Dear Shekhar Kapur Babaji ki jai ho!

Now Shekhar Kapur says "I have achieved less in my life, by not accepting my right brain tendency as a strenght"

BOSS! if i can achieve even half of what you have achieved I HAVE ARRIVED!!! more alive and kicking and who cares about this left and right brains?

I am also accused of being impractical, dreamer, scrizophenic (see this spelling i cant type well), lonely wanderer and when it came from near and dear ones...i was like am i OK? but in all these times...i realized i am also numb, dumb, and the best part of it is numb to their sensitivity which is actually great! log toh kahenge...just because people say this is right and wrong and i will change my life because of their perceptions i think i will lose myself, reach nowhere...so then i try to enjoy what i am...sometimes irresponsible, confined to solitary, doing the things i want and not bothering...

So at the end of the day who cares? why ... we come alone, go alone...being visitor to this planet its perfectly all right to be so...sometimes near and dear ones worry and their worry actually affects but at the end of the day do they know whats going on with your being? I really do not think so man! and yes...despite they say for days i worry and then again that being comes to me...so all this right-left brain actually is defeated because again being alive with all these people who finally give up on you becomes a way of life...i wish there was a club..LOL...you know...a club to this kind of people...

ha ha ha

Go by your instinct. If you are happy with your decision everyone around you would be.

Right, there is no need to change.
its the ratio in the brain that makes a person unique. 1:99 too can make a good combination.
Njoy

Dear Shekhar,
I swear to god that yesterday I was thinking exactly about the same very thing that you have mentioned here i.e. the decisions about the films you have made. I was thinking that ideally from 1997 to 2008 you should have made close to 6 films assuming just under 2 years per film, so why did Shekhar only made 2 - What was stopping him or not interesting him enough since obviously he was being offered films all the time?

I again thought about the interview you gave to Mahesh Bhatt where he asks you that after Elizabeth Steven Spielberg's studio DreamWorks kept on sending you scripts and you kept on saying no. He probes you further and asks the reason why and you just say that you didn't like them enough.

I thought that did Shekhar not exploit completely the opportunities that came his way after Elizabeth because of his very personal way of decision making - obviously only you have the answers but I truly wanted to understand you.

I was watching tons of Oscar clips yesterday night on you tube and came across this one where "Shakespeare in Love" wins best picture http://youtube.com/watch?v=IP9a10PK54g
I thought you were also there and what would have been going through your mind at that time - everyone thought Saving Private Ryan would win and Elizabeth was also a nominee and "Shakespeare" wins. Would love to know what was going through your mind at that point?

Best Regards,
Himanshu

whatever part of the brain you may be living thru brother, you definitely seem to have the heart at your place. next time i see u i would like to give you a tight hug.

hi shekhar !

BINGO...........go right ahead ! hey.....why do they say 'right' ahead in the 1st place....? you have hope :) !!

seriously.......each of us figures out during the course of life 'what works for us'. i do believe that whatever brings out our best is 'right for us'. it may not 'fit' with certain mind sets, but, better that than you being a 'misfit'....?

besides.......it is the right brain that is more connected with your consciousness too.....while the left is planning its worldly moves.......?... am i right ?
and is'nt that where the 'divine go ahead' comes from ?

when your right brain brings happiness and the left one mars it...........then it is so evident what works for you........

EYES RIGHT............march ahead....:)

Jesus!!
I dont know how many parts I have in my brain lol...Scored highest in biology but...psst did not fail in this huh...know why? because the teacher was lovable!!

Na jaane how many parts of what we are...each part is yet another part...part after part...

All I know is our conditioning of all factors is done in childhood..and is an ever growing process through out life...where we choose to do a certain act/behaviour/thing against our will due to circumstances/need/weakness/strength

Or

Do it as per our will...we humans have done honours in character assasination, and giving deformed accusations/judgements....I DONT CARE!!!

Do and done the best I could
.
.
The world and their petty thoughts against me for any reason can stay with them.

EH HEH!!

Apna zamana aap banate hai ehle dil
.
.
Hum wo nahi jisse zamana bana gaya!

Shayad hum shekhar kapoor/aishwarya nahi baan sakte...par hum
.
.
Hum hai!!

Wohooo kya dialogue maara hai
.
.
taaliyaaa.

Chalo chalti hu Shekhar kahi Im tiresd of this world too...kahi aur urne ko dil kareh hai

A restless spirit I have been eternally...and I guess U know it
.
.
One day once again i will pop in and say hiyaaa

Aap apna khayal rakhna...
Thank you for your smiles!!!

Sapna

shekhar, sometimes your blogs make me wonder about the power of thoughts and whether there is some way in which 'thoughts' communicate with each other: ie without the individual's awareness. i say this because i have been thinking about something like this recently, but contrary to your thoughts mine have been 'why did i not listen to the right/intuitive/female side of my brain........'

i went into medicine not because i had a passion for it but because i got brainwashed.......i remember my dad saying:
ladki ho, medicine sabse achcchha rahega....you are so right about our education system and its various lacunae.
now i do actually love my job and the difference i make in other people's lives but i don't feel a passion for it!

i wish i had followed my dreams, i wish i had followed my intuition, my inner voice, my female side: the right side of my brain.

as you have said above 'accepting my right brain tendency as a strength' is what is not coming to me. more often than not i find myself rebuking me for being all to emotional all over again, .......trying to do things after analysis and in doing that i actually mess things up even more.

i have immense respect for people like yourselves who have had the courage to follow the right brain, for the paths shown by the left are well trodden, clear cut but dull and boring.

but can we do without the left brain? no. for it is the masculine side and what use would this planet be without 'maleness', without the most powerful hormone testosterone.

i recently came across a picture of this deity: ardhnarishvara, a kind of hermaphrodite between shiva and shakti. on the reverse side it said 'truth can only be achieved from both male and female, from both logic and intuition, from thought and emotion, from introspection and action'.

perhaps this is why we all have a left side and right side to our brains, so we can avail both and try to find a balance. but you are right, we have individual predilections to one or the other.

