Special pics Part 1

I am not on instagram, don't post many pics on other social media and I tend to be really callous about taking and storing good pics. I have lost some really good pics because of changing many phones and losing data on my laptop. But ultimately I realized that some pics are too special not to preserve. So I thought it would be wise to store a few select pics in my blog and add a brief description.

Trip to Kalga, Himachal Pradesh - June 2016

I have already placed this small, quaint, gorgeous village situated on the top of a hill/mountain on a huge pedestal in a post I wrote last year so I won't elaborate too much. This was where my friends and I stayed during our trip here.

Breathtaking view from the balcony of our cottage guesthouse. I think from the relaxed posture of my friends leg, one can only imagine what an amazingly chilled out trip this was.

The Beatles Ashram, Rishikesh - March 2016

This was really special for a couple of reasons. To say that the Beatles is incredibly special to me is an understatement. There was something about the Beatles ashram that was magical and I just can't place what. Probably just thought of the presence of the Fab 4 in a mystical land and to know that there were beatles fans around the world who had come here to pay tribute to their favourite band by making beautiful fan art, scribbling lyrics of the songs everywhere made me feel such a deep connect with them. (Mama and Papa, I don't mean to freak you out) but this was my first ever solo trip. It actually was an awesome experience because Rishikesh was such a bustling touristy place, that not even for one moment did I feel awkward or unsafe. Only in one instance, when I was all alone in the ashram, I really was hoping that someone would come so I could ask them to take a pic of me with the magnificent Beatles fan art as background. Sure enough 2 British ladies came and when I asked, one of them very happily took the second pic and I remember her beaming after she had taken the pic, saying, " The purple colour of your t-shirt is a really good contrast against the backdrop."

Star pics

The above pic was sent to me by Appu chacha - an awesome family member of mine who I highly respect and look up to. He had read my blog and I suppose, in response to one of my posts, sent me this pic saying that he thought I might like it. Truth is I love it and I couldn't stop staring at it for a really long time. He told me it is an anti poaching camp he had been to in the middle of a jungle 25 kms from the Gudalur district of Tamil Nadu. The Indian landscape really is a majestic wonder!

There really is so much of thrash on Facebook. But sometimes, if you are lucky, you stumble across some absolute gems. This pic was posted by someone I knew long ago in my childhood. The source is European Southern Observatory. Would you take a look at that? It's just jaw dropping. 

Mental illness and leadership

I came across a article the other day whose main theme was how mental illness can actually be an asset where leadership was involved.

While it sounds quite controversial, the article logically spoke about how people with mental illness i.e. people with depression, bipolar disorder (I do not remember the other quoted illnesses) exhibit the following traits:- empathy, creativity, realism and resilience.

Going one by one, where I am penning down my interpretation of the article as I remember it - 

1) Empathy: When you have experienced the feeling of hitting a prolonged rock bottom, plunging the lowest of lows, it definitely is more likely that you understand a person's suffering even if that person or the circumstance he/she is in is miles different from yours. And I think especially if a depressed person has experienced compassion from others during that period, he/she is much more likely to try and help a person in a similar circumstance knowing full well what it feels like to be down in the gutter and more importantly knowing how even  small gesture of kindness is enough to prevent a person from falling over the edge 

2) Creativity: Anyone can look at the best artistes in the world to know that is true. I think the best songs especially on sad themes like heart break is when you her a musician play and you kind of sense that the person is not just strumming an instrument or singing into a mic but just bleeding his/her heart out. These are the kind of performances that can move one to tears. When pain can manifest itself in such powerful self expression, the world is definitely better off and I sincerely hope the artiste is better off as well.

