Dreams, Reality, and the Shattered
Illusion: A Tribute to Nora Ephron
Dreams come in different colours and
shapes, constantly changing as we age. As time passes, the colour and shape of
our dreams shift, evolving in ways we can hardly predict. Often, we live in a
world surrounded by illusions, too far removed from reality. At the end of the
day, we find ourselves in an unfamiliar alley, yet we continue to craft a life
that is a cocktail of dreams and reality, forcing ourselves to believe in it.
That’s why, all too often, we end up with shattered dreams. There was a time
when we revelled in a world created by Mills and Boon, knowing it was sheer
nonsense, or we lived through rom-coms.
However, honestly, at my age, I too
must admit that I have succumbed to an intense desire to sit with a bucket of
popcorn and watch some of the best rom-coms. This blog is a tribute to Nora
Ephron, who created some of the most memorable works. However, it would be
unwise to remember her only for a handful of rom-coms. She was a multifaceted
genius—journalist, writer, screenwriter, producer, and director—who gave us not
only stunning rom-coms but also exceptional movies.
Nora
Ephron: A Legacy Beyond Rom-Coms
Nora Ephron was born in New York City
on May 19, 1941, to Phoebe and Henry Ephron, both screenwriters. At the age of
four, her family moved to Beverly Hills, California, where she stayed until she
graduated from Beverly Hills High. She later attended Wellesley College in
Wellesley, Massachusetts. Ephron's sisters, Delia and Amy, are also
screenwriters, while her sister Hallie Ephron is a journalist, book reviewer, and
novelist specializing in crime fiction. Ephron’s parents based Sandra Dee’s
character in the play and the film Take Her, She’s Mine on their
daughter, Nora, inspired by her letters from college.
Ephron is best known for her romantic
comedies, having been nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best
Writing (Original Screenplay)—for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally...,
and Sleepless in Seattle. She won a BAFTA Award for Best Original
Screenplay for When Harry Met Sally... and often collaborated with her
sister, Delia Ephron. Her last film was Julie & Julia, and she also
co-authored the Drama Desk Award-winning theatrical production Love, Loss,
and What I Wore.
Filmography
Year
Film
Director
Screenwriter
Producer
1983
Silkwood
Y
1986
Heartburn
Y
1989
When Harry Met
Sally...
Y
Y
Cookie
Y
Y
1990
My Blue Heaven
Y
Y
1992
This Is My Life
Y
Y
1993
Sleepless in Seattle
Y
Y
1994
Mixed Nuts
Y
Y
1996
Michael
Y
Y
Y
1998
All I Wanna Do
Y
You've Got Mail
Y
Y
Y
2000
Hanging Up
Y
Y
Lucky Numbers
Y
Y
2005
Bewitched
Y
Y
Y
2009
Julie & Julia
Y
Y
Y
!!!R.I.P. Nora Ephron, a multi-facet genius
who successfully infiltrated into the men’s bastion!!!
The "God
particle" is a subatomic
particle dubbed the "God particle" because it is believed to
have originated during the Big Bang and helped shape the subatomic
particles that make up all matter in the universe. Scientists believe that in the first
billionth of a second after the Big Bang, the universe was a gigantic
soup of particles racing around at the speed of light without any mass to speak
of. It was through their interaction with the Higgs field that they gained mass
and eventually formed the universe. The "God particle" nicknamed as Higgs-Boson
is named after the scientists Satyendra Nath Bose and Peter Higgs.
The Large Hadron
Collider
The Large Hadron
Collider is the world's biggest and most powerful particle accelerator, a
27-km (17-mile) looped pipe that sits in a tunnel 100 metres underground on the
Swiss/French border. It cost 3 billion euros to build.
Two beams of
protons are fired in opposite directions around it before smashing into each
other to create many millions of particle collisions every second in a
recreation of the conditions a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, when
the Higgs field is believed to have 'switched on'.
4th July, 2012, scientists working at the European
Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin,
Switzerland, near the border
with France,
made the announcement, saying that researchers "have now found the missing
cornerstone of particle physics."
