Having My Sails Slapped... this time by the Sound of Drums

“You can’t direct the wind but you can adjust the sails.” ~ Anonymous

In a way i call myself a seeker. For i always have questions and i need simple answers not something that sails over my head. i need someone who can adjust my sails which seeks directions too.

i know Hindus believe in reincarnation and Karma but i am also a strong believer of ' NOW'. i don't care what i did in the past or how i came about in this form from a before life but as of now i am here and i live nurturing not much ill-will but yeah bearing a few grudges here and there which is but natural for the trespasses done on me but overall am clean. Harmless. Yeah that's the word.
It matters now more than ever to co-exist and be harmless.

i have read and i presume most would've like me read it too but i wonder how many want answers as to why Guru Dronacharya asked for Eklavya's thumb as Gurudakshina in the great epic Mahabharata.
Not the answer we all have but the answer that evades us.
Of course we all know it was about no one being able to surpass Dronacharya's own favorite Arjuna and also that Eklavya was a 'lowcaste' and archery ( plus all the skills of warfare) was supposedly reserved for the Kshatriyas, the Warrior Class.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekalavya

Oh i have seen a lot of movies showing a teacher and student relationship. Read stories too. Was a student once then went on to become a teacher myself. The one experience i had as a student which affected me deeply i had it etched so well in my heart that i dared not repeat it myself as a teacher and really i can't tell if i was successful in that for it's for my successful darlings all over the world to decide if i am bragging about it or telling the truth.
Which is- i never had FAVORITES.
Although i must confess however that my own teachers having their own favorites was what actually propelled me from being an average student to being the one whom the class teacher would fondly look to or face smilingly at while addressing the class. i hated school all the time when i was invisible to those i looked up to as soon as i  was seated on to my desk, my teachers. Liking it only not when i became popular because that by God's grace i did not have to make much efforts for ...was born fairly rich with looks to match.
i really started loving and enjoying school only when my name started featuring in the teachers' 'Fond Of ' list.

Around 2002 there was a Hindi movie ' Sur' with some great songs. Starring Great Comedy Actor Mehmood's son who also made it big as a fantastic singer too. Lucky Ali and co starring a new comer Gauri Karnik.  Not a hit movie though but i liked it. Mainly because it depicted a relationship. It tried to show the ' Super Ego' of a teacher also the ' 'Jealousy' that a teacher can have for it's own protege. To the extent of breaking her completely and driving her off to a nunnery where she decides to be as a recluse for the rest of her life. Dead outwardly and dumb inwardly from within her soul vowing never to sing again and thus become a nun.  A living dead as you might say of the one who could compose and sing much more brilliantly than the one who had first beseeched her from her plain, simple but happy surroundings and tried to polish her.
But of course this being a typical Bollywood movie had to have a coming together after intermission scenario. So in this story a 'melody of life' because the movie is about music and those two associated with it the teacher realizes his mistake and finally reconciles with the soon to become nun student who had while learning from the teacher was also shown to have fallen in love with the teacher. They get back together and the story proceeds with him having made her a star and taking on to another young uncertain clay in his hands to mold into one fine porcelain, one who treats him like a God and that's how the happy melodic but a melodramaticThe End happens in ' Sur'.
Want to see it then pls do with English subtitles on You Tube at http://youtu.be/h5vHACpaRUg

Why all this talk...
Guru Dronacharya...student...my teaching...movie...Sur...Melody of life...
Now another movie...
' WHIPLASH'
And probably Oscar Nominated too...

Yeah this is where my blog was heading all along.

Yeah Teachers and their teaching methodology...that's where my blog is moving towards and perhaps a little bit more.
i have just seen this movie and  the effect has been profound, poignant, and a lot many i can't express in just one word.
Those words that i will use might seem harangued as much has been said eloquently by many.
And my blog is not a review. i don't excel in reviews rather i excel at nothing i am just here to express and share.