3) Realism: I think this point is best illustrated with examples as mentioned in the article. Winston Churchill was prone to severe bouts of depression to the point that he could not even get out of bed. Further more, a lot of the times, he had suicidal tendencies. So much so, he would avoid balconies or high altitudes. Because of his perspective of not seeing things through rose tinted glasses all the time, he was the only person during the rise of the Nazis could see the kind of threat  it really posed to the Allied powers and the stability of the world. It is said that it was he was the one who insisted on going into the war although his whole cabinet was against the decision. Similarly Abraham Lincoln who suffered depression also oversaw the Civil War with a great sense of reality. The author of the article argues that mental illness is actually an asset during times of crisis for a leader because the leader is able to discern the situation as it is and doesn't have the tendency to look away from inconvenient facts or facts that the leader doesn't like.

4) Resilience: 'I have seen my greatest enemy. And he lies within me' I guess people really tend to underestimate what it feels like when you are in constant war with yourself. I am not sure whether one manages to ever defeat their inner demons but one can manage to live above them. This process of trying to conquer yourself is possibly the most exhausting and difficult thing to do and it is a life long process but I suppose this battle builds up resilience and mental strength

Ultimately, what  I found most interesting was the conclusion of the article where it said that mental illness should not be a disqualifying trait for a hiring a person in a leadership role. 

Interesting insights from the book - 'The subtle art of not giving a ****'

Recently a couple of very close friends gifted me a few books. One of them was the book - "The subtle art of not giving a ****" by Mark Manson. I think other than life experiences, some books have this extraordinary capability of subtly changing your trail of thinking. I would probably say that this is one of those books for me. My structure for this post is I am going to pen down one of the most incredible anecdotes I have read ever from this book followed by a list of insights I gained from this book.

PART I - TALE OF 2 MUSICIANS

In one of the anecdotes in this book, the career trajectories of 2 musicians who were chucked out unceremoniously from their band are traced.

a) A guitarist named Dave Mustaine belonging to a band who had just signed on a record deal was out of the blue, chucked out of the band without any explanation allegedly because of excessive drinking and drug problems. The guy on his bus ride home vowed that he would form his own band which would be so much greater than the band that he was chucked out of and would teach his former wretched bandmates a lesson with his success. True to his word, he became really famous and successful with his heavy metal named named Megadeth. However the band that he got chucked out of was Metallica which is considered one of the greatest rock bands in music history.

b) The drummer of the Beatles initially was not Ringo Starr. They started out with a drummer known as Pete Best. Pete Best was talented and incredibly good looking. It turns out that John and Paul in particular were jealous of Pete especially because of the female adulation he received and in 1962 asked their manager to chuck him out of the band (so effin horribly petty I know!). And their manager after some hesitation just asked him to leave. After beatlemania engulfed Britain in 1963 and the US in 1964, Pete Best was understandably depressed, took to drinking, failed in his other musical ventures and almost committed suicide in 1968 only to be stopped by his mother.

So 2 vastly divergent career paths for 2 musicians who were dealt an unfortunate deck of cards right at the start of a very promising career. But this is where the story gets really interesting.

In 2003 Dave Mustaine in a deeply personal interview gets teary eyed and states that despite the fame he got, he S-T-I-L-L feels like an utter failure because he feels that at the end of the day, he will always be the guy who got chucked out of Metallica

In sheer contrast, Pete Best in an interview states that he is happier than what he would have probably been had he still been with the Beatles. He explains that the circumstances that he found himself after his firing lead him to his wife and children - a stable and very happy family life. He still got to tour across Europe as a drummer playing for different bands so he still got to do what he loved. The only thing  he missed out on was intense fame and adulation but what he had gained instead was much more meaningful to him.

The book argues that the metrics you choose to judge your life with and your underlying values determine how you cope after a devastating setback and ultimately how you lead your life. Dave Mustaine's metric on how he judged his life (whether he knew it or not) was whether he was more successful than Metallica or not an by that count he was a failure.

It really is interesting to ask yourself - would you rather be a Pete Best or a Dave Mustaine?

