Thursday, July 10, 2014

Revival

I am 32 going on 33. Married 3 yrs now.
Between today and my last blogpost, I have seen hundreds of movies, read thousands of books, visited several countries in the world (respectable 2 digit number), gotten promoted once...
Not one of these profound life changing experiences made me want to write a post than Saloni's FB update that she had and my hurt ego that her blogroll had Ramya Kannan [once my co-named blog sister] and not me.

So here I am.
What am I most excited about today? House of Cards. Union Budget. Approaching weekend.
Not in any order of course...

Kevin Spacey is a damn fine actor. Really. Its a pity he is not well known among the people I go to lunch with in the new office I am working out of which is situated at the end of the world [homage H2G2].
I tried to get this otherwise very arty lunch friend of mine (he worked for a local theatre group in marketing and stage production while still moonlighting as a software engineer) to recall kevin spacey in any of his seminal movies - American Beauty, Se7en...each of these elicited no response.
God I am so old.
Kevin Spacey wears his age well, like a monogrammed kercheif gracefully folded into the pocket of his dapper suit. His character is wholly evil, knows it and lives life to serve himself without even the slighted compunction to cover all the greed & selfishness up with guilt- its exhilarating.
Robin Wright, who I havent loved in anything else except Princess Bride (I loved everyone in that...even Humperdinck) just breathes life into her character Claire Underwood. She doesnt care about picket fences and children ...she is happy and proud even to be in marriage with Francis who shares with total candor his infidelity with the young journo, his schemes to take over the world, all of it as long as she is kept moneyed and powerful enough to do her NGO projects.
I remember looking at that scene of both sitting near a window sharing a cigarette going - They have a really great marriage.
Different strokes for Different Folks.

I dont know who died and made me Agony aunt but at Quora, where I joined to read intellectually stimulating thoughts, I am increasingly being sought to answer questions related to relationships, engagements being broken, couples coming to terms with incompatibility.
I have no life experience with relationships like dating, living in or being engaged.
Right, technically I was engaged 2+ months during which I could cajole my then fiance to meet up for lunch once at an eatery 5 mins from his house...so not your prototypical enagement, one would say.
And having successfully made it to middle age without ever having been wooed once, I have become the curator in the museum of broken relationships at Quora. Yaay! I relish now the drama I never went through...all the thrill, none of the pain.
Still I hope the trend changes, I would like to get back to learning about science, space, mythology and popular culture again.

I have successfully filed my tax returns for a year that saw the record highest tax ever paid by moi.
Seems I have reached some hallowed slab meant for rich people by fluke and was punished severely for it.
With my dismal ratings this year at work, I am sure I can plan to claim the usual slab for next years tax - the one meant for the middle class. NaMo's govt has announced the Union Budget today which has been tagged #SuperBudget by some fawning news channels (and I use the term loosely)..they have given 1.5 Lakh limit for 80C. Since I actually know that will help with my taxation being a bit lower next year, I am happy.
Since this govt has no opposition, congress and left parties are doing the due diligence by calling the #SuperBudget as disasterous and not for the common man respectively.
I think the truth lies somewhere between Super and disaster.

This has been a long week owing to 3-4 days of sickness starting last weekend.
Hope to have a good relaxing time to recuperate in another day and some hours to go.

Weekend wont you come soon,
Rain
(older/more corpuscular/All the more combative)