i thought i was seeing a relationship being built up at first. Probably a genius who needs perfection. Then as the story proceeds my own intent gets suspicious till it becomes scathing and i give it up entirely to be nice towards my feeling for such a teacher.
i was seeing a teacher behave not as a potter one who carefully molds and later polishes to brilliance but rather like the psycho devising brutal and abusive means for his next victim as to how best to snuff the life out of a passion so lovingly nurtured. i felt tension built up as the muscles on my face tightened with a frown, then grimace, sometimes wince and even teeth clenching till the jaws hurt and what not as the word B****** with a barrage of others or whatever i could think of started pouring out. Inwardly though for the CONDUCTOR of the prestigious institution where gifted children came to learn. Tears welling more with anger than for the poor plight of the students themselves.
i kept saying why weren't they all just getting up and bashing him up. Why is the story proceeding that way. This is 2015...
Was he so invincible/ intimidating or does art of learning music from a master really make one so soft or is it that yearning/ quest for learning from a fine conductor is so intense so sincere that one is willing to undergo any amount of trauma/ torture. Even today... in the year 2015?
What kind of a teacher would do that i thought to myself...swearing filthy, sometimes slapping hard other times breaking stuff.
Shaking rudely first and then finally succeeding in his evil attempts at yanking it all off... the hard practiced labored love of life.
All in the pretext of bringing the ' BEST' out of the pupil.

What i felt while watching the movie was that i was seeing the same whiplash super ego the same jealousy i saw in 'Sur' of a teacher for a student.
Right from the beginning Fletcher (acted brilliantly by J.K Simmons for bringing that intensity into the movie) knew of Andrew's (Miles Teller) exceptional skills. 
And he was just using his position as a 'Boss' to torture. Was probably giving kicks to his already super bloated with ego depraved soul. Because according to this teacher ' Good Job' is not a great way to encourage a pupil to get the best out of him. According to this teacher in order to ''... push people beyond what is expected of them..." he has to use this instead:

" You are a worthless, friendless, faggot-lipped little piece of shit whose mommy left daddy when she figured out he wasn't Eugene O'Neill and who's now weeping and slobbering all over my drum set like a fucking nine-year-old girl! So for the final FATHER FUCKING time... SAY IT LOUDER! ''

My personal Oscar best keeps shuffling as i go ahead with my have watched list. Till yesterday it was "Still Alice' and now it is Whiplash. Hahahahaha. Fickle minded am i...but hey when did i say i am on the jury...and i still have Birdman, American Sniper, Selma, Mr Turner on my have to watch list. So the shuffling will go on and on till Oscar Night although i suspect Theory Of Everything might nail it.

But wait... i am not done yet.
i will not quit without letting all know what else i found worth sharing in this movie 'Whiplash'.
i found Andrew's belief in himself quite an eye-opener. His coolness about being different from the rest and not having a social life so as to speak which the world might look down upon but which he himself did not much care about very inspiring. i got my lesson number ONE.
That particular family dinner scene where he stands up for himself, i felt that very genuine for that's what i presume happens in a typically rich family when all are into big careers and being one from such a family in chasing dreams not really bothered about anything... money or even those comforts that money provides but just hopelessly into one's real passion quite possible. The family having fun at your expense nit picking at the drop of the hat...typical...generally happens even in mediocre families.
This is what Andrew said then on being snubbed as a drummer... "I'd rather die drunk, broke at 34 and have people at a dinner table talk about me than live to be rich and sober at 90 and nobody remembered who I was."
And finally the way the movie ends...boy i was Drum Struck!!. 
Then all that saxophone and jazz. Not that i am a great jazz lover or anything but it felt good. 
Got reminded of my own student a very special one...the only one who played super Saxophone and i called him Mr Gentleman...cause he was one humble of the entire lot of the super rich 'brats' i taught . Wonder where Ajay Rau is now...how he is doing...
His mom is the the founder of the Little Theatre and the entire family is just one of the super talented family i knew as a teacher. 
http://www.thelittletheatreindia.com/

Coming back to Drums from Ajay and his Saxophone never knew that Drums were human and could speak so personal. That apart from it having a great sound a beat that matched our own heart it can really say everything that you would want it to say and also do for you. To a maniac of a teacher who just won't give up in being relentless. And if you are in love with your drums just like Andrew was you don't have to swear or use filthy words even. Your drums will do it for you as the mouth keeps repeating on being warned by a fearful intimidating conductor. " I'll cue you..." Boom- Tick Boom- Tick Dhak - Tak- Dhik -Tak .
Oh gosh!!! i am goose pimply once again just by the thought of that last scene how the movie ends...
Actually it starts too with the practice of the drums...
Tempo one word i know now from the movie...don't know the words what that is called how it starts...but it starts with some beat of the drums...feels like soldiers are getting ready...



That's why not only for THE TEACHER and the TEACHER- STUDENT relationship but for more do brace yourself for this ' WHIPLASH' and hope all imbibe lots from it just like i did and not just some movie to talk about at dinner table.




Do you know the secret of the true scholar? In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him; and in that I am his pupil.  Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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