Personally I know that my younger version would have rather been a Dave Mustaine. But now it repulses me to think of having hate and revenge as your prime motivators of success and even when you work that hard to achieve it, you still are not at peace and are filled with self loathing. I take this is as a sign of growing up But I do know that a lot of people would not be comfortable with the idea of being a metamorphic Pete Best as well especially those who have burning ambition to achieve the highest levels of success/fame and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But what I believe is crucially important is to be brutally honest to yourself as to what values matter to you and with which you would want to judge yourself and others. And as far as possible, make sure those values are not shallow and superficial values. Most importantly accept those values/metrics which give you peace of mind. Otherwise you end up like a Dave Mustaine still bitter and unhappy.

At the end of the day, not all things in life that you think you want out of life are worth the importance and investment in emotion you give them. Choose wisely what what you want those things to be.

PART TWO - INSIGHTS FROM THE BOOK

1) Action is most times a cause and not an effect of motivation. Do something

2) Pain, regrets, rejection, loss, failures  suffering and death are an inevitable part of life. Nobody is immune to these and is entitled to feel good and positive all the time. Life is lived by engaging with and not avoiding negative experiences.

3) Happiness comes from solving problems and is a constant work in progress

4) Problems and their severity of it are not unique to you. If you have a problem chances are millions have and face them.  Responsibility to solve them lies with you and this is what builds up emotional resilience

5) Be more accepting of lying in the middle of the normal curve of life and not  feel the need for claiming entitlement by lying on extreme ends of it

6) Be aware of your own mortality. This will give perspective whether what you are stressing so much about really matters so much in the grand scheme of things

7) Desire to avoid conflict, confrontation and rejection is a subtle form of entitlement because of the need to feel great all the time by avoiding hurting yourself and others

8) Indifferent is the worst thing you can be. There is a name for a person who finds no emotion or meaning in anything - a psychopath

9) Emotional healthy relationships are those where people support each other to solve their own shit. Nobody can or should 'save' you and you can't or shouldn't take responsibility for anybody's problems. The pain of confrontation leads to greater trust and respect in truly healthy relationships.

Penning this down really drills into me some very valuable truths to be accepted about life. My hope is that I or any person reading this can adopt some of these learnings in the practical sense.

My most cherished #20yearsofHarryPotter moment

The ‘Harry Potter’ book series has been and probably will remain my all time favourite book. I read somewhere that it was the publishing world’s answer to the Beatles. I couldn’t agree more.

The first book – “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” was published on June 26^th 1997. So all the HP fans were going ballistic few days back on social media with the #20yearsof HarryPotter hashtag where everyone was sharing their favourite Harry Potter ‘moment’ from their childhood.

Mind you, I think Harry Potter is a very deep and profound book. But if I talk about my favourite memory associated with the book, there is a standout memory and oddly enough it has to do with one of the most innocuous passages of the first book in the 7 part series.

The context of this particular paragraph that I am referring to is that Harry Potter is attending his first ever day at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry where he listens to the Headmaster (the eternal and evergreen Albus Dumbledore) addressing his students before the commencement of a new academic year.

“Albus Dumbledore had gotten to his feet. He was beaming at the students, his arms opened wide, as if nothing could have pleased him more than to see them all there."Welcome," he said. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words.

And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!

"Thank you!"

He sat back down. Everybody clapped and cheered. Harry didn't know whether to laugh or not.

"Is he -- a bit mad?" he asked Percy uncertainly.

"Mad?" said Percy airily. "He's a genius! Best wizard in the world! But he is a bit mad, yes. Potatoes, Harry?"

For some reason, as a kid, the above passage just had me in splits and Every. Single. Time. I would think about it, I would burst out laughing.

I read this book first in the year 2000 as a 10 year old. If I remember right, my dad had bought the first 3 books for me during my summer vacation. During that time, my granddad had been hospitalized for a brief period. We used to visit him in the hospital regularly and I would spend some time with him. My granddad was the most erudite, intellectual and smartest person I have ever known in my life till date. Even in his old age, he remembered word to word poetry and plot lines of books which he had read during his child hood!

