On a family whtsapp group today morning, there was a discussion that a person called Ambareesh Murty passed away. His living obituary was shared. I had no clue who this person is and yet read the obituary twice! It touched some right nerves.. my Jiju also said “ Better to have something like this than not’ I could not agree more to that. Wikipedia then told me who this person was.
It got me thinking that all of us should have one drafted. It gives us an opportunity to decide which life contributions, challenges,achievements, stories and milestones we want to be remembered for. I would like to add a bit of laughter into it, imagining people with joyful tears at my funeral gives me goosebumps! Such a feel good factor.. isn’t it?
I am proud of my culture and heritage. But when it comes to funerals I personally think we can do a much better job. Yes we can focus on the rituals and traditions and grieving but also celebrate the passing life. Definitely each death and situation is very different but the passed soul remains the common factor. So his or her life deserves to be celebrated and the spirit of life, hope and legacy passed on. I get inspired by cultures who make this happen at the funeral. My Italian colleague recently shared that her dad passed away but he ensured it was soo easy for them. He had it all planned- the will, had chosen his casket and all the details of his funeral. I want me, all of us and especially the elders of our Indian society to be him. When we know that’s the ultimate, why fear it?! Accepting it gives us and our loved ones some peace of mind. We can openly love and celebrate life! On the contradictory, another friend of mine spent so much of time and effort writing a thank you speech for her wedding. She read it out aloud and I had happy tears. She had mentioned her grandfather who is no more. That got me thinking maybe we lack the art of celebrating life too!
I am not saying imagining a life without your loved one is easy. I would definitely give anything to make memories while they are alive and not take things for granted. But also have them draft a living obituary and tell me how they want to be celebrated and be remembered.
When I googled to see what a living obituary is all about I also found that there are companies offering these writing services! So now it’s up-to you to hire them or write one by yourself.. I am definitely going to get a draft started…
IG is our go to for fun, entertainment, reels,news, pep talks, knowledge and to know what is happening in the life of people you know and the people you don’t! While I was sick and mindlessly browsing I read something powerful on IG and it resonated with me..
Ann Hansen says “ Being busy is an epidemic in our society leading to much stress and unhappiness” She also says , “ Savour quiet. Savour downtime. Savour simplicity. This is where you will find meaning and purpose. Live and learn in those moments.”
Slowing down inevitably means spending more time with oneself and the family… maybe? For me it has been that way… finding that calm in every moment – giving my 💯 % when my 7 year old son is talking or we are playing chess, reading with him, enjoying my husband’s PJs, being present when my mom is narrating something about a neighbour who I haven’t seen in years..
My first memory of a person enjoying quiet and silence is probably of an older couple from a western movie. It’s not much of an Asian thing where everybody is running after something.. Oh yes nowadays even there people are going back to the roots of yoga and meditation, which is great! True learning happens when the mind and body are rested and quiet. With this awareness we are also training our child to enjoy not doing anything at times.. just stare at the wall or the blue sky…
For a person who has always been happy being busy for 35 years, 2023 has been that year to slow down and find silence meaningful. I often refer myself as people’s person and indeed I am. But nowadays I also cherish the days when I am all by myself. I am training myself to be alone and not feel lonely 3 days a week I work from home while my husband and son are away from 8 am to 5 pm. At the beginning of this routine the stillness and quietness I felt during my work breaks used to get on my nerves. But slowly I started to realize that this is the ME time that I advocate for.
A person can be truly happy only when he/she can spend meaningful and purposeful minutes/hours with oneself ♥️
“After all, Life goes on…” they say and yet we live from one weekend to another.
It is a beautiful snowy Friday evening in my part of the world. Am I coming out of a hiatus because I do not have any plans tonight? My last blog was way back in 2020, life indeed does go on and also the WordPress features advanced, I am still figuring out the options like block inserter, inline images etc !
Weekend is to relax and recharge after the week’s hustle bustle. And yet when there are no plans for the weekend you fret about it. I wonder is this just me? I am sure not. In this new year, I am training the planner/scheduler parts of my brain to take a break on weekends. Do impromptu things or not do anything at all. Some weekends they listen to me and on some they scream at me with plans, schedules and tasks. I would say I am progressing well but probably my husband and son would say otherwise! A study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology says it takes anywhere from 18 days to 254 days for people to form a new habit. Thus to change a habit of so many years of constantly planning would take a little more than that.
