25 Tips on Turning 25

Vanessa Rebello

Last week I completed a quarter of a century on this planet, and decided to tweet a little gyaan that I had accumulated over the years.  Here are a few of the things that I can share with you today. 

1. Nothing is permanent. Nothing makes sense. Nothing is 100%. And that’s alright.
2. Don’t quit a job without another in hand, especially with financial obligations. The job scene is unpredictable for freshers. 
3. A broken heart and an empty bank will teach you a lot more than any educational institute ever will.
4. To be good at something you need to actually DO it. Persistently.
5. Don’t waste your time with crappy people. They suck the life out of you and move on. Learn the art of indifference instead.
6. As far as possible, never owe anyone any money. The vicious cycle of debt will kill you, one payment at a time.
7. What you love and what pays the bills might be two separate things. Either incorporate the two or find a way to do both.
8. People are going to talk. No. Matter. What. Let them.
9. A good friend is one who tells you when you’re full of shit.
10. You will be taken advantage of in some way or the other. Learn to recognize the people who do this and avoid them.
11. Learn to be happy for people. Jealousy gets your nowhere.
12. Your 20s are when you have the least to lose. Take risks in love, work and life.
13. Cut the bullshit out of your life. People or otherwise.
14. Don’t get attached to ideas. Put them out there. Push the good ones. Just remember: The best ideas are always bigger than you. 
15. Meet people. There are so many of them out there and they all have something to offer. Take what you get, give what you can.
16. Figure out who you are and accept it. You need to learn to enjoy your own company.
17. Family comes first. Always.
18. The way you look matters. People are superficial – accept it. If you can beat this with your intelligence/personality – good for you.
19. Learn to laugh. If you can’t laugh at yourself, don’t feel bad when people laugh at you.
20. Smile and wave. Sometimes you’re going to need to be courteous to people you don’t like. Suck it up and do it.
21. Ask. If you don’t know something, ask. Don’t pretend to know. Don’t Google it later. Just ask.
22. Your parents are growing old. The day you fully understand this is the day you’re an adult.
23. Keep secrets. Don’t gossip. It’s important to be nice.
24. Read. Douglas Adams. Richard Dawkins. Blogs. Websites. Something. But read.
25. Love.

Won’t you take me to Funkytown?

by Nishi Shroff

Image Source: Sellerby.com

I don’t want to be a hypocrite, but it isn’t easy to live in a city where moving just half-an-inch, in any direction, means stepping on somebody’s toes, literally. I would also like to breathe fresh air, but when I sit at a promenade I can still inhale Marlboro fumes. I most definitely don’t want to be a hypocrite.

There are billboards all over the place and nobody cares what’s on them, you learn how to tune it all out when there’s so much clutter thrown at you. What worries me are the lakhs and crores in ad spends, especially when a child is crapping on the corner of a busy junction, right below a bank’s hoarding.

Being grown up requires Shit, Strength and Sass

by Rucha Shukla

Grown up. How often do our parents ask us to grow up? Be mature. Start behaving our age. We feel indignant. We are behaving our age, this is what I am supposed to be at 15 or 16 or 18. Let me live.

And you live. Till one day you find that life catches up with you and you realize that you have grown up. Actually. And oh man that is such a weird realization. Suddenly you want to go back. Reach 14, hit 16, and swing all the way into 18 and re enact your 21^st birthday…All over again.

But you’re grown up now. What to do? What’s been drilled into our heads since we were probably 5 has finally come to pass. You start behaving mature, you file your tax returns (and that to me is the ultimate in grown up world), you start worrying what you will put on your Facebook status will be read and judged by people, you worry about money (which you earn and hence is even more precious) and you worry about the super ultimate “Where is my life headed?”

But somebody has to be grown up. To my mind it’s like puberty, it’s going to hit you sooner or later. Too soon and you’ll feel weird; too late and you’ll feel like you’re irresponsible. Either ways, it’s going to hit you.

Doesn’t have to be doomsday, though it sounds like that the way I’ve written it. It’s just hit me and I’ve been at times fighting tooth and nail to resist it or embracing it like the Chipko movement.

The trick – None that I can think of, except that you make it up as you go along. Sort of like writing your own story, you edit your own parts, add your own drama, polish up the words and do a little bit of calligraphy. And you get to choose your very own paper. I would choose a purple colored one.

