The Stare - II

(this post is in continuation to "The Stare" posted earlier)

.......it took some doing, but I found I could relax and hold the glance if I simply stopped working to figure out what the other person was thinking. I had to force myself to stop reading every twitch, every sideways glance, every brush of the hair. When I walked in the door, when I stuck out my hand, when I said "Hi?" I turned my gaze toward the pupil of the person's eye. It really was a process of searching it out, looking at the black of the eye only, holding my glance there, and waiting until the eye color registered in my periphery.

It worked, too. Females could not hold my glance longer; men moved faster. This worked with colleagues. With friends. Even with Auto-drivers, whom I looked at in their rearview mirrors. I began to gain better control over these transactions by searching out their eyes. It took only a few seconds, but I could plainly see what they were looking for. Here is what I saw: No matter how much attention they appeared to be giving me, no matter how slowly they spoke or how long they paused after greeting me, it was evident that these people were initially treating me like every other guy who walked in off the street, trying to figure me out and see how fast they could get me what I wanted before moving on.

The eye contact changed all that. You realize you have X-ray vision. You had the right blade. With my eyes, I calmed them, slowed them down, and did so without knocking them over or humiliating them. I used my eyes to upset the indifference of their routines and simply register my presence. It worked every time. They didn't know me, but then, suddenly, it seemed they did. I did not need to bargain much. The doorman perked up when I arrived at the dad’s office and stood up straighter when I walked out.

I tried it with people who see me all the time. The guard at my office who now greets me every time I walk in. The person I've known for three years. A guy I know from some social service activities. In each case, upon greeting them, I'd search out their pupils and hold my eyes on theirs for a minimum of two blinks. Just as with people I didn't know, time seemed to slow down and routine moments became unpredictable. Not just because two blinks is an eternity when you have nothing to say except "How are you?" but because it meant they had to look at me at least once, and often two or three times, before they spoke.

While I may suck at eye contact naturally, there are people who are worse, much worse, in every ring of my life. The more I practiced, the more hapless they seemed. It's the law of dominance, I think, that the more dominant you become, the more you want to stay dominant. I found I liked backing people down. I began to look at them long enough that I began to sense when they were about to look away. The truth is, instead of them seeing me, it ended up that I could really see them. They were just like I was, a little afraid of eye contact, a little leery of connection. I meant well, so I pressed on. People gave me apologies I didn't ask for. They invited me to dinner.

I could do far worse with my eyes. Anyone can. The tool can always become the weapon.

With any gesture of influence, the danger lies in not knowing what you are after. I fell into an easy routine recently. Just yesterday, while negotiating the price of a beautiful watch I was buying for my mom, I was staring into the eyes of a storekeeper, trying to figure out what color his eyes were, when he suddenly dropped the price by two thousand bucks to four thousand. I'd been threatening him somehow and hadn't known it. I didn't break away. I didn't look down. While I hadn't expected as much, now I had to see where I could go from there.

His eyes jumped back and forth, from the counter to the watch to me, then back again, in reverse. His eyes looked green, I decided. Green.

"Four thousand," I said. "Flat price. No tax. OK?"

He nodded and looked back at me then, long and hard. We were in agreement, though neither of us said a thing.

FYI, my eyes are BROWN.

Call up...

It is a well established “known” assumption that senses do bring out lots of things, which are about to happen in our lives. Twisting the story would entail that more than senses, it is what we eventually end up doing, reminds us of lots of hidden agendas of thy nature.

I’ll not beat around the bush anymore (it anyhow won’t make much of a difference), and come to what the incident of the day is – I used to have Reliance phones – not just one, but two of them (don’t wonder why two – I am presumptuous enough to say that one was official and another was for personal use; now don’t ask me what personal use I’m talking about). Both of these were ignored and discarded a couple of years ago (the paradigm shift of need of fancier handsets was the trigger..).

