Thursday, March 01, 2007

Yours inspirationally...

What inspires? A speech? A story? A quote? A movie? A person?

Sunsets, war movies (old style, with the horses and swords!) always inspire me! Braveheart, The last samurai, Lord of the rings, and even troy imparted that feeling...! Some nut eh? ;-) I remember being inspired by the story of 'the race for dna'. Being a biotechie, i found the story of a how an aspiring ornithologist,James Watson and a physicist (measuring viscosity of liquids!), Francis Crick came together to crack the structure of the secret of life, dna, that too after years of competition with a pioneer in the field of protein structure computation, Linus Pauling. Other stories, other quotes or single lines, even songs... they just make you stop for a while and think, and marvel, and wonder...they make you want to do something significant! I still dont know why inspiration is such a short-lived feeling. When it is present, it is overwhelming with its presence, but when it leaves, it leaves you devoid of a feeling of worthiness!

Long hours of travel to our destination, the heat and the distance should have put off anyone among our group who was attending the workshop on toxicology at kancheepuram. But at the end of the 2 day affair, we stood there applauding, wanting more. It is my strong belief that i wouldn't remember more than half of that workshop had it not been for this 20 minute speech by a prof. It was a mix of biology and philosophy, the best vote of thanks i have ever heard. It is very rare that a live speech makes you cry because of the sheer beauty of its contents...this one moved most of us to tears, and was talked about for hours in the bus. It inspired me to the extent of picking up the mic and thanking him for the speech - something i've never done before, and never ever dreamed of doing. So i'd like to say, to Dr.Venkatadri, the look in your eyes when you talked about the sunset and the rhapsody, the fools and the world, plato and biology...that look, was inspiration. And like one of my friends put it, Philosophy was never so beautiful till we met you!

There's this movie i watched today which in its own way was a little inspiring. A movie from which emanated so much postive-ness that even the most determined pessimist would remain optimistic for atleast sometime after watching it. Mozhi. We don't see too many tamil movies like this one these days. Light and floaty, but very beautiful, and very thought provoking, not easily forgotten, good music, excellent perfomances and characterisation. Its like a new genre of movies has evolved with the 'prakashraj production' tag. And every movie is getting better...while you can expect a good story and good perfomances from a mani rathnam movie, good entertainment and commercial cinema from a shankar film, prakashraj gives us the hope that his movies will be classic feel-good, with an under-current of very good humour. I reccomend this movie, highly.

And then there's this story of someone's life. Someone i respected for her experience in the field of cancer research, and her dedication towards the subject till i heard other things... After hearing her story, there's so much more respect and so much to learn from. Though the story of how she waited 2 years, and worked so hard just to get into the lab of her dreams, to satisfy her passion for cancer research is awe evoking, and very inspiring, the other side of her story makes one realise how much the choices we make in life matter, and how important it is to make the right decisions. It seems impossible that a person who has made so many sacrifices can exist...but there she stands, teaches, sits among us like she were one of us, jokes around about students, not ever allowing us to acknowldge the fact that we're blessed to have ever met her, and sit with her and hold subject talk and small talk. One wonders why her story had to be so complicated, why she had to undergo so many trials, why she had to deal with more than she could ever handle... but again, some things, some stories are just not meant to be understood...and we may spend a lifetime trying to understand them. Like a friend once wrote

"kuch kahaniyan, kuch daastayein, jo kabhi kisi ko samjane ke liye na banayi gayi ho, jise samajhne main kabhi shayad puri zindagi lag jaye"

Yours inspirationally
Signing off....

14 comments:

Nithya said...

beautiful post :)

Am feeling inspired..This post has injected a fresh dose of inspiration in me :P

"It was a mix of biology and philosophy"

Unrelated fields :O
How was the workshop btw (apart frm Dr. Venkatadri's speech that is :P)

Me going to watch mozhi tomorrow..Loads of ppl were raving abt the lead players' performances

"kuch kahaniyan, kuch daastayein, jo kabhi kisi ko samjane ke liye na banayi gayi ho, jise samajhne main kabhi shayad puri zindagi lag jaye"

Splendid..Loved this quote..Pass my appreciations onto ur frnd (the person who wrote this i mean) :P

Anonymous said...

