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Anonymous asked: Whats your real name bro? :D
And have you found out who this Tarun kumar dude is yet?? XD XD

It’s staring at you right in the face.

And no, but I do want to. Sort of a personal mission.

Inception - Analysis and Interpretation

SPOILER ALERT: If you still need one, then you sir, are pitiful. No, don’t just sit there and look for a Cam rip, get off your ass and go watch it. If it’s not playing in your town, move. If your friends won’t come with you because it’s too high-concept, then ditch them. If you are 4 years-old, well… I guess then none of these words make sense to you anyway. Here’s a picture of a shiny balloon http://bit.ly/amBIob

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The very first visual of Inception that Nolan presented to us, in the movie’s first trailer almost a year ago, was this small metal top that spun, wobbled and fell over. Co-incidentally (or maybe not), the last visual of Inception was this same metal top as it spun and wobbled. Things came full circle in a way, in a gripping ending sequence. Nolan chose to do us all in the head and tantalisingly cut to black before resolution, leaving the movie open to be interpreted in many different ways. This one particular theory has been spinning in my head for a couple weeks now, and I thought I should just write it down and see if it makes any sense to anyone else.

I call it, The Circle of Life.

Analysing the deeper meanings of this movie could give a headache to a rocket scientist, so he would quote terms like ‘angular velocity’ and ‘counteracting forces’ to state that a wobbling totem would infact eventually topple. That Cobb did infact reunite with his children and the movie had a happy ending. I too thought the same, immediately after stepping out from my first viewing. However, every time I rewatched the movie thereafter, things started creeping in my head that made me think differently.

Now, I am of the belief that regardless of scientific principle, the totem would indeed have kept on spinning. The genesis of this belief was the simplest of ideas that was planted in my head by one scene in the movie. It is when Cobb recruits Ariadne and asks her to draw mazes. The kicker in that scene was that Cobb couldn’t seem to immediately work his way through a circular maze. Then, in the Mombasa scene, while Cobb is being chased by people of the Cobol Corporation, the cinematography made it seem as if Cobb was running through a maze of winding streets and narrow corners before having to squeeze through the tiniest of openings to reach the cheese.

If you were to draw the architecture of the mind, as shown in the movie, on paper it would be something like this…



“If you’re gonna perform Inception, you need imagination”

Remember that scene where the city of Paris rises up and rolls over? Visually stunning but what exactly was the purpose of that scene? Imagine rolling the above rectangular drawing around a vertical axis so that the top and bottom edges meet. Roll it a little tighter and it overlaps. A little tighter, and limbo merges with the real world. A circular flow of consciousness through multiple levels of the mind only to end up where you started. It is this circular maze that is beyond Cobb’s understanding. Cobb’s own ‘circle of life’.

Another hint in the Paris dream sequence is when Ariadne lines up two giant mirrors to show infinite, cascading reflections of Cobb. One possible interpretation is that, the mirrors reflect Cobb’s many existences in parallel levels of the mind. Infinite, because Cobb is stuck in this recursive circle where he cannot escape from the guilt of being responsible for his wife’s death. Yet another hint of circular infinity, the Penrose stairs.

So what happened in the movie?

Chronologically, the earliest scene is Cobb and Mal waking up on the shore of their sub-conscious. They lived together for many years before death took them back to where they started. Only, Mal’s mind was infected with the idea Cobb planted. She took a leap of faith and killed herself hoping to wake up and escape her circular existence. It is my belief that she was indeed successful, that she woke up in some other-worldly place (maybe Zion?) which was the real world. Cobb, however refused to take that leap of faith and became infected with the idea that he killed his wife. This infection slowly but steadily worked it’s way through the inner recesses of his mind through the layers, through the events of the movie. He brings a freight train in level 1, projections of his kids in level 2 and a projection of his wife in level 3, one he hesitates to shoot. Fischer dies and Cobb and Ariadne go into Limbo to find him. Here, Cobb confronts Mal’s projection and she stabs him. Ariadne rescues Fischer, shoots Mal and escapes Limbo. Cobb chooses to stay with Mal in Limbo and accepts that he has to let her go. She dies from the gunshot. Cobb wakes up once again, at the shore of his sub-conscious. Only this time, he is without Mal. He finds Saito and they presumably kill themselves. They both wake up in the plane, in what we assume is the real world, only it is not. Cobb has actually woken up in a deeper dreamstate, where Mal doesn’t haunt him because he has let go of his guilt and his only motivation is to see his kids. So he imagines Saito’s projection making the call and clearing his charges. He reaches home and cannot believe it. He spins the totem and suddenly sees his kids’ faces. He realises it doesn’t matter anymore to him whether the totem spins or falls for he is together with the kids. Reality or dream, he is where he wants to be. And that is that.