Today, I was just going through my stuff when I could locate one of those reliance handsets in my junk drawer (again, don’t ask me whether it was personal or official). To my surprise, it was still there. What surprised me more was that it was still working. And above all, it had all the messages (or SMS’) intact (Not that I had thought that someone would have deleted data from it, but it came as a surprise that the text was still there)!

And believe me, the messages were real touchy. It reminded me of quite a few things – highlighted ones being - a night’s drive about a hundred kilometers away from the city to drop someone home; a total collapse of a friend’s love life; & an anxious friend waiting to get the answer from her beloved – there were so many, what should I call it, maybe “flavors”, in those messages that I could almost relive the past.

I wanted to pick up my cell and call to relive those moments, but somehow, my fingers felt a quiver and I just could not – it wasn’t the ‘ego’ that was holding me back; it was a fear – fear of making a mistake (no, calling is not a mistake here; not calling is..). The fear of sounding stupid, when it means the least. Vaise who knows the real essence of stupidity – is it the lesson learnt from “Pride and Prejudice”? Or does it ensemble from the absence of acts – I don’t know.

But calling – yes – I’ll do for sure. Just giving myself some time…

Belief..

Though I've been on a low for a few days, but this shall speak out anyhow..

The Ultimate Search for Bourne With Google

Much awaited Bourne is back - The Bourne Ultimatum is as much a political movie as an action adventure: director Paul Greengrass made it after the second Bourne film and United 93, the movie about what happened on one of the jets hijacked by terrorists on 9/11. All three movies take place in that anxious place between reality and perception, and The Bourne Ultimatum is made with the same shaky, documentary-style cinematography that invites us into the grey and faithless world of the spy. Not since John le Carre suffered the end of the Cold War have we had such a rich and adult view of what secrets mean.

Not that there’s much time to think about it. The Bourne Ultimatum is also breathlessly tense: Greengrass stages three chases with a beautiful eye for the suspense of the everyday. In the first, Bourne leads a newspaper reporter (Paddy Considine) through a London train station as assassins follow them both. It’s one of the movie’s several chases-within-a-chase: everyone has a cellphone, all of them are tapped, and Bourne orchestrates the journalist’s flight even as he is being followed and in turn following. It’s very long and unfailingly gripping, and Greengrass manages to convey the twists and complications clearly within its crowded reality.

The Bourne Ultimatum ends with the answers Bourne has been seeking. These turn out to be disappointing, maybe because the movie has to come to a shuddering halt while we go through flashbacks that don’t tell us much that we couldn’t guess. Bourne’s long run to find out who he is turns out to be not that important. What he was really learning, it turns out, is who we are.

I would rate it 4.5/5

Quick Trivia - Universal Pictures and Google have joined to promote the movie and at the same time tout several of Google's products to moviegoers.

"The Ultimate Search for Bourne With Google," is an interactive game that uses several Google products, including search, maps, images, translation and YouTube, to let players adopt the persona of Jason Bourne, the film's hero. Players are given challenges each week at a dedicated Google site, www.google.com/bourne. Another feather in the cap, I must say.

Here's ME..Where're you?

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Music and Lyrics

There's a formula for romantic comedies that one must adhere to, which is pretty much close to the guidelines Mills and Boon put out for their novels (Yes, I know what they are!). Logical too, given the size of the romance market. Your hero must be good-looking, a little tad naughty, eventually redeemable and every lady should want him. The heroine must be amiable, a little peculiar, and she must win the hero over with the force of her lovable personality, because even though all the people in these stories are inevitably drop dead gorgeous, it's never about the sex, because, well, that would be just crass.

"Music and Lyrics" - an unusually witty and intelligent romantic comedy. A Movie advised on Valentine’s day / Friendship day. Once recommended.

On this day...

On this day, the friendship day, I'll share one of the incidents I've been a part of that I can talk about. It is about this friend of mine, who I don't think goes through my blog, and it would be safe for me to blurt out the incident here.