Higgs-Bosons
The God particle
was first discovered by Satyendra Nath Bose. Einstein often systematically
adopted Bose’s approach that is known as ‘Bose-Einstein Statistics’. Bose's
Quantum Statistics has enabled many scientists to solve several problems
scientifically and by cogent reasoning. Bose sent one paper to Einstein in
1926.The distinguished scientist was at a loss to understand how the solution
offered by Bose could be used in Physics. Although Einstein published the
article, he expressed his doubts. So Bose met him, discussed and they jointly
worked on it. The Higgs mechanism is a process by which vector bosons can get
rest mass without explicitly breaking gauge invariance. The proposal for such a
spontaneous symmetry breaking mechanism originally was suggested in 1962 by
Philip Warren Anderson and developed
into a full relativistic model in 1964, independently and almost
simultaneously, by three groups of physicists: by François Englert and
Robert Brout, by Peter Higgs and by
Gerald Guralnik, C. R. Hagen, and Tom Kibble.
Satyendra Nath
Bose
Satyendra Nath
Bose was born on 1 January
1894n in Calcutta.
His schooling began at the age of five. His first school was near his home.
Later, he was admitted to the New Indian
School. In the final year
of school, he was admitted to the Hindu
School. He passed his
entrance examination/ matriculation in 1909 and stood fifth in the order of
merit. He next joined the intermediate science course at the Presidency College,
Calcutta, where
he was taught by illustrious teachers as Jagadis Chandra Bose and
Prafulla Chandra Ray. Meghnad Saha came
and joined the same college two years later. Satyendra Nath Bose chose mixed (applied)
mathematics for his B.Sc. and passed the examinations standing first in 1913
and again stood first in the M.Sc. mixed mathematics exam in 1915. It is said
that his marks in the M.Sc. examination created a new record in the annals of
the University of
Calcutta,--which is yet
to be surpassed.
After completing
his M.Sc., Bose joined the University
of Calcutta as a research
scholar in 1916 and started his studies in the theory of relativity. It was an
exciting era in the history of scientific progress. He is best known for his
work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s, providing the foundation for Bose–Einstein
statistics and the theory of the Bose–Einstein condensate. The class of
particles known as bosons is named after him.
A self-taught
scholar and a polyglot, he had a wide range of interests in varied fields
including physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, mineralogy, philosophy,
arts, literature and music. He served on many research and development
committees in independent India.
Peter Higgs
Peter Higgs was born in Wallsend, North Tyneside, England. He attended Cotham Grammar School, where he was inspired by the work of one of
the school's alumni, Paul Dirac, a founder of the field of quantum mechanics.
At the age of 17 Higgs moved to City of London School, where he specialized in
mathematics, then to King's College London where he graduated with a first
class honours in Physics, and later achieved a master's degree, and a Ph.D. He
became a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh,
then held various posts at University College London and Imperial College
London. He retired in 1996 and became Emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh. At Edinburgh Higgs first
became interested in mass, developing the idea that particles were massless
when the universe began, acquiring mass a fraction of a second later as a
result of interacting with a theoretical field (which became known as
the Higgs field). Higgs postulated that this field permeates space,
giving all elementary subatomic particles that interact with it their mass.
Satyendra Nath
Bose never got the due he
should be like his teacher Jagdish Chandra Bose. In past it was always a
practice, we failed to recognize the homegrown genius and go on to acknowledge
it when world does it.
!!!Don’t you think that Bose’s always Rocks,
Ha – Ha – Ha!!!
After going through
three different schools, finally I was settled with one only when I migrated
to Jammy (Jamshedpur).
Two different schools in which I studied in Jammy were exceptional.
Specially life in my last school was unforgettable one. The surrounding, the teachers
and being a part of a naughtiest gang, I mean my friends circle, Nostalgia!.
It was not all fun and no study, I was reasonably good in my studies and that
probably made things better because the last one was your ticket to the teacher
affections. During my seven years tenure in two different Jammy
school I never have seen a teacher who needed a stick to discipline the student.
Sticks were never found a place in our classroom. Not all of us were a
saint but the credit goes to our teachers and their extra-ordinary
patience. Until today, I never failed to pay my gratitude to those angles
who once enlighten my life.