divs u knw i did read d post early but as usual late comment ;) but i mean d post had 2 incidents that had also moved me 2 tears,touched me deep down der jus as it motivated u 2 write bout it, am glad u did post on it, Dr.Venkatadri-woww wot do i say bout him,reely no words,philo is intrstng,true but it wasnt this beutiful till we met him,lissnd 2 him,he spoke for probably 15 min but it was like n xperience not a speech,an xperience so beutfl dat it moved most of us 2 tears,d way he said 'we've got jus 1 life so make it as beutiful as u can' he's got d gift of d gab,k i thnk i can jus go on n on ;)

Anonymous said...

n my comment cont,dnt be surprised if it exceeds ur post length ;)k kidding bout d oder person, all i'd say is dat we r blessed 2 hav a mam like her,a person so passionate towards her field,dat she sacrifised 1o yrs dat 2 of her youth 4 her research,sum1 we can only look up 2 n yet again also reminds u of dose few stories,dat r inspiring but if u actly analyse it,it jus looses it's beauty,u can neva reely understnd dese beutfl stories cos dey r neva made 2 be undrstd,n bout mozhi- again it was n xperience not a muvie,such a feel gud film wid so much optimism n senstivity-woww n i thnk all of us had a grt xperience wtchng it 2gedr :)

Nikhil said...

Divs,

I see that you have a crush on Prithviraj.

*tries hard not to laugh and poke fun*

I won't judge.

BTW, my blog is updated.

And congratulations on your 100th post. You beat me to it, sweetness.

Div said...

nithya - Thanks! Nice to know someone got inspired :) Bio and philosophy are indeed unrelated...the workshop minus the speech was also very nice. We had some practical exposure, which usually doesnt happen. And the interaction was lovely. It was a nice experience. You definitely should watch mozhi. And abt those lines, i think the writer of those lines got the msg :) am sure she read your comment.

Sand - Nice loooooong comment man! Been with you thro 3 of those things mentioned! So well, yeah i guess u know how it feels! We have only one life... :)yeah. And abt the stories that one cant understand... need i say more? :)

Nik - You can judge all you want...:P So wat if i have a crush on him? :D I didnt watch the movie for prithviraj and i do not have a crush on him, but i do think he pulled off his role well! Maybe u shud watch the movie to get wat am sayin, but considerin your refined tastes, u may have to refrain from judging me again *evil grin*
And thanks so much for the congrats :) 100 posts seems long!

Div said...

nik - your comment made me laugh, like hell!

:P

Nikhil said...

Thank you, Divs, for laughing.

*sigh*

So very few ppl get me.

Div said...

nik - Was that comment positive or negative? Did i understand u or not? do explain! it always leads to better understanding next time! :P

Nikhil said...

That was a positive comment, obviously!

I was just trying to imply that ppl here (in clg) do not get me at all. I'm tired of that.

You ppl get me, all the time. I'm thankful for that.
:-D

Man, I need to get out more.

Anonymous said...

Well, to me everything inspires, it's just that I don't get inspired enough.
Maybe if she hadn't undergone so many trials she wouldn't be what she is now?
Biology and philosophy, well actually I think they are related, biology is study of life, and philosophy is what you learn from life in words?Mokkai I know :D
Well, what did the person who gave the vote of thanks actually say?
And that is a really nice line. :)

Div said...

nik - whew! nice to know :)

suk - everything inspires? Nice...i dont think anything inspires enough to be frank! And well, yeah, maybe she wouldn be what she is today without those trials, but it really needn have been so bad...biology and philosophy may be related, but that way,everything can be related to every other thing :) That wasn big enough a mokkai ;-) Nice line indeed! Will tell u abt the speech some time...

Anonymous said...

ofcourse I am talking to mokkai queen about mokkais so glad it's not big enough.well yeah I guess everything is related the web of life or whatever they call it.

Vinod Ramamoorthy said...

Long time since I have been in blogspace:)

Cant agree with u more abt Mozhi ..I think it surely is a breather amongst the degrading tamil movies thats been releasing these days...

Div said...

vinod - welcome back to blogspace!
degrading tamil movies...totally!Mozhi is one of a kind :) am sure they'll havea remake in hindi and telugu and malayalam and kannada And...blah!

:)