Well, the story goes like this - Let's call this friend 'D'. D and I have been knowing each other for ages, for as long as I can remember (I know, I know, I have a bad memory, and I hardly remember things happening a couple of hours back, but whatever..) - so now, we both used to get along very well as friends - and by getting along, I mean that no ten minutes could pass without us having an argument or a fight. Obviously my mom trusted D more than she trusted me, and vice versa. Not that we used to go out too often in those early days, but it used to be fun to fight at each opportunity possible. And one fine day, we had a fight, a catastrophe!

Hang on, hang on...if I tell you the reason for the quarrel, you've beat both of us to death. All those who today know the reason for that quarrel we had still wonder what was there to even have an argument about. I WILL NOT open the cards to tell the reason, because it will reveal how stupid we were, but anyhow. So we had this quarrel, and we stopped talking (as we generally used to, for a couple of hours) - but on this occasion, neither of us tried to revert...so the hours became days, days became weeks, weeks months, and ultimately months turned into years, with us not talking..!!!

In the meanwhile, D shifted home, and so did I, our phone numbers changed, and since I am talking of the primitive age when we hardly used to operate computers, we did not have each other's email IDs too..Years later, when in college, a classmate of mine told me that some friend of his met some other person, who knew me, and the name of this other person was 'D'! Just like we see Flashback in movies, I could recollect all the times spent together, and I decided to get back in touch with D at that moment itself.

But but but, everything was not as simple. D's address was still not known - my classmate's friend had some faint idea of which street D stayed in!

Anyone seen 'Love Actually'? Remember how Hugh Grant (playing the Prime Minister of Britain in the movie) went from door to door in the street, trying to locate Natalie (PM's love in the movie). Not that I had watched the movie by then, but that's exactly what I was prompted to act upon. I can still remember the shocked face of D when I knocked on the front door of D's house, and D standing there, wondering how on earth I could find the place!!!

Post that, it's been a couple of years, and yes, we are in regular touch now. Fights and quarrels are still as silly as they used to be, but I guess the time has taught us both a lot - that near or far, it's a matter of being with your friends, in essence.

It's a matter of hanging on, after others have let go.

Now D holds a distinct place - many other friends of mine do too, but I am writing how special D is to me here, because I know D will never reach this page.. And many of my friends who might read this should know that I have their stories too, but those will be shared only in forums or platforms where they can't see them. :-)

Now some general gyan, that you may skip..
One of the most memorable moments in life is when you meet old friends whom you had lost touch midway in the journey of life. You will be overwhelmed with the feeling of emotional detachment, realizing how much you have been missing him or her all these years. Having them around will remind you of all those golden moments that you spent together in the rain, amidst the morning mist or under the scorching sun. It will remind you of those golden moments of sharing lunch together and exchanging your friendship bands. More so it will remind you of how silly you have been when you picked up fights on matters of no substance, spending days, weeks, months, or even years not talking to that dear friend of yours.

Apparently today is friendship day. Many would have planned for grand reunions and rocking get togethers with old friends. This is a way of sharing all emotions that you had stored for them for this long span of time. Doesn't really matter if you don't do it now though, because one can celebrate the occasion of friendship any time of the year! Just grab a couple of beers, and/or pickup some snacks from the nearby shack, and sit under the stars on the ground with your friend, and revisit all times, good and bad, with your dear friend - you won't discount that day as any other day. the good and the bad times with your friend.

And if the idea has not stuck yet, go and collect the contact info of all your long lost friends (by long lost, I do not mean those who you've left in the "Kumbh-ka-mela"!), and get back to them - shoot them an email, post a letter, call them up, send gifts, or do anything that makes you feel you are closer to your friend.

And at last, 'The Devil Wears Prada'

Someone has said, "What should profit a man if he should gain the whole world but lose his soul in the process?". Countless plays, movies, novels, short stories, speeches, essays and nonfiction books have been written on the subject. Enters 'The Devil Wears Prada'. This movie is, thus, hardly original but smart, excellently acted and surprisingly fun and thoughtful.