Friday ritual – ask a work colleague, ” What are your weekend plans?” Today I asked instead, ” What are you doing to relax over the weekend?” She instantly caught my rephrase and said, ” Now you asked me that, I am really thinking if my plans are relaxing or just about completing the errands, checking off a list etc ” I do agree weekend activities vary based on socioeconomic factors, marital and family status, personality types and probably an exhaustive list. If you have a kid( or kids ) a lot of time is spent taking them to various classes but hats off to those parents who utilize that time skillfully to learn a new thing or play a sport themselves.
Planning for the 2496 weekend hours in a year can be tedious and stressful. At times by habit or otherwise we need to plan for some, which is absolutely okay. Some weekends plans just get made on the fly too. When there is the levy of time to unwind, these things are bound to happen without effortless planning – quality family time, disciplined fitness rituals ( I am currently in love with mine – today was an amazing muscle sculpt strengthening class ) , self care ( my hair was happy to be treated with homemade keratin mask! and hobbies/passion flourish.Lately, I am trying mindfully not to live from one weekend to another. It is not easy but definitely has feel good factor.
I had the writer’s block on how to end this, nudged my husband for ideas. He said ” Learn to live in the moment and breathe.” Hope this stays with you like it did for me 🙂
2020 – the year of COVID-19 pandemic and the year which took me 6 months to write something apart from emails and social media posts!
I am going to be a mind talker today ( Mind Vs Brain – are they the same, co-related or different? Perhaps a topic for another time.) Did it take a pandemic or a famous Bollywood actor’s demise for me to write about this? Perhaps yes. YES, we have been seeing, hearing and reading about MENTAL HEALTH everywhere. I read the most apt definition (in my opinion) – ” mental health is a state of well-being and we all have it. It’s not just about surviving, it’s about thriving. It’s enjoying life, having a sense of purpose and being able to manage life’s highs and lows” . Kudos for the much needed awareness but don’t you think we are X ( put your age here) years behind already? If we acknowledge it so late, when are we going to ACT on it? Doesn’t it need to be part of every academic curriculum and every company’s KPI?
Today I want to focus on the GOOD mental health. Understanding the other side of the same coin ( mental illness/mental health disorders – depression, anxiety, panic attacks, addictive behaviors etc ) is equally important. For now regarding the other side I just want to say ‘let there be no stigma or fear regarding mental illness” The person suffering, the support system/caregiver and the community needs to tackle this together. Why the GOOD? I consciously try to remain optimistic and focus on the brighter side of things, the lockdown has definitely tested my belief like probably each being on this earth. Yes, there are days I have sulked, felt low, demotivated and discouraged. Being grateful, retrospective ,resilient ( powered in my mind by my brain! ) and definitely my family has helped me immensely to remain on the same course of positivity.
Mental health isn’t simply the absence of mental illness – so true! It is a nuance – good mental health might look different from one person to another. According to a study, there are six common factors of well-being that we see across different descriptions and definitions (my discernment) :
A sense of purpose – it is a variable but always have one at every stage/phase of life if not an ultimate one
Strong relationships – there might just be a few but make every effort to keep them alive
Feeling connected to others – I try to do this by thinking that there is always a learning or a take away from every person I interact with
Having a good sense of self – oh boy! this one is the most EVOLVING factor. I am the greatest mystery to me and I will keep unraveling this mystery until my death.
Coping with stress – Living only in the present/the moment is the least stressful. Challenging to do that but I am practicing. For me that constant urge to do a new thing or hone an exiting interest has helped
Enjoying life – I am still learning the best way to do this. But I think there are two things worth mentioning here. Firstly, to try and see the bigger picture of everything. Second is to accelerate from collective consciousness ( a concept explained beautifully by Deepak Chopra ) to pure consciousness.
Definitely at this point, my thoughts are wandering and there is a plethora of things I want to write here. But I don’t want to bore myself nor you! 🙂 I will end on two notes. To fight with COVID-19, we are being asked to form a social bubble ( to interact with only a set of people always so that the contact is minimum and tracing is easier), so why don’t we take this opportunity to form a social bubble for life – a set of people who will be there for you and you will be there for them no matter the distance, time zones! They can be your family/ friend/an acquaintance to whom you should be able to say. ” I just want to talk, please just listen. No judgements, no advice, no interruptions, no inference. ” This is important because I think a good mental health depends on expressing yourself in one way or the other! Also this way mental health is primarily part of a family (the root) which defines and redefines us through out our lives.
