Jab We Met, Kandukonden Kandukonden And Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam

Guruji was describing three different "love"s from three different movies. These were Kareena and Tarun Arora / Shahid Kapoor in Jab We Met, Aishwarya and Abbas / Mammotty in Kandukonden Kandukonden, Aish and Salman / Ajay Devgan in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.

She asked me, what did Ajay Devgan and Mammotty find in Aishwarya in both movies? Well Aish was beautiful, vivacious, romantic and not bitchy. I explained that to men a woman with very good looks, who is not stupid is very  acceptable.

She suggested that in all the three movies the heroine fell in love with someone initially and then married someone else who was more appropriate. That the themes were similar.

I disagreed. While chemistry of a very high order existed between Aish and Abbas / Salman, the same chemistry was absent with the men Aish ultimately marries. The love between the husband and wife was mature and had less chemistry and fire.

If we come to Jab We Met while Kareena loved Tarun, it wasn't quite reciprocated by Tarun. The chemistry was absent in this. But even while Kareena was supposedly in love with Tarun, can we not see the chemistry between her and Shahid?

Another thing that struck me was the (absence of) fire between Tabu and Ajit in Kandukonden Kandukonden. It was mature love. Is it difficult to find fire in mature love? Is it a rare phenomenon?

Am I A Narcissist?

I took the test and here is the result.

Results of your

Narcissistic Personality Quiz

Your Total: 16

Between 12 and 15 is average.
Celebrities often score closer to 18.
Narcissists score over 20.

Here's how you rated on the seven component traits of narcissism:

Narcissistic Trait			Strength of Trait
Authority: 4.00
Self-Sufficiency: 5.00
Superiority: 2.00
Exhibitionism: 2.00
Exploitativeness: 0.00
Vanity: 0.00
Entitlement: 3.00

Below you will find a brief interpretation of each narcissism trait and what your score relative to that trait may indicate about you.

Authority

Authority refers to a person's leadership skills and power. People who score higher on authority like to be in charge and gain power, often for power's sake alone.

Self-Sufficiency

This trait refers to how self-sufficient a person is, that is, how much you rely on others versus your own abilities to meet your needs in life. You scored particularly high in self-sufficiency, suggesting you are highly self sufficient.

Superiority

This trait refers to whether a person feels they are more superior than those around them.

Exhibitionism

This trait refers to a person's need to be the center of attention, and willingness to ensure they are the center of attention (even at the expense of others' needs).

Exploitativeness

This trait refers to how willing you are to exploit others in order to meet your own needs or goals.

Vanity

This trait refers to a person's vanity, or their belief in one's own superior abilities and attractiveness compared to others.

Entitlement

This trait refers to the expectation and amount of entitlement a person has in their lives, that is, unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with one's expectations. People who score higher on this trait generally have a greater expectation of entitlement, while those who score lower expect little from others or life.

I didn't think self sufficiency could be a narcissistic trait. If you were self sufficient and you didn't need people can you be narcissistic? Hmm.

Additional reading: 

• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2010/09/big-five-personality-test.html
• http://vbala99.blogspot.in/2012/05/conversation-with-friend.html

Rapes In Delhi

I read a couple of article quoting Delhi police's insensitivity towards rape victims. 

• http://www.firstpost.com/living/from-the-delhi-police-six-reasons-why-women-deserve-to-be-raped-269957.html
• http://www.tehelka.com/story_main52.asp?filename=Ne140412Coverstory.asp

You are entitled to leave your house unlocked when you go on a vacation, such an act is certainly not illegal. You may also insist that your house not be burgled then. 

But if thieves do break in to your apartment, the police would have to look for the burglars and also explain you to lock up your apartment when you leave town. If the police tell you to be more careful, is it derelict of them? If their only action is to tell you to be more careful, then it certainly isn't acceptable. But apart from doing their duty of catching the victim, they also tell you to be careful in future, would we cry hoarse?

If you have Rs100,000 in cash, would you drink with strangers? You won't, right? Why would you, a woman, drink with strangers when you intrinsically have with you something very valuable?

If you still had to carry that amount of cash, would you carry it in a revealing package? If you did and got robbed, would someone be wrong admonishing you for being stupid?

Does it mean that a robber or rapist is right in what he does? Of course not. Yet, it is prudent to be careful, right?

As to the "callous" nature of Delhi police who say that women sometimes exaggerate about being raped, do read this. Do you think the woman was raped?

Women sometimes confuse rape for being unhappy after having sex, maybe because the expected payout did not happen. How many stories have we read of women who lodged a police complaint that their boyfriend raped her because he refused to marry her. Is this rape? Only a convoluted mind would consider this to be rape.

Let the authors of the links at the top understand that it's not just the police (Delhi or elsewhere) who seem to be callous. It's the women who sometimes (note my use of "sometimes") also not seem to know what rape means. While the act of rape is absolutely abominable, not every act of sex where the woman wakes up unhappy is an act of rape as well. For a more detailed understanding of this subject, I would recommend this link.

Find The Cat - Puzzle

A friend sent me this puzzle. Find the cat below.

Review of Udaan (2010)

This is a lovely review of an equally lovely movie Udaan. 