What does this post mean? I don’t know. It’s a cross between The Sunscreen Song and Finding Neverland. I 

think.

Hi my name is Rucha and I’m trying to write. All over again.

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Rucha Shukla is an Associate Producer for TV and has recently spent most of her time alternately dreaming about getting a house in Coorg so that she can write random poetry for the rest of her days and watching reruns of Supernatural.

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If you want to be happy, be.

by Suchita Ranglani

It’s funny how everyday we end up getting into a silly argument with either our best friend or our worst enemy. How we crib about the most irrelevant things. How we let the fact that our favorite donut at MOD isn’t available affect us so much.  Or the fact that someone doesn’t agree with us.  How we cry over spilling ketchup over our white t-shirt or complain about a coming up test or an assignment. It’s just so silly.

Below the surface, we end up forcing ourselves to live in pain, long for the past, crib about what we do and do not have. We sympathize with ourselves, with our “pain”. With the apparent ‘shattered’ state we are in. Blame others for the mess in our lives. Try to change ‘their’ view and in the bargain lose our minds. Get angry with ‘them’ because apparently “they’re wrong”. Regret what we’ve already done. And unknowingly, get accustomed to the depression. It’s just SO strange.

What we don’t realize that the ‘shattered’ state claim to be in is our own choice. We have put ourselves there, by focusing on everything that is supposedly ‘wrong’.

5 Movies to Watch before You Die: #5 - 12 Angry Men

by Dharmesh Gandhi

Before I watched ‘12 Angry Men’, I had watched ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ and ‘Serpico’ by Sidney Lumet, which happen to be in my list of all time favorite films. I loved ‘Dog Day Afternoon’; so I was expecting something similar when I sat down to watch 12 Angry Men. At first, I was not too keen to watch the film as I had not watched any actors (apart from Fonda) in any films. 

Apart from a brief setup and a briefer epilogue, the entire film takes place within a small New York City jury room, on "the hottest day of the year," as 12 men debate the fate of a young defendant charged with murdering his father. Incredible. Aside from the great performances (by each of these great actors) the standout in ‘12 Angry Men’ is Lumet's subtle pacing and tension-building. Lumet gently leads us in to the crucial characteristics of the jurors.

Atmosphere is as important as character. Watch the jurors sweat in stifling heat and then delight in the rainstorm. All the while, Fonda remains cool and calm in his white suit. A ticking clock, a wall-mounted fan and a dozen heated debaters are perfectly exploited to portray this study in prejudice, justice and humanity. The interlaced moments of comedy are very welcome too and always appropriate to the progress of plot and character.

The brilliance of ‘12 Angry Men’ can be explained in three parts. Sidney Lumet does everything right in this film. The setting is simple; most of the action takes place in the jury room, with the exception of some establishing shots telling the viewer where they are, and the plot is pretty straightforward But there are some wonderful elements that he introduces into the scene to further the claustrophobia and tension: He makes it the hottest day of the summer, and for most of the film, the fan doesn't work, so you can literally see the sweat pouring off of these men and soaking through their shirts. He also uses some tight close-ups of the actors at times, particularly when they are giving dissenting opinions or are in a state of emotional discomfort.

Secondly, the film's script is absolutely first-rate. Not only does the story come together like a thousand puzzle pieces, but also the clever way it does this never fails to astonish me. One would think that sitting and watching 12 guys talk about a court case while getting in each other's faces for an hour and a half wouldn't be compelling, but the intricacies of each juror, the way each of their backgrounds and prejudices are revealed is fantastic.

Let’s come to the cinematography. To make the room seem smaller as the story continued, lenses of longer focal lengths have been used, so that the backgrounds seemed to close in on the characters. The first part of the film is shot above eye level. The second, at eye level. And the last is shot below eye level. In that way, towards the end the ceiling began to appear. Not only were the walls closing in, the ceiling was as well. The sense of increasing claustrophobia did a lot to raise the tension of the last part of the movie. In the film's last shot, a wide angle was used to let the viewer finally breathe.

‘12 Angry Men’ is one of those rare B/W favourites for me. It's almost disarmingly simple and straightforward. Its drama frighteningly is intense. I understand why some may view the film as dated, or have a problem with the era from which it was made. I take into account all the cultural differences between then and now (the all-white male jury, the American slang, the one-dimensional setting) but none of it matters because the story, direction, and acting are so good. The morality of the story is the focus, not the backdrop. 