A happy ending.

Perhaps.

Comments, queries, rebuttals, debunkings are all welcome.

PS: Here is a not-as-serious take on the events of the movie, drawn crudely to summarise what happened to the parents after they saw it.  (View in full size)

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Questions received

When a person is in limbo, how long is he/she sleeping (or sedated) in the real world?

To theorise, limbo is the deepest of dreamstates, so the flow of time in limbo would seem like almost nothing in the real world. Only frame of reference we have is that Cobb and Saito woke up on the plane just before it was to land. Kinda hard to judge how long Mal and Cobb were sleeping/sedated based on that. Made peace with the assumption that limbo is timeless much like… (SPOILER ALERT) Lost’s flash-sideways world.

If Mal is alive in the real world (after jumping off the building) why hasn’t she woken him up when she’s out of the dream?

Good question. In my theory, I come to the conclusion that Cobb’s “real world” and limbo merge towards the end of the film. Now we do not know how deep of a dreamstate Cobb is in, in his “real world”. But my theory would suggest that his brain is scrambled to such an extent that he believes he actually is in the real world (exactly what he thought happened to Mal) So, the “real world” is limbo. Now apply the logic of relative time as suggested in the film. While Cobb spends several years trapped in his limbo, just a few seconds might have passed in the actual REAL WORLD. Maybe the 10 seconds Mal will take to give Cobb a kick equates to several dozen years in limbo.

If you have a question, ask me on Twitter -> @Batmanush

Don’t try this at Home

WWF/E, back in the Attitude Era of the 90s and early 00s was stuff of legend. Many afternoons were spent glued to the telly watching Raw and later, Smackdown. I watched the sidey shows Metal, Superstars, Velocity, Heat etc. and even the recaps on Livewire, Afterburn, Bottomline. Puberty was hit when Trish Stratus walked out in tight spandex. Adrenaline pumped as Mick Foley was thrown off the top of 20 foot cell through two tables and thumbtacks and what not. And holy shit, how awesome was Stone Cold with his one finger salute!

And then one son of a bitch named John Cena had to come in and ruin it all. With his coming and of all the pussy 12 year olds that listen to the Jonas Brothers that he was targeted at, the tone of WWE programming shifted from R-rated angles around crucifixion, lingerie pillow fights and psychological torment to PG-friendly stories about quirky midgets and lovable retards.

You want epic wrestling, go watch Hart/Austin at WM 13, or the aforementioned Foley/Taker Hell In A Cell at KOTR ‘98 or my most memorable match of all - the epic “unsanctioned” battle that was Michaels/HHH at Summerslam ‘02. Everything about that match, from the pre-fight build-up, to the entrances, to the match progression, to the dramatic ending was perfect. Watch it. And to whoever that says professional wrestling isn’t cool because it’s fake, fuck off. It is called by the management itself as ‘sports entertainment’. Yes, the matches are fixed when they are booked but god damn it, it’s still real to me! The blood is real, the pain is real, the injuries are VERY real. All of which is non-existent in the horse-shit WWE stories being produced these days. They are wasting people like Jericho and Edge by booking them in storylines that doesn’t beget how truly twisted their characters were back in the era of 3:16. Suck it up, kids and tell WWE to get back the lesbian divas and the hardcore matches where blood flowed like… blood. REAL blood.