One of the days, after I had read a considerable portion of the first book of Harry Potter, and when I visited him in the hospital, I could barely contain myself and told him very excitedly, “You know Appacha, there is this famous children’s book called Harry Potter these days and I am reading it and it is sooooo funny. “

Talking about the paragraph that I have quoted in the beginning, which at that point was hilariously and painfully amusing to me – I went on animatedly, “In this book, you won’t believe, when a 11 year old boy Harry Potter attends his school for the first time and his headmaster addresses the students, the headmaster HAS ONLY 4 WORDS TO SAY - NITWIT, BLUBBER, ODDMENT, TWEAK!!”

“What does that mean?”, he questioned probably genuinely shocked and concerned what a modern day children’s book was teaching kids 2 generations below than his.

“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s nonsense….. In fact even Harry Potter thinks that the headmaster is mad”, I said and burst out laughing.

Then suddenly, I saw my granddad (who had all kinds of drips/needles poked into his body) roar with laughter after ages. I think the both of us laughed together for a good few minutes till we were light headed. And then he proceeded to passionately tell me about his Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie books he had read as a child. 

Even as a kid, I could make out how something as small as me uttering some gibberish words of a Harry Potter book miraculously brought a bit of cheer to him (even if it was just for a short while) at a time when he was in such pain.  I look back at this beautiful grandfather – granddaughter moment almost 2 decades old with great fondness and affection and this by far will always be my favourite #20yearsofHarryPotter moment.

Of magical moments in life

In the movie, 'La La Land', which is otherwise an annoyingly overrated movie (I have faced the wrath from a couple of really good friends who are huge fans of the movie for saying this), there is one scene in my opinion which is easily the best scene of the movie. The setting is when the main female lead (Emma Stone) is walking kinda dejectedly, alone on an empty street in the night. She suddenly stops when out of nowhere she hears a captivatingly melancholic tune play out from a piano. She gets drawn to the source of the music and enters a restaurant/club/bar where she discovers the pianist (Ryan Ghosling's character) playing the piano and she just stands there transfixed as she watches him play. I generally consider myself adequately competent in expressing myself when I write but in that moment of the scene, it is just virtually impossible for me to do justice to describe that expression on her face as she hears and watches him play that music. It is clear that the tune has a deeply moving effect on her like she is under some spell and even after he is done, she just continues to stare at the pianist in stunned silence (kudos to Emma Stone for emoting this so brilliantly and at the end of the day she was rewarded with an Oscar for this movie). It is such a simple moment but so magical.

_________________________________________________________________________________

23rd and 24th June 2016

 “You know when I went trekking in a nearby area of the place where we are going to, the sky was so clear that I could see the Milky Way!!”, claimed a friend of mine who from teen-hood has always had this amazing knack of knowing exactly the right thing to say to make me hyper excited about anything she thinks I would look forward to.

I tried desperately hard to be calm and measured in my response - “You’re joking right?! Don’t do this ok….don’t build my expectations so much with your exaggerations!”

“Nooo! Even if not the Milky Way you probably will see more stars than you have in your life. Seriously!”, she exclaimed responding to my incredulous look.

The context of the above conversation was when 3 close pals and I were enroute to a remote place in Himachal Pradesh named Kalga for a getaway from city life for a couple of days exactly one year back. And I gotta say…despite not being a real great fan of the mountains, that place was one of the most breathtaking I have even seen in my life. It was pristine, green and untouched by commercialism. We were putting up at a guesthouse in that area which was literally in the middle of a forest with a spectacular view of the mountains. The best part was that as we had reached on a weekday, we had the whole of the cottage guesthouse where we were staying to ourselves