Each setting and situation you’re in, and each person you interact with, can impact your well-being. Surround yourself with positive people. People inspire you, or they drain you – pick them wisely. “Surround yourself with the dreamers, and the doers, the believers, and thinkers, but most of all, surround yourself with those who see the greatness within you, even when you don’t see it yourself.”
I am working towards a BALANCED mind rather than just a beautiful one and definitely don’t want it to be a disturbed one! Now go, ACT on your mental health.
People do things but I always wonder more about the WHY than the what and how? Don’t you? We always tend to think that the community we live in and the people we are surrounded by are good, happy and healthy ( most of you would have imagined the body health but I am talking about the MIND health! ). When we read or see some disturbing news of murder, rape, serial killing we always assume those things happened far away. Don’t we?
*Spolier Alert* there are going to be a few references and analogies from the psychological thriller series on Netflix, ” MINDHUNTER”. So please continue to read at your own discretion.
I remember reading a book on Charles Sobhraj in my high school ( probably our librarian never censored books seriously back in those days!) and discussed it in length with my best friend. It was definitely disturbing and I don’t remember much about the details of the book. But after that I usually avoided such books! I never imagined that a recent conversation with a good friend would make me curious to watch this series and bring back the memories of reading a book almost 20 years ago! ( Ok, now don’t start to calculate my age haha)
I binge watched two seasons of this series being a hypocrite mom. It was 3 days of no TV for my son during the daytime and it was 3 TV nighters for me!
This series is really fascinating than unsettling. It is about two FBI profilers and a criminal psychologist who revolutionized the study of psychopathic killers in the 1970s and 80s. “Profiling” – all of us do it everyday. A few of us have made a career by being good at it, maybe not recruited as FBI agents Holden Ford and Bill Tench but as recruiters and a few of us do profiling of a passerby, a neighbor, a co-passenger in the metro etc etc as a hobby or subconsciously. I have come to understand that recruitment people and their ways determine the foundation for a company/institution of any kind to thrive. So a company’s foremost strategy should be to get an excellent recruitment. Do I believe in profiling? Yes, maybe MBTI or DISC are not 100% accurate but their indications might be really useful. Oh no no I am not implying that job seekers are criminals like these serial killers! haha
There is an intellectual sparring happening among so many thoughts in my head right now regarding this series, FBI agents, criminal psychologists, serial killers, behavioral and emotional trait analysis of these psychopaths but I will stick to tell you two things. One, why I loved the series so much and second I will try to answer my own question in my head to why do they do what they do!
I loved every episode, every interview Holden and Tench have with Ed Kemper, Richard Speck, Brudos, Charles Manson, David Berkowitz,Monte Rissell etc. Brilliant direction, dialogues and acting on both the sides.The Atlanta mass murder kept me hooked to the season 2 but the ending of William Wayne gave me goosebumps! Until 2019, he has not been convicted of all the murders so is the real culprit still at large? Did the profiling fail at such a scale? I might take a while to forget the faces of these murderers and rapists. The actors have portrayed them as real as it could be. I have almost researched on each one of them and their story, are they alive or dead, which prison are they serving now? Oh hold that thought in your head that is telling you that I am a psychopath trying to read and understand so much unnecessarily from a binge watched netflix series! Dr.Windy Carr is a strong female character whose knowledge is an immense value add to the whole behavioral research but it intrigues to see how she struggles to conceal about her homosexuality and her conversation with one of the killers who denies being homosexual yet has committed crimes because of that is nerve-racking. Holden’s panic attacks or Bill’s experience of things he sees at work being happening in his house. His 7 year old adopted and reserved son takes part in a murder unknowingly. Bill starts to think if his son’s traits are indications of a disturbed mind?
One of the oldest questions in criminology – and, for that matter, philosophy, law, theology – is whether criminals are born or made. Are serial killers a product of nature (genetics) or nurture (environmental factors)? I read the most suited answer to this question somewhere and I am reiterating in the exact words,
“Perhaps it’s not that serial killers are made, but that the majority of us are unmade, by good parenting and socialization. What remains behind is these un-fully-socialized beings with this capacity to attack and kill. And often that capacity is grafted onto a sexual impulse – aggression sexualized at puberty.Many serial killers are survivors of early childhood trauma of some kind – physical or sexual abuse, family dysfunction, emotionally distant or absent parents. Trauma is the single recurring theme in the biographies of most killers.”
