Happening Life?

"Happening life you lead" - atleast two of my friends have said this to me in the past 72 hours...and it had my immensely puzzled. I just couldn't get their definition of "happening" - one said it coz I eat out regularly with my family...in the last one year this habit of ours had gone a bit out of order and we were increasingly ordering food home, but after my three months hiatus when I was "restaurant-deprived" I've been insistent that we go out atleast once a fortnight, if not every week. Been to Noodle Bar last Sunday, and today it was Just Around the Corner to satisfy my craving for salads...and that to my dear friend classifies as a "happening life"!!! To me it classfies as having a life, plain and simple...

The other friend truly puzzled me coz from what I understand I have a "happening life" because I'm confused, because I carry around with me a sense of void, an emptiness that I don't want to deal with after nearly two years of battling with it - seriously if this is "happening" I'd rather lead a very placid boring life....the sense of emptiness, I thought I'd developed methods to deal with, but every now and then it crops up to cripple all my reasoning, logic and rationalising, playing havoc with the decisions I take, the relationships I have in my life and generally leaving me totally screwed up. And the confusion of where I'm going, what direction my life is gonna veer in...hell I could soooooo do without that "happening" to me!!!

On a different note, I saw two movies yesterday - I returned from my Drama exam (which went pretty well) with a rather vague, irritating head-ache....while I waited for the Dispirin to kick into action I was flipping channels and out of sheer boredom settled on this teen-flick - the only description I can come up with for the movie is that it was totally "condom centred" - been ages since I saw a movie as ridiculous as that! The second movie is worth talking about...

"The Pianist" (2002), the movie that got Adrien Body his Academy award last year for best performace in leading role, is based on the auobiography of Wladyslaw Szpilman. Wladyslaw Szpilman, in the 1930s, was known as the most accomplished piano player in all of Poland, if not Europe. At the outbreak of the Second World War, however, Szpilman becomes subject to the anti-Jewish laws imposed by the conquering Germans. By the start of the 1940s, Szpilman has seen his world go from piano concert halls to the Jewish Ghetto of Warsaw and then must suffer the tragedy of his family deported to a death camp, while Szpilman is conscripted into a forced German Labor Compound. At last deciding to escape, Szpilman goes into hiding as a Jewish refugee where he is witness to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Warsaw City Revolt in 1945.

The Pianist

Wladyslaw Szpilman

(I strongly recommend that you go through both sites to get a better feeling not only of the movie, but also of the life and passion of Szpilman!)

The scenes in which they've shown the devastated city of Warsaw, Szpilman hiding in the bombed-out buildings, rummaging through abandoned houses for some food, at times even just some clean water to drink are some of the most stark scenes I have seen in movies...but by far, the most moving scene is the one where a German officer discovers Szpilman in his last hiding place and asks him to play the piano...Szpilman does, and does so for the entire day. The German officer lets him stay in the attic of the house and helps him till the last days of the war. Though not as hard-hitting as "The Schindler's List" which I maintain is a must-see, (since this is more of a surviver's tale than an indictment of the holocaust) the movie nevertheless leaves an imprint on the mind...definitely a Must See!!!