But well as pretentious this may sound, the thing I was looking forward to the most was star gazing at night.  Lord knows what it is with some people and stars! Maybe its the whole ‘we are such a tiny speck in such an enormous multiverse’ thing. Or maybe it just something as uncomplicated as liking twinkly, glittery and blingey things.  Truth is that being a resident of some pretty polluted cities, I have never actually seen a sky clear enough to be dotted with stars. The only time I really recall seeing a gorgeous night sky was when I was a kid and visited my native place during one of my summer vacations but I guess even that place has become quite polluted now ‘cause I never saw that sight again ever since. So I thought this was my best opportunity – a high altitude, secluded and a virtually pollution-free village situated randomly among the Himalayas to see a crystal clear sky. So by the time the night rolled in, literally every 15 minutes, I would stick my head outside the terrace and check the sky. And frankly, the only thing I could observe was one or two stars playing peek-a-boo in the sky. “I see more than this in the sky of the most polluted city on the earth where we live” I whined  to my friend who had gotten me excited about this whole aspect in the first place. “Well our bad luck that it’s a bit cloudy today .Maybe tomorrow will be better” she said sounding apologetic. Any way after a point I think I gave up gazing outside and after making a mental note to not overhype any personal expectations in the future, I turned my attention to the excellent surroundings, food, drinks, music and company for the remainder of the night.

The next day which was a Friday, we had an extraordinary day where we trekked most of the day and by the time we returned to the guest house in the evening, we were pretty exhausted and were looking forward to cap what had till now been a PERFECT day with a quiet, chilled out night like the one we had previously. To our annoyance, when we came back, there were 2 (or more) big gangs of college kids who had hogged the common dining space which we had entire ownership of the previous day and who more less took control of the music playlist. I can become quite a grouch especially when the music I am listening to is completely opposite to my taste and so as the night progressed, the constant loud chatter from those kids and the irritating music got to my nerves (god I am old!) and I just took off, leaving alone from my friends group to our room and, as an attempt to better my mood, made a last ditch effort to look skywards from our room window. "The last night in this place and still no goddamn stars.", I muttered to myself when the sky view exactly like the preceding night managed to disappoint me. I proceeded to lie down and try to go to sleep. I think an hour or so must have passed and it had reached beyond midnight before I realized what an ungrateful brat I was being for sulking for the silliest of reasons and not being with the people with whom I had spent one of the most incredible days of my life discounting the final few hours of the day. I decided rejoin my friends who at that point still had not come to the room. 

<Now as this is a one year old memory, the exact sequence of events from this point are a little hazy so I reproduce them to the best of my memory.>

When I got out of the room, I saw 2 of them still sitting in the common area and was going to rejoin them when I heard my name being called...I turned to see from the balcony, my 3rd friend calling me from just outside the cottage. "What on earth are you doin---" I started saying a bit confused. "Come down fast and call the other 2 ...", she responded urgently. I called my other 2 friends and the 3 of us went down just outside the house to join our friend who had called us. Even in the dark I could make out the excitement on her face and then she pointed upwards. We all looked up.

And there it was.

A clear clear sky filled with stars....... It was a setting where 4 friends were huddled together on a wooden bench in a small clearing just outside a cottage guesthouse surrounded by thick intense greenery under a dark sky full of stars at I think at about one am in the night, For most part, we were gazing upwards. I don't remember the conversation that probably went  on for at least an hour. But I do remember that warmth, that camaraderie , that feeling of utter contentment. As more time passed, the sky grew darker and the stars grew so bright that now it was virtually impossible to look anywhere besides skyward, Suddenly ...out of the blue...out of nowhere, the biggest, brightest most dazzling and in my case the only SHOOTING star I have ever seen just whizzed passed us.

"OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH", we all gasped loudly. This breathtaking moment was succeeded by a moment of comedy of sorts.

"What? Where? What just happened? yelled one of my friends frantically. 

The rest of us pounced on her with flabbergasted variations of Oh my dear god!Wtf? Wth? You missed it?....you missed THAT sight? How tf ? Whats the matter with you? ...........and even till today, we give her a hard time on how she managed to miss THAT shooting star. Amazingly enough, even after that massive shooting star graced us with its fleeting presence, there was a trail of more shooting stars which followed it albeit much smaller. 