Today when I looked
forward to today’s school I can see the miserable state it is in. Most
of the teachers are not going to school for teaching rather working as a marketing
manager for themselves. They go to the school for selling their
services that they giving back at their home or in other coaching center. Often
their message to the parent is very clear and parents too preferred the
same to find an easy way escape route from their responsibility. Therefore, it
is unwise to solely blame the school or the teaching staff. Today’s kids
too partially accountable for the situations. I cannot say the kids are the
lone sufferer, they are taking most advantage from these situations. They are
getting more and reluctant to give back. Tolerance, patience is the word that
does not exist in the dictionary of today’s kid. However, situation in Indian
education institutional campus are not as grim as USA and Europe
but it is a fashion for the young Indians are to follow the west and some
recent past events in the campus are seems very alarming.
Kolkata, SouthPointSchool
With twelve
thousand odd students, South Point counted as one of the largest school
in Asia. It has a history of numerous petite
campus violence but most alarming when it was happened between two classs I
students.
The school
authorities conceded that a fight had broken out between two six-year-old.
“They fought among themselves, like young children often do. We had also called
the parents to solve the issue. We did not anticipate that the parents would
lodge a police complaint. We will inquire into the matter,” said a school
official.
However, the
parents have different story to tell, “The bullying has been going on since
April, when my son was admitted to Class I. My son was beaten up regularly,
even with iron rods at times,” said the boy’s mother. My son was beaten
up so badly with a water bottle that he had to be given first aid at school. We
also had to take him to a doctor.
New Delhi
An eighth-grader
stabbed an 11th-grader in the shoulder and chest at Central School No. 1,
a government school in New Delhi.
The victim, a boy named Rahul, said he was trying to break up a fight.
"Some kids were fighting and I just went there to stop them. Suddenly one
of them turned around and stabbed me even before I could realize," said
Rahul, wrapped in gauze bandage. He underwent minor surgery.
Gurgaon
Gurgaon is famous for score of negative things
which I have already written in my earlier blog. A 14-year-old boy was fatally
shot by two other boys in a hallway of the upscale EuroInternationalSchool in Gurgaon, a suburb of New Delhi, police reported. One of the boys
sneaked his father's gun into the school, wrapped in a sock. According to
police, two students took turns shooting Abhishek Tyagi, 14,
in a school hall. He died with two bullets in his chest and one in his head,
news reports said. The two boys are being held in juvenile detention.
Madhya Pradesh
In a replay of that
crime, a 15-year-old student at a government school in the state of
Madhya Pradesh was shot dead by a 17-year-old classmate. Police said the
assailant used a homemade handgun.
CHENNAI
Class IX student of
a Chennai school stabbed his teacher to death inside the classroom itself. The cause is given by the
police as that the boy was under pressure after the teacher repeatedly sent
adverse remarks to his parents. The student, son of a customs clearing agency
employee, repeatedly stabbed his Hindi teacher Uma Maheshwari.
Parents
investing exuberant every amount on
their child for better future but often return is nix. If you are getting more
then you are bound to give back more. Blaming on the pressure you cannot take a
ride an one-way traffic.
!!!Good Investment means quality returns but
where it is?!!!
This small incident
happened around two decades ago while I was staying in IIT, Mumbai. I
had a Garwali family as my neighbour among some other wonderful lots I
was having around me. I never saw any other peace loving and harmless family
who could compete with them in these criteria. Head of the family was working
in Proctor and Gamble (P&G) and the lady of the house was a homemaker. They
had five children, four boys and a girl. Sadly, that the eldest two boys
of the four are no more and died rather very pathetic way. During those days,
after the dinner we used to go for a night walk. One night after such outing
when we were walking back we found that one of my neighbour’s son was engaged
in some conversation with a patrolling constable. Before we could
reacted the constable hit the boy on his leg with a stick that generally
the police always have with them. The force was so great that the boy instantly
fell down on the ground, he started screaming loudly, he was in great pain. We
ran to his rescue and informed the policeman that the boy belongs to a family those
not even capable to kill an insect. After that incident, the boy was in bed for
a month with the injury. His only crime was, when the policeman asked his name
he requested to know the reason for his query. I kept a tab on that constable
because if something like that occurred again I would gone all the way to
complain against him. However, in the same year he was given a police medal for
his honesty and hard work. Things never ended there, after a year he was
suspended for accepting bribe. So, this is the story about the peoples
who supposed to protect us, the common-man. All over India, everyday you will find
thousands of such cases involving a policeman. Who are these stick wielding
peoples, they are only a public servant who eating and shitting on public
money. Who authorized them to go after the innocent peoples and kept harassing
them. Instead of going after hardcore criminal, they end up shielding
their crime for financial gain and show their power on the innocent people like
my harmless neighbour.
