Gerald D'Cunha

  “I think, violence has always been popular, way before movies started being made.” Norman Reedus   N orman Reedus said it right… Violence has, always, been there since Kane and Abel existed… And, it has been described graphically in our Holy Books, even. Movies came just a century ago; maybe, a litter earlier than that. So, whether there should be violence – more of it, less of it, or nothing of it at all – well, it doesn’t really matter. Violence is there in our blood… I have it, you have it, and we all have it. Period. What is evident is this: Most of us don’t like to display our violence publicly. So, we like to see it being displayed on movie screens and like to watch it in the darkness of the cinema halls. I have liked to watch very intense scenes involving violence in all good movies. But, not when violence is shown for the sake of violence. The mindless or meaningless violence puts me off. Even if millions hail it as ‘great action sequence’, I simply canno...

  “Not all friends know they have lost you.” Joyce Rachelle   S o, today is the ‘Friendship Day’. I am not going to greet my best friends – ‘A Happy Friendship Day, dost ’. Nor I am going to get   greetings from them. Frankly, like you, I, too, have a very, very few friends who have been there in all weathers – in good times and bad times. As we all know, we do not need to go singing along the village streets – “Yeh dosti, hum kabhi nahi thodenge’… Kabhi nahi thodenge? Come on! Life is real, not reel. In real life, Gandhis and Bachchans breakaway… Amitabh Bachchan, Amar Singh and Anil Ambani can never declare to the world: “Khana peena saath hai/Marna jeena saath hai/Saari zindagi” Come on friend, let’s be real! I have had plenty of friends through out my 63 years of life. Like you, a few – very, very few – have been around in good weathers and bad weathers, both. If I express by bitterness over many of my friends not being around – and call them ‘fair-weath...