Leaving aside the story and performance review, which I'll talk about later, I must specify upfront that if you are a 'Fashion' freak and enjoy observing, this movie is meant for you - forget about the story or anything, the fashionable traits of the movie will surely blow you over.

Andy (Anne Hathaway) is a sweet young scrubbed behind the ears young lady who moves from the countryside to the big bad city. She is so naive that she is genuinely surprised when not everyone is delighted to meet her.

She goes to work at a fashion magazine presided over by 'Miranda'. Miranda is a monsterboss, a consummate bitch. The kind of boss who inspires by fear and lives by mottos such as: "I don't have headaches, I cause them".

Andy starts her career at Runaway in awe & fear of the snazzily dressed arrogant women who work in this atmosphere of fear, stress and hostility. She thinks they are the powerful and the smart and sees herself as weak and silly. As the movie progresses, Andy learns she, by retaining her humanity, personality and principles, is the powerful and smart and her coworkers, by selling their souls and allowing themselves to be treated like garbage just for money and clothes, are the weak and silly.

The movie follows the very typical plot arc of having the protagonist be a nice person who, tempted by the dark side, acts like a jerk for a while, gets her comeuppance, sees the light and comes back to being a nice person all in about two hours. Wouldn't it be wonderful if real life worked so smoothly?

Meryl Streep is perfect as the devil-lady. She could be the best American actress alive. Miranda is a person of contradictions. She is loathesome and compelling, enviable and repulsive, powerful and vulnerable, regal and pathetic. She manages her professional world with a ruthless excellence that would make a political boss blush with modesty.

The Stare

I don't know whether you would have noticed or not, but maintaining eye contact feels awkward, even creepy. At first; then it just feels powerful. I’ve read a bit about eye contact during conversations, in addition to what I have seen, observed and noticed, and here is what comes out.

When I was small, my dad could always tell when I was lying. When I was about six years old, he told me God whispered it to him. Since he was religious, I had to respect that. He had a treaty with God. I wanted to hear it. I figured if I knew when it happened, the precise moment, I'd hear the voice of God, too.

I decided to watch my dad's eyes for a sign – some twitch of recognition, some little break in his concentration, anything – that would tell me when he was hearing the voice of God. I told him easy lies, the ones I always told him: that my brother did it, or that I forgot doing it – broke the china, left the gate unlatched. At first I didn't even want to blink, for fear I'd miss the moment when God spoke. But the truth is, I got nothing. No sign. In fact, the more I looked at his eyes, the more I began to realize that my dad had no idea that I was lying. None. He looked straight back at me, waiting to hear the next thing I would tell him. In fact, he was hanging on my words. There was no voice of God. My father wasn't listening to anyone but me. He had no idea when I was lying, especially if I stared him down the whole time.

The trick, I soon realized, was simply to look him in the eye as I spoke. So it was that I became an atheist and a proficient liar in one fell swoop. Such were my salad days.

A person’s gaze has weight, resistance, muscularity. Clearly, there are people who use their eyes well. You know them: the sales rep, the tyrannical boss, mom! Their eyes force the question. These people may be as dumb as streetlamps (I am not saying they are), but they are an undeniable presence in the room. They know they must be dealt with. You know it, too.

It is a very particular skill set. The eye-contact specialist is like the one guy in the game of hockey who knows only how to take a penalty corner. Relentless and a little annoying, he uses his skill, presses his opponents with the fundamentals. It may not work every time, but eventually things work his way. Over time, this habit—establishing and maintaining eye contact—creates favorable situations and produces results. The eye-contact specialist gets talked to first, dealt with most promptly, and responded to most thoroughly. He's always first in line for a reason.

And for the one who's being looked at, eye contact sends a message, signaling acknowledgment, connection, and attention, signaling something, I think, like empathy. Being seen is, on some level, being felt. It's nice to be acknowledged. Even so, why does eye contact, wielded freely, always feel like a weapon to me? Why do I want to smack people who stare at me deeply while I'm talking about girls or career or for that matter, anything under the sun? Maybe the true signal is less subtle, less friendly than "I'm paying attention to you." Whether he admits it or not, that person is participating in one very large bet that you will blink first. That guy, the one who's looking at you—straight at you, right into you—is getting something that you are not. It's called the upper hand.