There two categories
of uniformed people in the society, of-course I am leaving the great
Indian army aside. One of them are police force and other you will find in
white uniform, we called them politicians. Three is not a crowd here, these
lethal combination is eating up our society and innocent lives – they are the Police,
the Underworld goons and the corrupt Politicians. Here are some
events relating the moral cops rather an offender.
Ghaziabad
Ghaziabad is always famous for either statues of Mayawati
and police atrocity.
The policemen in Ghaziabad have started a
moral policing act to discourage couples from sitting in public places.
Policemen have resumed the drive called 'Operation Majnu' to crack down on
couples, which they claim will curb sexual harassment. Policemen were seen harassing couples in a
park in Sahibabad and forcing men to do sit-ups. They have also been picking up
couples from other parks and malls and questioning them in public. 'Operation
Majnu' is being led by Station Officer Alka Pandey of the Ghaziabad
Police.
Apart from above
incident we also know that how this same police force messed up with Arushi
murder case. In recent past they broke all rules and ethic when they gone to
disclosed the details about a rape victim to the media.
Karnataka
Since BJP
government came to the power the wind of changes came in Karnataka. All right
wing parties acting as reformer when the politician from the party need to be
reformed.
Moral policing
reared its head again, this time in BJP-ruled Karnataka where members of a
right-wing Hindu group assaulted girls in a Mangalore pub, accusing them
of behaving in an “obscene manner”. Eyewitnesses said the girls were chased and
thrashed by activists of the Sri Ram Sena as they tried to flee from the
pub on the busy Balmatta Road
in the heart of Mangalore. There were also allegations that some of the girls
were molested.
A slap without a
sound
Nisha Susan, a 29-year-old journalist, decided to
counterattack. With several associates, she launched a group on the social
networking Web site, Facebook. They called it the "Consortium of
Pub-Going, Loose and Forward Women." And they unveiled a plan to
dispatch piles of pink knickers to the leader of Sri Ram Sena in a nonviolent
gesture of defiance. The women chose Valentine's Day. This day
particularly rankles right-wing Hindu extremists, who consider it an immoral
commercialized Western import.
Mumbai
A heaven for Police,
underworld and corrupt politicians nexus, almost five dozens of films made on
this topic. Mumbai have a new reformer, a hockey stick wielding policeman, the Assistant
Commissioner of Police Vasant Dhoble.
Mr Dhoble's track
record in the police force say that he himself is a serial offender but always
saved by the political patronage. He had come under scanner in 2008 for alleged
“negligence” as he lost 12 important files on global terrorist and
underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. He was suspended in 1989 for accepting a bribe
in Pune. In 1994, he was sentenced to seven years in prison and fined a lakh
for his role in a custodial death. He was dismissed from the force but
reinstated in 1996, after his jail sentence was dismissed by the Mumbai High
Court. A departmental inquiry against him is still pending in this case - the
Supreme Court had ordered this.
You believe or not,
this man now called himself a social reformer. He has redefined 'social
service', wielding his hockey stick to devastating effect and a camera. In
January this year at a bar on Sahar
Road in Andheri. Dhoble arrived past midnight only
to find no girls present there. Dhoble went into the kitchen, discovering a
narrow passage leading to a 2x2 sq ft door. He couldn't break in but slid his cellphone
under the door and took pictures. They revealed tell-tale evidence: Ten girls,
all in their 20s, standing in a well-lit room-five of them in shimmery saris,
two in mini-skirts and three in jeans and tops. Dhoble called the local police
and forced the bar owner to open the door to the secret room. The girls are now
at a women's reform home in Chembur.