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Dharmesh Gandhi thrives on cinema and pop culture. When he is not busy doing that, he's a TVshow evangelist. If he's doing neither of those, he's probably asleep. If you want to talk to him about movies or bitch about the shows he airs on Star World you can catch him on Twitter.


This is the first of his series of 5 movie reviews for LaptopLit.

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Feature: Mumbai Local Trains - A Class Apart

by Mihir Suvanam

Image by Blaine Rodrigues

Just to fuck with your head, the Western Railways Corporation classified different coaches on their train system as First Class and Second Class. It’s all the same class really and we are all equally fucked no matter what class we travel. Nobody here gets out smelling like jasmine. But what this class distinction does do is induce in the working class a false sense of status.

I pay about 800 odd Rupees for a 3 month ‘First Class’ pass to travel from Santacruz to Elphinstone Road. Why do I buy this in spite of knowing that there are an equal number of bodies stacked in to my compartment as compared to the other un-striped compartment? Because I’m a classist whore and the first class stacks me up against pin-striped, educated, white collar, bespectacled, novel readers. I deserve no less. If I am going to be showered with warm sweat it’d better be from these gentlemen.

But these men are probably somebody else’s bitches too, which is why they waste no time in exerting their superiority once inside the ‘First Class’ black hole. If an un-stripped, laborer-type bhaiya is spotted in our little slice of luxury, then God have mercy on him. It’s not like he’s single handedly causing the compartment to overflow with human bodies. The average reaction before someone notices him is about 6 seconds; somebody will smugly say “Yeh first class hai!” That’s it. No solution will be offered or no moral will be taught. A fact will be stated in its entirety. And then the gent will wait for the words to take effect. This will melt thebhaiya’s ego, the last dying cell of his self-respect will commit suicide and his head will hang low. At the next stop he will get down and merge with the non-perfumed sweat of his un-stripped brethren.

Friday Features: What’s in a cliché?

by Pankti Mehta

The clock is ticking to the eleventh hour, and you’re at your wit’s end. You’re still at square one with your piece, typing and erasing, typing and erasing. The sun stopped shining hours ago, but your hay remains unmade. All you want to do is forget how procrastination reached its peak today and call it a day now that it’s late – so you end up writing a paragraph that looks a bit like this.

I’ve always been confused with the cliché. How much is too much? I remember going through a phase when I would avoid them except in titles or endings. At about the same time Holden Caulfield spoke about how his English teacher didn't like cliches. "But I like them," he said. "They're accurate, and in some situations, they hit the nail right on the head."

That made sense. They’re recognizable, those clichés, give your reader something to relate with. They work superbly for headlines, let you use puns, ‘catch-phrases’, but they don’t come without the danger of over-use. I’ve fallen into the snare myself, not that long ago, using the headline ‘Go green’ for a story about how to use the colour in your home interiors. It made me cringe then, too, knowing fully well it’s terribleness, but it fit the space exactly and it was late…oh well.

Friday Features: Antilla - Mythical Island and Mighty Mansion

by Sanika Tillway

Antilla is named after a
mythical island

Mukesh Ambani recently had a housewarming party with the crème de la crème of high society in attendance at his new home Antilla (named after a mythical island). Billed as the Taj Mahal of the 21^st century, the monstrosity, as I call it, spans 4,00,000 sq ft. With 80 of the city’s who’s who in attendance, it was a rather private affair. This didn’t, however, stop it from making headlines given that everyone who mattered came – Sachin Tendulkar, Aamir Khan, Deepak Parekh, Parmeshwar Godrej, Preity Zinta and Kumar Mangalam Birla among others.

I’d like to give you a perspective of what this house has been planned like. First of all, there was all this brouhaha when reports of Mukesh building a new home first started doing the rounds. Then followed the controversy about the land belonging to the Wakf Board and how Ambani had acquired the property for Rs. 21 crore, far below its market price. But, all said, it’s got what it takes to be, you know, ‘iconic’. Think Antilla and you’re thinking - Ambani, avant-garde architecture, not to mention the big bucks spent on making it the landmark it now is. Maybe now Mukesh is thinking, “That’ll show Anil…” Maybe, he’s also wondering if his brother will avenge the insult by handing him an inflated electricity bill.