Well, that's my preferred hand. So I did my thing. For few days I tried to use eye contact to get what I wanted, with real abandon. It was no small trick. By nature, my eyes drift. I tend to look past people when I talk. I look out the window, examine the horizon. I'm sure this has cost me connection with some people who take it as a sign of being evasive or shifty. When I paid attention to it, I found that my tendency was to click in, lock eyes for a second or less, then look upward or outward into the distance. It's just not my rhythm to stare.

That was the first lesson: Eye contact is not the same as staring.

People don't like the dumb indifference of a stare. My first attempts at maintaining eye contact were so self-conscious that I took to picking a point on the person's face – as close to the eyes as possible – and gazing at it as calmly as possible. That was a disaster. I wasn't looking at people so much as I was at a blemish they happened to know very well.

If I stared at a point, say, between someone's eyes or at a mole just above an eyebrow, people knew it right away.

I did this which a friend, and she stood it for about a few seconds before she asked me, "What are you looking at?" She ran her finger along her eyebrow.

So I tried to concentrate on eyelashes, but this made my own eyes jump as I talked. My head bobbed, too, and I was hit with a sense of motion sickness. People constantly noticed my stare. I was forced to apologize, telling them that I was just spacing out, not paying attention – the direct opposite of what I was hoping to convey in the first place. It was as if I had become a mirror in which people saw their own tiny imperfections, magnified by my glance.

Both parties in a conversation are caught almost constantly in the true focus and precise direction of a glance. I had to go for the eyes. There is no faking it.

There have always been people in my life who were good at using their eyes. My seventh-grade English teacher. My boss who’s giving me lots of work these days. My friend the pilot. My neighbour who I always used to fight with. I don't know if I trusted each of these people because they looked straight at me or if they looked straight at me because I trusted them. Yet each could lock and hold my glance for minutes at a time, while I was feeling sick after five seconds. What exactly did they see? How did they do it?

It is clear that the idea of eye contact is not simply to point your eyes in a given direction. You have to use your eyes. I have to take a move. I am sucking it up, and will start to lock in on the pupils. It will take some time, but I’ll come back and share, how it went. Till then, wait.

Nothings..

There is nothing specific that I have to share, except that it has been a fortnight since I made a post – S came down to Bangalore, and was here for a week (some say it was for his GMAT exam – I second); we went over to Savandurga yet again for trekking; the next weekend was spent in watching Potter’s latest mania, and bowling. And of course, the work load has gone up manifolds, for a change.

S being here made me recall all the good times we had while being in Delhi. I could relive the days when we would spend the days and nights, doing absolutely nothing in the hostels of IITD, while watching movies and pointing out the progress of S’ progress from his last bike crash. Other than that, while S was here, could again hear between the murmur of sounds when his friends met, where I could read between the lines of the conversations we had, when we were just out of college – I won’t mention those here, because if you have been there, you know it, and if you haven’t been there yet, I’ll give you a chance to have a go yourself. With S, we went over for trekking again, and I realized I am not such-a-bad-trekker anyhow.

Then this weekend, HP was obviously on the cards – though not as good as any of its predecessors. The charm of magic has gone by, and I guess it’s only a matter of time now, that the last book will be here, and HP (along with JK Rowling) will make a place in the pages of history as one of the most intriguing series of all times.

And lastly, the work that has been there (wonder why work always come last na!) – last two weeks saw me working on a couple of things, and working really late too – could recall those early days in Noida, when it was literally ‘burning-in-midnight-oil’ for many. Though the kind of work I have undertaken is nice, I still don’t know if it is the time for me to do this kind of planning / strategic / so called ‘high-end’ work. Got to make note of this, and make sure that I’m doing some ground level work too.

Other than that, time’s picking up monotone – got to infuse some reality into it.