Sixty four-year-old
Yusuf Bhure, owner of the Mogal Sarai restaurant in Bandra, fell
unconscious and partially lost his hearing after Dhoble struck him on the ear
and groin while inspecting the restaurant.
This week newspaper
revealed that 1.8m Indians suffer cop torture. It is time to send a strong message to the
so-called social reformers and the monsters hiding in the uniform.
!!!Only the cowards who preferred to demonstrate
their supremacy on the innocent.!!!
Last week we have
seen lots of activity in Delhi but Delhi is always famous for the same
reason. Be it team Anna or it Ramdev Delhi is always buzzing.
This time around the reason for the buzz around the announcement of the candidature
for the next president of India.. Whenever she was a minister
either with Congress or with NDA, she always did it, your guess is as well as
mine. It is Mamata Banerjee, once again she did it but please don’t say ‘once
more’ because we Bengali itself fed with her antic. I remember a piece of cartoon
by great R. K. Laxman showing that then Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee who was admitted in the hospital for some reason was running for
cover from the backdoor when someone announced that Mamata Banerjee is
visiting him.
I wanted to inform
Ms. Banerjee, that I am a very apolitical person and also that in last Loksabha
election she was a contestant from my constituency and I did vote for her. When
I declared to my students that I was one of the fool who too voted for her
obviously they asked me how is my feeling now. I only can say that it is go
down as one of my biggest mistake concerning my life. May be, she can branded
me a CPM cadre, a Maoist, an anti Bengali or may be an anti
National, but her opinion does not
bother me any more. Of-course she is running a party which does not have
different opinion, only opinion works in her party which only diktat by her. In
my earlier blog I praised her and sadly today I am doing it with such
contrasting negative feeling. As, her own party member and MP Kabir Suman
described her as, either her attitude changed drastically or she is a terrific
actress. The way things are going I think we will able publish a full fledged book
on her tantrums.
Tantrums of Mamata
While she was
a railway minister, Mamata Banerjee.
Accused of being temperamental, she has
irked members of parliament such as Ram Vilas Paswan for throwing her
shawl at him after a speech, and for walking out during parliamentary sessions.
After calling the
Park Street rape case as "cooked up to malign the government", Mamata Banerjee did a U-turn and assured all
help to the team of National Commission for Women (NCW) but not to the victim
or for once she never aphorized to her making such a foolish comment. She again
did the same for the victim from Katwa.
She conveyed to
prime minister Manmohan Singh that she would not be able to accompany
him on his visit to Bangladesh, as she
is not happy with the final draft of the interim deal New Delhi and Dhaka are
likely to sign for sharing of the waters of river Teesta. It was clearly
a snub to the prime minister, who had invited her to join him on his visit to
the eastern neighbour. She cannot rise above the electoral interests, but the
way things going we are going to see some changes within or after four years.
At an open house
session with the Chief Minister, conducted by CNN-IBN to mark one year
of the Trinamool Congress's coming to power in West Bengal,
she branded a student as Maoist and CPM cadre. She was asked about the
handling of recent crimes against women and the conduct of some senior
ministers from her party, by a PresidencyUniversity student, Taniya
Bhardwaj. She angrily accused the student of being a Maoist, refused to
answer questions and stormed off the stage.
This time she was
gone too far by snubbing Mr. Pranab Mukherjee’s nomination as next
president, when every Bengali wanted it. After rejecting the UPA’s Presidential
candidate, she now Mamata Banerjee is sulking in a corner and decided to open
her heart in public by taking her woes to Facebook. For over period
since UPA-II came into the power, Mamata Banerjee has tried her
best to pressurised the government at the centre, blocking almost every reform
which caused great damage to the Indian economy, bringing down the growth rate.
The thinker
community from Bengal those once supported her
too fed of her antic, only baring two. One of them is a squeeze master
and other, come on, I think all knows it better than me.
A senior Congress
politician has an extraordinary wish for 2012. He wants the Opposition NDA
to come to power in the new year for only one reason — so that NDA might suffer
Mamata Banerjee's tantrums just as the present coalition has had to bear them.
!!!Hold your card close to your chest but
till it is worth using.!!!