/rant

However, my purpose of writing this post wasn’t to rant. I recently reconnected with this friend of mine, Ashish, from school and the first thing we remembered was hanging out and pulling off wrestling moves on each other, saying ‘Fuck You’ to the often repeated ‘Don’t try this at Home’ warning. We were 12 and the Stunner was the coolest thing on the planet. But, we never tried it after the one time, it got real and the guy bit his tongue. Also, our backyard wrestling antics were not quite in our backyard as much as it was in our parents’ bedroom. The comfy pillows and the bouncy mattress made for a good wrestling canvas. We would not just simulate specific moves but actually choreograph an entire match between us and tweak it every time till it became a legitimate Match of the Year candidate. Here’s how things would pan out -

Entrance

The WWF entrance themes were amongst the first English songs that I remember hearing. And they still sound just as badass as they did to my 12 year-old self. HHH always had an awesome entrance track (usually Motorhead) but my personal favourite was Break The Walls Down, Chris Jericho’s original theme. The Sevendust version is legendary. I made my entrance to it. And Ashish would enter to either Rob Zombie’s Edge theme or Breaking Point’s RVD theme. We’d pose around for the imaginary crowd, flex our imaginary muscles and snarl and growl at each other before the match got underway.

Ready Moves

Punches, jabs, kicks, sweeps, slaps and headbutts. I loved doing the Ric Flair style ‘wooooo’ chop and could pull off a pretty mean missile dropkick. But, we had to abandon many of the aerial maneuvers at the sound of an increasingly creaky bed.

All of this was the setup to the next part of the match…

Submission Moves

This is where shit got real. Professional wrestling on the telly could be faked but you lock in a very real Ankle Lock on someone and they will tap out in seconds. The Ankle Lock, of course, was made popular by Kurt Angle, a legitimate Olympic gold medal winner in the sport. It was very real and it hurt like a bitch. And then there was the Figure 4 Leg Lock. Try getting one snapped on you and not crying for mommy within the first five seconds. We took care to not hurt each other during our matches but there were times when we had to take a breather and walk off the stretched knee or the extended ankle. Before getting right back into it.

Spots

It wouldn’t be a WWF match without a few cliched spots thrown in for good measure. So we had a ref bump, followed by the heel character (we swapped roles everytime) getting a chair (or more accurately, a pillow) and whacking the other guy in the face and then across the back. If sometimes we had a third friend along then he would do the interference-low blow spot. But through it all the good guy would persevere, do an HBK style kip-up before going apeshit on the bad guy with counters are clotheslines and bodyslams before setting up…

The Finisher

Here is where we would forget we were in a match and just pull off a long list of some of our favourite moves. Spinebusters and Powerbombs were commonplace. Piledrivers added an extra element of danger. After retiring the Stunner from our arsenal there was only one other move that could replace the awesomeness of it. That was… The (MOTHERFUCKING!) Pedigree - HHH’s all time epic facebusting, mindblasting, testicleblowing move of pure win. Sure it started with sticking the guy’s face in your crotch, but there wasn’t a damn thing homoerotic about it. Pain was coming. You hold the bad guy’s face parallel to the ground, double underhook the arms, jump up and bring down the wrath of all that is evil on him by setting up a meeting between skull and (pillowy) concrete. It was the most brutal thing. And we sold it as so. The match was so exhausting that the good guy would have to crawl his way near the fallen bad guy and drag his arm on him as he laid down for the pin count.

1… 2… 3. And it was over.

We got up, dusted off and promptly switched the TV on to catch the latest Raw.

Silence, I kill you.

