisdom in my readings of the greats of the literary world. & Shakespeare has always been a favorite, even though I don’t read him as much as I would want to.

When I graduated from high school, there was one thing that I knew about myself – I might not have the best grades, I might not be beautiful, but I’m destined for greatness.

Sound a little too full of myself, don’t I? Well, I never was. I just never believed that I was an average human being. Maybe I had to believe that I was bigger than everything around me, that I was larger than life in order to overcome some deep insecurity. But then again, I’ve never really been insecure about much. Yet, I always believed that being average was beneath me.

Then I started my undergrad & from the very first day, with just one or two exceptions, people who I thought were my friends seemed to take it upon themselves, however unconsciously, to disillusion me, to force me to be average. And for a while they succeeded. I did believe I was nothing more than an ordinary girl going through the motions of life like so many before me.

But now, 5 years later with still another year to go before I finish my undergrad, I believe again. I believe that I am greater than all of this, greater than all the petty issues that have plagued my life for the past 5 years, greater than all the people who strive to go unnoticed, greater than this small life I’m living.

I might not have the best grades still. & I might not be motivated enough to do something about them. But they don’t define me. I am a good person, a good friend. I am someone who lights up a room when she walks into it. I am someone who makes friends wherever she goes. I am someone who is brimming with talent and only needs a nudge in the right direction. I am someone who dreams & loves without holding back. I am someone who is larger than life and someone who is destined for great things, someone who will change the world someday.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, because a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. And I’ll be damned if I am going to be dragged down into the trenches to work with the “average” when I am destined to rub shoulders with giants.

“O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys!
To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on!
To be a sailor of the world bound for all ports,
A ship itself, (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air,)
A swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys.”

- “A Song of Joys” by Walt Whitman