"A wave of intense happiness washed over me, and I told myself to carry this moment as a talisman of a time in my life when I was both truly content and lucky enough to realize it."

I guess the above quote describes best what I felt in that moment. I guess a lot of times, we fail to really enjoy the moment as it truly deserves to be savored and then when we look back, then we realize that in hindsight what a moment it really was. But there are those rare moments where you are just fully 100% consciously present totally and absolutely aware that what you are experiencing is magic or something very close ....whether it is being completely struck paralyzed by a piece of music or star gazing lost in the mountains with close pals. Best part is I guess beauty of life lies in the simplest of moments. 

Probably, the above 2 moments I have listed in this post sound over-dramatized or over-romanticized but there is absolutely no way...no darn way I could ever ever ever, even when I look back after 50 years, over-dramatize or over-romanticize what I felt on that trip in a June night of 2016. On the contrary, even if I exert my most powerful vocabulary skills, any word/s would fall short of the sense of wonder I truly felt that day. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) not all the most superior moments in life can be captured on camera....but they get captured in your memories... and in the heart. An sometimes, in addition, they get captured flimsily in a post like this....to serve as a reminder if or when reminding is ever needed that no matter what changes - whether the people, whether the surroundings or anything else for that matter, magical moments in the past and the happiness associated with them never change and more importantly that there will be countless moments like these that are yet to be lived in a lifetime.

Michelle Obama's speech: By a woman for a woman

I have followed the past few US Presidential elections the same way a person mildly interested in sports follows the Football World Cup – enough interest to keep tab of the status of the prominent teams involved and scores, even watch a couple of important matches but not that much interest to invest emotionally in it.

But that leaked tape of Donald Trump making lewd comments about women for some inexplicable reason had a really jarring and mortifying effect on me. This despite the fact that:

1) There is so much fodder available regarding many Indian politician’s statements on women that I’d assume that all ability to be shocked is lost into space
2) Like a lot of women, I am pretty much resigned to the feeling that objectification of women is too widespread culturally to wish away
3) That some really shady elements especially in positions of power have this sense of entitlement where they can violate who they think are beneath them and get away with it is no secret

But to hear what you sense in verbalized form so vulgar and brazen that too from a person running for arguably the most influential position in the world was really a punch in the stomach.
I tried to think coherently and logically about this shit storm by gathering different points of view emerging from global coverage and writing about it. But all that managed to come out of me was a barrage of expletives that could cut down a forest.

I finally got an answer to why this had an overwhelming effect on me in the form of Michelle Obama’s speech yesterday. Minus the endorsement/political part of it, hers was a remarkable speech which I do hope will be remembered for a very long time to come. In the first 10-15 minutes of her speech, not only did every single word of hers resonate with me (and I am sure a lot of people especially women), but she took a powerful stand against something that is so obviously wrong…something that spineless worms like the section of people who after having condemned the words (whether religious group or even women for that matter) have failed to do by still continuing to defend and offer support to someone who is clearly morally bankrupt.

As I have grown up, I have tried to, over the years convince myself that there is no black and white in life and that what is right and wrong, a lot of times, is just a matter of perception. Guess in a way, it’s a defense mechanism to navigate through this world as an adult. But some things in life like viewing women in the way Donald Trump does are just clear cut wrong...some things are as Michelle puts it – about basic human decency.

Thanks Michelle Obama for rationalizing my anger in a way that I just couldn’t.

PS - I wish there was some way where qualities like basic human decency be made measurable, quantifiable items that could be used as automatic disqualifying criteria for people running for high ranking public offices. Then democratic elections would be about selecting who you think is right for the job and not who is least of the evil options which is what is appearing to happen increasingly

Captain America 3: Civil War: Action, Humour, Substance

Post #4

Have always like mindless superhero movies/cartoons as a kid and even now for that matter. Grew up following the Spiderman, Avengers, X-Men, Iron Man series etc.