A strange phone call compelled me to write this out. This evening, a friend called me up to figure out plans for the weekend. Now generally, you wouldn’t mistake this guy for an idiot. That is until he cut me off mid-sentence and said, “Oye! Aaj Michael Jackson mara tha, ek saal pehle. Chal lets do a few moments of silence yaar.” And then he didn’t talk for a minute. Or so I presumed, because I hung up at the 10-second mark. Turns out I was right. The guy called back exactly a minute later and said, “Abbe itna bhi nahi kar sakta kya yaar!”

note to self: remove from Facebook list

I’ve never quite understood the point behind standing motionlessly silent for “a moment” at the mention of a dead person. I can understand it as a social convention to be followed at funerals but not when some guy on a podium requests an audience to observe silence for someone who died ten years ago. For someone they don’t genuinely care about with the ridiculous pretext that silence brings peace to the departed’s soul. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that a ten-year old omnipresent floating soul glides over us at all times, restless from all the noise emanating from the living world. A sort of paranormal Grendel-like entity. And to soothe this ghostly presence we allow it just a “few moments” of silence? Before going to back to being the loud, obnoxious race that we are? Pointless no?

But seriously, I know I don’t, but how many of us actually say a prayer or remember the person, if it is for someone personally insignificant. Here are a few things that go through my head during:

- I wonder what everyone else is thinking.

- Why am I swaying? I can’t seem to stand perfectly still.

- How much longer will this last?

- What’s that smell?

- Popular ad jingles and wondering if people can hear me humming them.

- One, two, three, four…

- Someone stuff a fist in that crying baby’s mouth.

- Uh oh. *sneeze* Awwwwkwward.

And then of course, there is the dreaded Giggle Loop

WARNING: To know of the Giggle Loop is to become part of the Giggle Loop

When I die, throw me a grand funeral with hired dancers and chicken tikka. Every forthcoming anniversary, say cheers to my name and get wasted. My flash-sideways version will join you for the binge.

She Left Me Alone

I was truly surprised by those pictures of rapper 50 Cent after he lost truckloads of weight for an upcoming movie role. What I did not know however, was that the dramatic weight loss would affect his rapping skills like so.

There are few things as delightful as chancing upon gold unexpectedly. While finding this video on my Twitter timeline (via @SahilRiz) doesn’t come anywhere close to the monetary benefits, it still made for a pretty awesome bout of laughter.

Dude goes by the name of Tarun Kumar Kushwah, hails from Delhi and wears a size 32 cup. This video was originally hosted on a Tata Docomo subsite. It almost redeems them for their god awful jingle and piss-poor commercia… wait, who am I kidding! No, it doesn’t. Docomo still sucks dicomo.

Anyway, I presume TKK has recently undergone heartbreak and rightly so he channels his despair, frustrations and anger through music. Or whatever those 164 seconds can be called. He baaasikelly dedicates his performance to all the boys “whose… girlfriends are… loose” and really, haven’t we all been there?

In case it wasn’t clear already, she left him alone. And he emphasises this by repeating it no less than 8 times, which makes me wonder if it were 8 instances she left him alone or if this guy was just thinking of the next line and making up this song as it goes. Those Whose Line hoe-downs have nothing on Rapmaster TKK’s killer verses!

Anyway after some 47 seconds of awkward improv delay, he comes up with no less than two lines – ‘She breaks my heart, she plays with my trust’ To illustrate these lines, he first breaks his keyboard with headbang gone wrong and then makes a full recovery to play with his… thrust (thankfully, off-screen)

Did I forget to mention TKK is an awesome beat-boxer/ting-tidading-tingading guy? And if that weren’t enough, he is also the world’s only air-nipple-stroking-guitar player. (On which twang sounds like trrring)

I don’t care about this

She is my heart

She is my life

She is my heart

She is my love

Well since he didn’t care about this particular verse, I didn’t much either. I did however happen to notice that fake Nike cap on him. No word yet on whether he plans to release official TKK merchandise – genuine Dollar Club baniyans, authentic Nyke caps and exciting offers on paper towels and hand sanitizers.

The rest of it is mostly gibberish that isn’t Hindi… isn’t English… isn’t even Pikey. At 1:45 however, his inner desires to indulge in coitus are expressed ever so casually.

I wish to faaaackk… but fear not ladies-who-are-now-interested-in-TKK-after-hearing-his-tragic-tale-with-way-too-many-hyphens, for he will love you. He will love you so much. So so so so much.