I’m just thinking about it from an aam aadmi perspective. What the hell is he going to do with that big a house and just six occupants – his mother Kokila (who will shuttle between the old family home where Anil currently resides and Antilla), his three children and wife Nita. The house is staffed by six hundred employees; making it about a hundred staffers per person (I tend to do the math in weird things). Three helipads, a four floor view of the Arabian Sea, each family member having a personal gym, swimming pools, ballrooms, lounges and the list is endless. What bothers me is that there is more focus on projecting it as a landmark than a home. Maybe, the media is at fault. What would worry plague me had it been my home, is why my home is being made out to be a luxury resort cum royal palace (the ballrooms have actually been compared to the Palace of Versailles). Is that really what a home is supposed to be about?

Crystal Chandeliers in the Ballroom
occupy 80% of the ceiling

Is a home not about warmth and love? Isn't it about the place you know you can head to knowing that even if you are not wanted anywhere else, this is one place that is rightfully yours; you don’t have to own, it could be your parents’ or rented or anything else that works for you? I’m thinking what  would I do in a house that has less family and more randoms available at my beck and call. Seriously, I’d feel like I’m sitting in an office with 600 people swarming around me. But, I guess when you have the dough (as also ample space, in this case), its okay for a home not to seem like a home. I’m thinking if it would be any different for Mukesh, zipping in and out of the elevators at his new residence, the same way he would in his office. Doesn’t he ever want to get out of his disinfected, air-conditioned aura to go to a real home?

Nine elevators line the lobby

Of course, if you were Mukesh Ambani, you’d have more important things to worry about, wouldn’t you? Like how to wage war against your brother about who deserves more gas. Or whether Nita will be comfortable using her new Airbus 319? Or if he can sue Bhajji for lifting Nita after Mumbai Indians won a match? Or what his mother thought of his housewarming party compared to the party that Anil hosted the same night?  You see, when you are one of the richest guys in the world, you have more important things on your mind apart from a home. So what if it becomes the talk of the town? After all, it is not aam being an Ambani.

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Sanika Tillway is a 21 year old student of Chartered Accountancy who likes to unleash the child within at every given opportunity.  Her interests include writing, reading, sleeping, talking and making random observations about people. To chit-chat with her, or to get some tips for your money laundering ways, click here.

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Friday Features: Designer Dilemma

by Mark Rocha

I’ve never really understood the compulsive nature of women to ‘shop’ without really buying anything. The concept of ‘window shopping’ – deception if you will, is something that I’ve never really been on board with. And they make it so convincing too! Right down to, ‘if only they had it in a lighter peach, I would have bought it’ – no you wouldn’t have; and besides, men only see sixteen colours – plums and peaches are just fruits to us – more on that later. Thankfully, this is not one of those narratives where the pretend world of makeup and wardrobe changes drive a man up the horses arse; this is more about those so called ‘designer labels’ that women must have!

I’m with my wife shopping for clothes at ‘Mango’, (there were others before, and a lot more after!) because she feels she needs a ‘new look’. A couple of hours later (yes – that’s how long it takes), she goes to the counter with a variety of seemingly wearable ‘things’ – because that’s what they are really. At times I can never understand how certain ‘tops’ or ‘bottoms’ ... uh ... work? For lack of a better word? Till she’s wearing it, it’s just cloth for me more often than not. Anyway, after the nice man makes it through pricing the wardrobe of Elizabeth Taylor, I’m presented with a total that rivals the gross national product of New Mexico where their only definition for ‘Mango’ is ‘fruit’ (and it’s much cheaper)!

It’s crazy! Why spend so much money on clothes that are wearable, only because everyone knows where you got it from?

Friday Features: Hair Raising Times by Sunder Sharma

by Sunder Sharma

Me and my barber never see things eye to eye. For one thing, he’s always doing his dirty work behind my back. I’ve never come out of his shop without feeling like a pale-face who’s had a close brush with the Red Indians – happy to have his scalp intact!

But this has been a part of my life from my early youth. My parents recount that it would take four strong men to hold me down while the village barber ran his shears over my head. The fashion then, among the elders, was a close cropped head – so close, as a matter of fact, that after the barber finished one would have a tough time believing that he didn’t use his razor instead of the scissors.