It's easy to just escape to a world where good and bad is just so clearly defined. A righteous hero kicking the ass of some maniacal, flamboyant villain who most of the times wants to demolish the entire planet earth.

That way, Captain America 3: Civil War was quite different from the films of this genre. It dealt with a whole host of super-heroes maneuvering their way in the real world where collateral damage is a reality. In super-hero movies, when escaping into a brilliant spectacle where buildings get destroyed by the droves, cars get smashed up, who really thinks about those unfortunate souls who somehow are in the wrong place in the wrong time bang in the middle of the mega fights between  the heroes and villains and lose their lives in the process.

There are 2 points in this film which kinda actually made me wrestle with conflicting feelings about how I felt about the situation:

Conflict #1: Pretty much right at the start of the film, the superheroes get divided into 2 camps. The first camp led by Tony Stark (Iron Man) feels that as the Avengers have gone out of control and are despised by the world as 'US based vigilantes' who have no regard for collateral damage, they need to kept reigned in by an accord signed by the 100+ nations of the UN. Under this accord, they no longer can operate independently and have to operate under controlled conditions according to the mandate of the UN accords signed.

The second camp led by Steve Rogers (Captain America) believes that the Avengers being controlled by an external body like UN is an awful idea because an external body consists of people with agendas and agendas can always change. In short they will be puppets and will always be at the biding of their political masters which won't always ensure that they do the right things that needs to be done. They regret the collateral damage which happens due to their activities but are of the opinion that it's better to save most people possible than to save none at all.

To be honest, I think both are extremely compelling arguments. On one hand there has to be accountability when there is collateral damage. On the other hand about the point of people with agendas and agendas changing, I do believe it to be true given the experience I have had till now in a public set up

It's confusing really - weirdly enough my head sides with stand taken by Iron man and my heart with that of Captain America!

This conflict sort of has a political undertone. Have realized that its just SO much easier when you strongly believe in a certain type ideology like those rabid left or right wingers who go on barking covering their ears refusing to even listen to a diverse point of view. You get screwed if you are a moderate who is willing to be open to both sides of the argument.

Conflict #2: So the 'villain' in this film is probably the most sympathy inducing villain in any superhero film/cartoon I have seen.  He lost his entire family including children, wife and dad who were civilians who got caught in the middle of a battle between the Avengers and Ultron. He is hellbent on revenge and thinks that the best way of getting rid of the Avengers is stoking infighting between them. Again this is such a grey area. It's a classic case of of the Joker quote "Why should I apologize for the monster I have become? No one ever apologized for making me this way?" Even in real life, it seems to me that at the heart of most of the conflicts in the world are such 'monsters' who at some point have been wronged. Again, most people aided by an unethical media choose to take the convenient option of viewing such conflicts through the narrow lens of nationalism, religion, regionism etc and pontificate on what's right and wrong

When you are a kid, you sincerely believe that everything is black and white and if you are a decent person, your hope is that you'll always strive to do what's right. And when you do finally grow up, you realize that so many times, what is right and wrong is just a matter of perspective.

Think that the best part of the film was despite its serious themes, the light hearted humour was quite a delight not to mention the breathtaking action sequences. In my opinion that's why this film scores over the Dark Knight films which was of course are very thought provoking and brilliant but too darkly intense and draining

I guess at the end of the day, adopting a humorous approach towards life certainly is the best weapon to avoid being overwhelmed by the seriousness of it.

Empathy too is a very powerful tool when 2 opinions are on the opposite sides of the spectrum. Even if it does not dissolve barriers, atleast it manages to dissolve the bitterness surrounding it which still leaves the possibility of resolution of the conflict open.

This is summed up perfectly in the last few lines of a letter by Steve to Tony at the end of the movie which reads

"I wish we agreed on the Accords, I really do. I know you're doing what you believe in, and that's all any of us can do. That's all any of us should...so no matter what, I promise you, if you need us - if you need me - I'll be there.

Pic courtesy RDJ FB pg