Oh but Ted Bundy did not face any trauma?! So maybe we do not have enough research to conclude this presumption.
I would like to end this blog with a conversation I had with a very good friend :
Friend : ” Now you know why I love these serial killers, they are so damn smart. They are geniuses basically. ”
Me: ” They are definitely smart and I would have considered them as geniuses only if they had channeled their intelligence, self-pity/live and impulsivity in the right direction”
Friend : ” What matters not is the result, what matters is the journey. Result = murder and journey = planning ”
Me : ” Well, planning and journey I agree. But it is not about the result at all. I call US humans for mainly two things :
> FEEL ‘EMPATHY’ for others
> THINK ” PERCEIVE” the situations, relationships and surroundings
These smart beings failed miserably in these two”
Both of us then agreed to discuss this further during a sheesha kinda evening! 🙂
I am looking forward to the season 3 ( hope it doesn’t take another 2 years ) probably to see Ted Bundy and Charles Sobhraj!
It has been six months since I blogged – 2019, you have been real quick of all the years so far!
Last evening after returning from work, the intention was to have an early dinner and go to bed early. I am sure you would agree if I say that such a plan always gets hijacked by two people called Netflix and Amazon prime! I call them people because of the kind of commitment they receive form each one of us. The little rendezvous turned to binge watching 9 episodes of ‘Made in Heaven’ from the start to the finish.
I am still tripping about it in my head and today when I read that it’s story writers are two females, 3 out of the 4 directors are women lead by Zoya Akhtar it was like “Oh now I know why it was like that!” Haha So proud of them that they made this, which is being considered as the best web series on the Indian television. I thoroughly enjoyed every bit and every episode.
One of the few review blogs I read of the accolades I liked two best :
1. It’s the perfect antidote to repression.
2. A hormonal revolution or revelation
Yes, I feel our Bollywood movie/tv series at times repress the reality, emotions and daunting perspectives of our progressive, educated yet traditional orthodox society – why is a sex scene taboo and you feel uncomfortable watching it with people around other than your spouse??!! There is an iota of inhibition to accept homosexuality even though your thinking is modern and mature! This series is unconventional and mind awakening on so many levels.
Each character has justified their role by such powerful performance. I like how through out the 9 episodes stories are threaded with the main characters. It’s difficult for me to choose the best performance – I like them all Tara, Karan, Adil, Jazz, Kabir! The righteous part of my brain hates Faiza a bit but then relationships/ perception of a situation are complicated for a third eye but for two people in it – it might be the best reality of the emotional and physical state of mind,body, heart and soul!
Each episode is so well scripted and directed through the colors, shades and emotions of a big fat INDIAN WEDDING! And you just cannot stop at one or two episodes. Kabir ( Shashank Arora) brilliantly enacts ” breaking the fourth wall” ie taking to the audience with the morals of each episode and my favorite one translates to ” why is marriage considered to be the ultimate goal for a female? Is it to the score the best companion, family, physical and emotional security?? are love and compatibility at times forgotten in this calculation? Can there be a life beyond all these for a women??!!!
Spoiler alert – the best review of this series for you to read after you watch it :
Does the title sound silly and absurd? Yes, might be the answer for most of you but at some point or the other you remember the anxiety of posting a status message/photo on Whtsapp, Facebook, Twitter,LinkedIn etc and then following it up to see how many liked it, loved it, hated it and commented on it! Being a part of this so called routine nowadays, is it the beginning or ending of some psychological disorder?
I follow this routine and this blog is an attempt to understand why I do it. After pondering a lot on this, I realized that I do it just because its my reaction to a momentary feeling of happiness, excitement and by posting it immediately on the social media do I miss being in the moment? No, I have somehow learned to live in the moment and yet capture that moment through my social media update. Sharing with the friends and family helps me feel connected to them and I know for a fact that the recipients on the other end might not feel the same. But in this virtual world it feels nice to assume that they do and a bit of assumption intended to do no harm to anybody works well for my life. So why not do things which make you happy? Oh wait! should i empathize with that person who infers and assumes so much more than what I stated through my update message or photo? Well, I cannot bother myself with how the many people viewing my update perceive it! I have the confidence that people who really matter to me feel that I shared the update with good intentions, will smile for me, will laugh with me, will think with me, will ask me, will appreciate with me, will give me their honest opinion if necessary and that is all that matters to me!
