The Revolutionary Road

A Week Later....

The campus is kind-of normal now but the fight is still on. The Soc-Cult GC events are scrapped whereas the Tech and Sports events are on just to keep normal life going. With a 200+ membership and an organized stream of operations, the black sunday google group members are fighting for Rohit and for each one of us who deserves a better standard of living. It is a watchdog which will scrutinize the actions of both the administration and the student representatives and will make sure they are on the right path. The visit of Mr. Murthuraman (Chairman, BOG, IITKGP) has kindled some hopes in the hearts of students but everyone wants to wait and watch if those assurances get converted to reality as promised. This morning, the residents of LLR Hall offered condolences to Rohit and I hope everyone did promise to himself that we will bring change.

I am amazed to see the overwhelming reponses from both the student and the alumni community on the scholsav site. The brainstorming that has been going for a few days now is certainly painting a clearer picture particularly for the alumni. Thank God we do have a college newspaper which is playing such a important role in this crisis situation.



On a different Note...

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;

She is back in Revolutionary Road. A crazy weird suburban married woman in the mid 50s in the US, Kate Winslet comes out so strong as a character in this movie that you are totally awed by her presence. Silence is as noisy in this movie as are the dialogues. Moving so frequently between pretentious happiness and recrimination, this masterpiece is a lucid depiction of the life of an unhappily married couple in their 30s who want to change their lives but somehow don't. Frank and April remind me of how sometimes we are so lazy, scared or helpless in following our dreams that life becomes an everyday chore - just something you want to do to keep breathing.

There are moments in the movie - few of them, when April subtly puts on a grab of apathetic joyfulness and promises Frank to give her best to everyday as it comes. She is so scared that she refuses to talk about her anguish with him. She begins to loathe him for reasons which don't seem to be a direct consequence of his actions. The desire to move to Paris and start all over again takes her so strongly that she doesn't seem to grow out of it. Forced to live by the standard norms of their contemporary society, Frank is bent on we-can-get-happiness-here-itself attitude which aggravates April's hatred and disgust.

The climactic moment arrives when an aquaintance's son John (a psycho guy under treatment for mental ailments) makes things worse by revealing his analysis on the Wheelers' decision to cancel their plan to move to Paris. As John shouts words after words describing the cowardly mental state of Frank, he incites Frank to become violent. An angry fight and April is back to her pretentious happy attitude in the morning again....Yes, they have kids, a bungalow! Frank has a good paying job though he hates it! She does some theater though she wants to work with great artists! Yet years pass-by and the desire gets lost under a pile of the crappy worldly actions called responsibilities.

Despite not being a nomination for the Best Picture, it is a must watch...