A disturbing day, but one filled with passion. Passionate about the tragedy that overcomes us all in India as one of our craft crashes in Mangalore, a Western coastal region. Passionate about the written word, for speech and presentation in prestigious institutes. Passionate about ourselves and our ‘body of lies’. Passionate about the obsession of connectible desire and the need to get back to them after getting back here.

But in all this indulgence, a simple pattern - one that prompts us to think for ourselves first. A tragedy a accident and our thoughts first go to whether there were any of ours involved. Family, friends, people we know. And once that is cleared, the desire to express the right sentiment, in a public domain. Prayers for the departed, condolences to the bereaved family and a sympathy to those that suffered because of the disaster.

We are like this only.

I never realized how important an exercise it is to chose chairs for an office. Long lasting, reliable, giving comfort to the staff and yet be not too exaggerated. I prefer the good old days of lesser or in fact no options. When options are set, it is easy to delay or misbehave. But the value that was given then, is completely absent now.

You get particular kinds of office gear. Chairs that go up and down. Chairs that have provision for ventilation, that shift gears to help the disabled to get up and down, and so on.

Eventually it must be known that the chair is an important ingredient for house and home, as well as for the forces, or indeed for your own setting of a office. Staff sits and so staff must approve. Disapproval would result in inefficiency and perhaps too lazy an atmosphere. So considering all these factors the selection process is long and cumbersome, but all done with the intent of each others betterment.

The afternoon then in speech and preparation for the event in another day or something like that. And ending up the evening with Ram Gopal Varma and joining his enthusiasm towards the kinds of film he wishes to make and wishes for others to make.

Sleep severely induced I revisit every word that I write just to make sure that I make sense. Some one on the Tweet said because I am 6′4″ all that I am writing is a bouncer for them. A bouncer in bowling terminology is the ball bowled that travels above the head of the batsman, thereby making it extremely difficult for him to play it. Most talk then, which turns out to be not understandable is termed in normal conversation but using cricket jargon, as a ‘bouncer’ - no one saw it, nor touched it nor played it. Not understood.

I advise them to study the content hard and they shall find that it is really pretty simple. Some of the writing, because it comes from greats of mind and spirit, does tend to lie in the realm of difficulty. But great writing has never been pressurized into a closed compartment. It has the freedom to travel long and wide. Freedom to put across the simplest of thoughts in the most complicated manner and conduct him self in whichever way he turns, to be looked at with awe and inspiration. It is not an easy job to garner inspiration. Often a touch of complication adds to the search for being inspired.

I would like to believe then, that we present ourselves often in a complicated manner, only to gain that special recognition. It is a quality of living, of what you may think would be an ideal condition. But I would think otherwise. I have noticed that the most simplest of expressions, invigorate the most complex situations. That the simplicity of thought has gone on to make the deepest philosophical impressions. That is the value and worth of good written word. But more than that, it is the element of finding yourself in what another’s words extol, that really gives brilliance to it.

I doubt very much that some of the greatest works in the written world were deliberately written that they would one day be reference to greatness. No of course not. They were written because they gave satisfaction and pleasure to the person who wrote it. Its another matter that it went on to become legendary in content.

Ramu and I discussed this very aspect in the context of film. The films that are made with the intent to enjoy the experience of making something that you believed in, are the ones that eventually succeed. The moment we set about to make content by stating even before the start, that they were being made to accumulate a certain designated revenue, to get that first week end of capacity, to resell to cover the cost and on .. we are treading on very insecure ground. The creative content of film is designed to entertain them that will come to get entertained. It is not designed to please a moral or social cause that gives us internal and personal pleasure . Yet it would be safe to assume that forces of creativity that believe in the ‘other’, do have justification for it. They must pursue that sentiment. It is no way inferior as a product. It is just how one looks at it that makes the difference.

Ramu said, we made Rann with the explicit thought of wanting to get into the very basis of electronic media, and maybe we succeeded in doing so. But we never gave it a thought whether the people that enter the portals of that dark hall, wish to be educated on that. And there lies the error. Ram Gopal Varma and others like him may have made sensitive provocative soul searching films. But how did we ever perceive that the audience was coming in to search for their soul. They may not have. Which is what turns the box office table in another direction. The point of debate then arises whether we make creative products purely for the revenue, or does it carry other responsibilities too.  There will be many pro and against arguments on this, but at the end of the day the battle will be between how many eyeballs each attracted.

At a similar argument in Paris some time back I discovered that their method of judging success of a film is by the count of the number of people that went to see it, not what that number of people spent, to go and see particular film. I am tempted to go with the Paris argument and see how we can find a way of converting that method to revenue in order that costs are covered and worked out.

But this is an endless process of argument debate and opposing views. I do not think there could be a sensible sane procedure in place. And which is why the famous French adage looms largely in front of us today - vive la difference !!

Back to the twiterati then… it was a promise to return

Love and love and love to all

Amitabh Bachchan