A walk in the clouds.. » Geek dreams are made of these

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

11:00 PM

I don’t dream much. No no, not in the philosophical I don’t have any dreams and aspirations sort of way. I have as many realistic plans of world domination as the next person, not to worry. But for someone who is a reasonably light sleeper (too much information that nobody wants to know) I don’t dream much. And on the occasions I do, I never remember them when I wake up. Which, if you ask me, (let’s pretend you did) is most annoying. I remember that I dreamt, but I don’t remember what happened in it. It is much like remembering the name of a lousy movie you’ve seen — you know it was bad and you never want to see it again. But but but .. you cannot remember the story! So you don’t remember WHY it was bad. Most infuriating it is. Leads to conversations like this in the desi store —

Friend: Should I watch Gunaah?
Me: Oh, good grief, don’t watch THAT!
Friend: Why? Who’s in it?
Me: Um, er .. I dunno. Sridevi maybe? Or was that Gumrah? Not sure.
Friend: *eyebrow raised* What’s it about?
Me: Um, er .. I dunno .. *trying to distract friend with mega-pack of Maggi*
Friend: You don’t like the movie, but you don’t know what it’s about?
Me: Um .. but I know that is a bad movie.
Friend: *second eyebrow raised to match the first*
Me: No seriously!
Friend: Yeah. Sure. *snigger*

Yep, the brilliance you exude at a moment like that can put Edison to shame. Does this ever happen to you? Please say it does? By the way, Gunaah is a Sunny/Dimple starrer while Gumrah is a Yash Johar flick starring Sridevi/Sunjay Dutt. Both humbug movies — one is a crime against movie-making, while the other is a lost cause. Both 1993. Both directed by that pompous windbag Mahesh Bhatt. So my confusion is valid, no? Yes, this is the same Bhatt who once had an evil twin that made decent movies like Arth (1982) and Saraansh (1984) so he sold him to the devil. And if you’ve watched his recent Paap (2003) or Zeher (2005), it looks like Udita Goswami’s clothes also went along with it. Such a nice guy, this chap.

On that note, here’s a bit of interesting trivia. Gunaah has an Amit Kumar-Anuradha Paudwal number — ye raat ye tanhaaiyaan, liptii huii parchhaaiyaan with music by Rajesh Roshan, whose tune was inspired from the theme music of the Charlie Chaplin film — Limelight (1952). Now Limelight’s music itself has a bit of unique trivia associated with it. Despite being a 1952 film, Charlie Chaplin along with Raymond Rasch and Larry Russell (source:IMDB) won the Oscar for Best Original Score for this film in 1972. Funda being that, since the movie had never screened in LA since its release in 1952, it still met the Academy’s eligibility rules for an Oscar. This is incidentally the only competitive Oscar that Chaplin ever won, the rest being honorary/lifetime achievement type awards. Neat eh?

The seeking of inspiration from the Limelight theme itself has two predecessors — Salil Chowdhury in Maaya (1961) in a Rafi number — zindagii hai kyaa sun merii jaan, and R D Burman in the rollicking fun film Bombay to Goa (1972), with the sweet Kishore-Lata number — tum merii zindagii mein kuchh is tarah se aaye. But make no mistakes, these aren’t ‘inspirations’ in the what-Anu-Malik-does-for-a-living sense of the word. In both cases, while the inspiration is certainly there, the distinct trademarks of Salil Chowdhury and Pancham are very apparent, making them excellent songs in their own right.

Okay, all movie references for this post are done, so we can all breathe freely and move on to the crux of the matter. I really like the word crux. It has such a nice crunch to it, like biting into a freshly fried appadam, don’t you think? But I am digressing.

So I had a rather weird dream a few nights ago which led to my singing thorny felt last week. And unlike my usual dreams, this one I nicely remember. In full 70mm Eastmancolor even. Pah. Yep, this was one of those, where you wake up and think to yourself — Maybe mom was right. Maybe inhaling too much petrol as a kid IS a bad thing. Sigh. So here are highlights of my geeky web developer version of hell —

It had a <dream> and </dream> tag surrounding it.
(But no namespace definition for it. Yikes!)
It had one of my blog commenters in it.
(I am not telling which one, so don’t even ask.)
I was a variable trapped within an infinite loop in my own code.
(Even my dream-code has bugs.)
I was hitting the Reload button to check for updates on my life.
(Yeah, very profound. Bleh.)
It ended in my hitting the ‘Save Draft’ button before waking up.
(So it is not yet over. There is more to come, or so it seems to suggest. Much joy.)