Oh I definitely have some basic ground rules and some crazy etiquette I follow when I update anything on the social media. Yes, primarily most of my updates are “Capture a moment in time” . There are definitely some social filters applied, some contacts censored, no faces on Insta and I do not see the need to publicize that whole list here as they are rules created by me and followed by me!
I am no celebrity but I feel the urge to declare this for all the silent, pretending to be invisible, active, honest, aggressive, genuine and competitor followers :
It’s JUST AN UPDATE – comment/like/share if you genuinely feel like, NO reaction is also just fine
Don’t infer or assume anything, please reach out before doing so if that inference or assumption leads to a dire consequence LOL
Doesn’t call for any empathy or sympathy and definitely NOT COMPETITION! ( Oh, she used 10 hashtags so I will use 15, they have gone to a X restaurant so I will go to Y, Peter got that toy for his son so I should get a better one for my daughter etc etc!)
Grow Up and grow out of the immaturity of being judgmental when viewing these updates
Try not to be a social media hypocrite – checking the social media whenever possible and yet announcing that everybody else is just overusing it unnecessarily except you.
At this age, I don’t believe leading a dual life. I put what I want to in my status. Maybe I will outgrow this habit and become totally inactive some day but I prefer experiencing that on my own rather than being told. Until then, I shall continue enjoying leaving behind my digital footprints and hope you will too! 🙂
Can you describe politics in one word or maybe in a sentence? I bet you are trying hard to do that now but most of you are also thinking how does it matter; politics is something I am least interested in. THINK AGAIN!
I am not talking only about the politics of/by a politician but politics in our day today life. When I Wikipedia_ed it I got my one word to describe it, Multifaceted. I recently finished watching 5 seasons of the American political thriller television series – House of Cards. I now wait for its final season to be released in November. I am sad it will not have Kevin Spacey but well, the show must go on. While I was watching this I felt even though I am not the president of US or nowhere near of becoming one, politics is such a vital part of our lives. Might not be so much in our personal lives but the moment we think about our professional lives; I definitely feel like a politician fighting to win a major election. If anybody reading this article has ever come across a workplace void of politics, please give me a shout out! And I will send across my CV to you, haha!
The moment I step into my workplace, it’s like I don another personality – this personality has been molded and manipulated by the past experiences, lessons learnt, observations and interpretations. Two things which are genuine is my smile and the passion I have for what I do as my job. But trust me, the culture of a company you work for aids that passion or puts a damper on it that you become habituated to just doing the work you do for just surviving or hanging in there. Are the relationships we share with our colleagues real or fake or something in between? Are we always in the race of proving ourselves, giving our best and waiting for that one appreciation we crave for, I am not getting into the financial expectation here but the emotional one. Do we always wonder about weighing out carefully the words we utter, aware of the office gossips and grapevine? How much does all of these factors influence our productivity? I would say a lot indeed. It affects our attitude/contributions towards teamwork, our readiness to walk that extra mile in doing our job or becoming the one to PLAY POLITICS and being diplomatic! ‘Play politics’ in all fairness gives a negative connotation to the word politics. I strongly agree that you soak in the company culture and if playing politics is part of it, you just begin to play it unintentionally at the start and intentionally as you spend more years in the same company. Is this good or bad? I have no definite answer but I take the liberty here to give you my interpretation of it.
Learning to play politics becomes a way of the work life because you want to be in the good books of your managers, get the best appraisal and the bottom-line – to continue having that job in these economically testing times. Some good karmas from my previous life maybe, that till date I have had amazing managers to work with and for and always shared a good relationship with them. Maybe that is because of me or maybe because of them – but I can say that I did eventually learn to play the politics but never with a bad intention in the heart or the head to downplay another person. Maybe that’s why I survived and still surviving. Playing politics for me is in three steps:
1. First, deliver your best – don’t leave any stone unturned from your side of the work/task/project
2. Be a little show off and opportunistic – this makes sense only when you learn to do it at the right time and with the right people. Our judgement of this rightness improves with the years of experience and exposure. I say exposure because for me it is on that farther side of a bell curve from working with different nationalities. This is an opportunity life has thrown at me and I succeeded in catching it!
3. Don’t get stuck up in only playing politics. See the bigger picture, if you only play politics it just becomes relevant to that current company you are working for but if you aim at becoming a retrospective politician playing for the LIFE POWER you will definitely succeed.