The character of the father is very interesting though I would have preferred him to have conceded that he could never be a good father and he is looking for a specific type of woman to get married to and that he would never again make the mistake of having a child. That he never said that makes me wonder how the man could ever be a good husband considering he was not good at maintaining any social relationship with people around him.

Many fathers are aloof, strict, unapproachable and not social. But the father in Udaan was different. His anger, violence and reactions were disproportionate to the issue he faced which made him come across as a monster and make anyone want to leave him.

Recipe For Who We Cannot Gel With

I have been thinking about the kind of persons we cannot gel with. I was discussing this with Guruji and some thoughts emerged.

The essentials of this line of thought is the following assumption:

The ability to get along, while it depends to a large extent on the individual X - some individuals are agreeable and some are not, depends also to a large extent on the chemistry between two people (X and Y) than only on the "physics" / nature of one person X. 

Let us assume there are 3 things (a, b, c) if exhibited frequently by anyone will get us raving mad. They get out the worst in us. The tendency of a person Y to have exhibit a and/or b  and/or c frequently (even unknowingly) is enough for us to tune off with that person Y. 

Now I have a question here. If the person Y has other nice qualities which we love, but they exhibit one or more of a, b, c will we still like that person or will we dislike him?

For example, we may hate someone who criticizes us, we may hate someone who is not loyal to us, we may hate someone whom we cannot communicate with. The person may have other nice things - he may be good looking, have a good sense of humor, not a miser etc. How do we relate to such a person? Do we see his nice qualities more or the ones that we hate more?

It depends on us, how tolerant we are. And how much are the things in Y that we love and how much of a b c are in that person which we hate. And I guess it's then "an algebraic sum" (more on the idea of "algebraic sum" later when I discuss dosage). I would at this point assume, without proof, that we can lose interest in the person Y if the quantum of a, b, c that we hate in a person are high enough in him.

Now, this leads to an interesting conclusion. We often tend to think of the presence of good qualities in another person more than on the "bad" things which we don't want him to have. Is it not more important to look at those things which we hate (and look for their absence) than on the presence  of nice things?

A thing that confuses is the set of generally held "nice" attributes which people expect everyone to have but which may mean little to us. For example, we all expect a man to be intelligent, confident, have a sense of humor, have authority, capable of loving, being considerate, "being always there for us and very loyal to us", "accepts us as we are" etc.

Now no man will have all of this in plenty. Which of the above characteristics is most important to us? Absence of which will not be an issue? Absence of which characteristic is a disaster for us? 

How do we ascertain this? By asking that question. Which a, b, c can get us raving mad? Presence of those in a man is a disaster. Other things, positive or negative, in that person may not be that important to us. Those may not have a big affect one way or the other.

So if we knew what those a, b, c for us are then we have to look primarily for persons lacking those (negative) characteristics. There is another question here: "Do we lack the a,b,c that a man cannot tolerate". If we do not lack the things a man hates in a person then how do we expect him to be attracted to us? While we always look at what the other person should / should not have, when do we look at who would love what we do / do not have? There is a specific type of person who would be attracted to us and is he also the person that we would be attracted to? If the answer to this question is yes then we have found the right person, at last.

I thought I had got all the thoughts I had now on this subject off my chest. Until Guruji reminded me of another aspect. If we don't get to see the impact of the negative a, b, c in another person then we may not dislike the other person enough. This brings in the aspect of dosage. 

Do we dislike all people all people who have the characteristics a, b, c equally? Absolutely no. Just as the impact of medicines varies with dosage, the impact of these characteristics on us varies with dosage. How many times have I told my friends "I am just like your husband (as horrible)", yet they still would like to speak with me. Why is this so? I don't live under the same roof as my friends, they don't feel the force of my personality because of the distance between us, meaning the dosage is low enough that they don't dislike me.

Extrapolate this thought. The spouse whom we cannot tolerate can still be our good friend (not a spouse but only a friend) since then the dosage of their negative characteristics may be mild enough for us to not get pissed off with them. And conversely, a person who is our good friend may not be good to be with 24/7 when we can get to see the full impact of their negative characteristics.

Additional reading: http://vbala99.blogspot.in/2012/02/what-is-connect.html

On Feminism

A friend gave me this article on feminism. While I agree with the author, there are some things I feel differently (which may or may not have been expressed by the author).

My opinion below, which I expressed to my friend, is hence no reflection on the thoughts expressed in the article linked above. 

If a man and a woman both want to have a child, then both are responsible for the child and its upkeep. Now if neither wants a child, again there is no problem. 

Problems may arise if one of them wants a child and the other does not. What if the man wants a child and the woman does not? A man or anyone else cannot force a woman to have a child, she is the person who has to go through the pregnancy. It is her right to decide whether or not to have a child.

What now if the woman wants to have a child and the man doesn't? The woman can have a child but the man would not be responsible for the upkeep of the child. He just happens to be the biological father with no other responsibility.

In summary, no one can force a woman to have a child, nor a man to go through the obligations of being a father if they never wanted to have a baby in the first place (when the woman overrules his wish to not have a child).

Additional reading:
http://vbala99.blogspot.in/2011/12/impact-of-last-name-portability-when.html