I don’t know if this made sense to you, but writing this put a lot of clarity in my head and thus this will be my musings about politics. Frank Underwood, the main character of House of cards brilliantly enacts ‘breaking the fourth wall’ i.e. talking to audience and the one I love the most is,” After all, we are nothing more or less than what we choose to reveal.”
To write or not to write – I have been subconsciously thinking about this topic since the last few weeks! Oh not because it’s a serious one but because I was not able to understand it completely and still haven’t. Maybe some of you will say it’s too soon in life to think about this ( assuming my articles appease to the younger generation haha ) and some will say it’s not even worth thinking. I agree with both.We can elude it but it will come for us sooner or later – DEATH.
Why DEATH? I live in the Middle East and its merry making time now – EID holidays so why such a dark topic I asked myself? yes, I was inspired by three sources here. One was the book I read ” when breath becomes air “, second the brilliant comedy Bollywood movie “Karwaan” and the last was Kevin Spacey’s character in “House of cards.” I would not go into the details of each one of these but all the three touched upon the subject of death in one or the other way.
In the book, Dr.Paul being a cancer specialist is diagnosed by cancer. He accepts it with so much of grace that I learnt , when you are put into a life situation where the end is obvious you don’t have a choice but how you traverse to that end is your choice. One thing for sure is that having a support system of family and friends makes all the difference in such a situation.
The movie is about dead body mix up- wrong dead body is being transported by road to be exchanged with the right one. The comic in the movie is hilarious but with the forethought about death in my head I thought what is our significance when our heart stops? Are we just a dead body? Do we make up our mind when alive on how we want to be buried/cremated/ burnt etc? How we wish our funeral to be? Do we want our organs to be donated? I do not have the answers to these questions but are they worth being asked?
If you have watched house of cards, we might just know what politics is! Kevin spacey’s character claims to beat death of others at many instances by his plan and power. Also says about his own death that people will remember him for his legacy and he will die as the most powerful politician the world has seen! Are such ambitions even worth?
You might feel my article has too many questions and very few answers! But after a lot of thought into this I realized that there is no right or wrong perception of death. It might be one to me and the other to you. What is important to understand that we have to keep in mind that our ultimate end is DEATH. We do not get to choose how and when that will happen but we do get to choose how we live until that happens! Maybe this is a cliched ending but to accept – DEATH is our ultimatum in the true sense is not an easy thing to do! Try that…
Ok, it’s the holidays so I will think about a lighter topic to write next 🙂
“Agar dil Raazi ho” – the title song of Alia Bhat’s movie Raazi echos our life shenanigans! Do we listen to our heart or the head? After watching this brilliant espionage thriller, oh yes my respect for Alia as an actor grew by many folds and the heart grew fonder of Vicky Kaushal ( Iqbal ) – I have started to follow him on insta! Apart from these instant reactions, during the drive back home I wondered about many things in the movie but pondered about two things :
” Can we ever be so patriotic like this Kashmiri Muslim young lady?” – for our generation what is the definition of patriotism anymore?
” Can we ever sacrifice our kid’s life or happiness ( maybe life is an unthinkable word here) for some greater good? ”
I am not reviewing the movie here because it is definitely worth your watch and I don’t want to spoil that for you!
To watch this movie redefining a Muslim’s patriotism for our country on the first day of Ramadan is not a mere coincidence maybe but God’s way of saying ” Humanity , love, beliefs, loyalty, relationships and patriotism are beyond religions!”
I was intrigued by the REAl ” Sehmat” woman and have been trying to read about her. She had abstained herself from the pleasures of materialistic life so maybe even if she was alive ( I read she passed away just last month) she wouldn’t have probably watched the movie or even revealed her identity to the world. Navy officer Harinder Sikka who wrote the book ‘Calling Sehmat’ on which the movie is based met the real one and his illustrations of those interactions portrays this once a spy girl as “I have made peace with my past and I don’t want to talk about it to the world” types of person. But the most interesting aspect is that after returning to India she did not continue to live in Kashmir but moved to Punjab and lived in Abdul’s house! People who have watched the movie will know that this was her way of making amends to her actions – atonement of life! My heart just said wow!
Another aspect of the movie that really touched my heart was how the relationship between Sehmat and Iqbal was portrayed by these two phenomenal actors.
I for a fact do not like reading a book after watching its movie or vice versa. So the credit goes to Meghana Gulzar for changing that -I am looking forward to grab a copy of the book to read now!
TheInnerVoice 