PS look forward to your movie on newyork. you say it is a series being shot in the us. can i ask how people like myself who live in london can watch it?

best wishes to the fascinating, creative, visionary right side of your brain and cheers to the fact that you are so in touch with your female side!

love, shivani

Follow this link and try this creativity test to see if you are more of a Right or Left Brain person. The results give a good summary at the end!!

http://www.wherecreativitygoestoschool.com/vancouver/left_right/rb_test.htm

Thanks
Gopi

hey shekhar........how would you feel if YOU were your right brain.........? where it energises you, guides you,makes you into the person you are.........and then YOU are hesitant to give it its due respect,are apologetic for it, and actually nod along with 'people' who insult it without having anything to do with it.......? out of jealousy sometimes.......? or merely by not being on the same wave length ?

anyways.......for talented people, being forced is like pushing a square peg into a round hole.............it does'nt work ! only it must be soooooooo tiring to KEEP thinking 'this' way and 'that' for ages before you decide.......?

Love is the only thing there. If you have love in your heart, no matter what happens is fine. Love is the only thing that matters in life. Love is the only thing that matters in life.

If you are hurt or angry, but you have love in your heart, you will get everything you need in life. Love is the only thing there.

dudeeeeeeee...

i completed the SHOOT...and the way i wanted it to be...

6 days schedule was there...i completed it in 5 and half days... but later i came to know that its costlier... hahaha... fuck...production is a dirty business and my production guy was very experienced and like my elder brother...he cut the cost as much as possible... but i am happy because i did it the way i wanted it to be...and funny part is that i was the only guy who was most inexperienced on the set...yet every one was happy...i could feel it... the whole crew had sleep less nights because 1 day shift got extended 4 days prior to shoot ( Cinematographer insisted and i realized as shoot progressed that he was right by asking me to extend the shift...Film making is not a joke) ... :) shooting is fun... its hectic... but its fun... now first thing i am going to do is the tele cine... once the exposed cans go to lab i will be at peace...

kedar

Congratulations Kedar,
RISE AND SHINE!

Smiles
Dq

shekhar........it has dawned upon me that a guy who is feeling SO MUCH already.......does not need 'bodh'........moral support...? yes...here...swish.....! you got it........:) i just sent it ! affection.......? LOADS......! but gyaan.......it is already deeply embedded in you !

so i give you what you need........

MY CONFIDENCE IN YOU :) !

Dear Shivani,
I liked your post and the only thing that I'd say is that it's never too late to start whatever you want to do - the whole world is open for you. Look at Deepa Mehta, she made her first film at 41 and now at 57 she is famous for her beautiful films. Now, we don't even think about how far back she has been actively working because when you have arrived nobody cares about when you actually started or what your age is now. So do whatever you want to right now.

Best Wishes,
Himanshu

dear himanshu, thank you so much for your kind and thoughtful words. also the example you site is so apt. thank you....wish you all the very best as well, shivani

ty Dq

Pleasure all mine dear@Kedar...

Aapna khayal rakhna..

Hugsss

Hugzz@Shekhar!!

Dear Shekhar,
As you said, "it's never too late". All of us can be happy people if we just followed our destined path and didn't struggle with it. The destined path is the one which comes most naturally to us......for which we don't need to think.

So, if you're more right brained than left, you don't have to fight with it. It would be foolish to fight with it. Accept who you are and live your life the way you want to. That's the only way I know to live.

Cheers!
Navin

Your thoughts and the burden of accusations you mention is echoed by millions of people worldwide. Mr. Kapur - I dont know about you but my response to such allegations/accusations/expectations is simple. I do whatever I think is right/convinient and does not make me feel guilty. The world out there wants to criticise - even if I do things to please them, they will still find something or the other to criticise in me. So, all I do is follow my heart and mind (whichever suits me at any time) and forget that anyone else beyond me exists. Selfish? Well... personal peace is more important than anything else. If I am not happy and at peace- I cant make others happy/peaceful. Life is a quest for self improvement. I carry the burden of accusations too - but also the happiness that my life is after all a sum of my decisions.

How does one act his age?

The last few days I have been doing some research in the most exclusive clubs in and around NYC (I mean the old money clubs/resorts and not the party ones like Bungalow 8) and found two that quite impressed me. The bathing corporation of Southampton is probably the most exclusive club in the Hamptons, and it was mentioned in the documentary born rich by Jamie Johnson (the heir of the Johnson and Johnson clan). I saw Jamie’s second documentary "The One Percent" at the Tribeca Film Festival 2yrs back and both films are a great insider and unbiased look at the lives of the top of the heap - the second one is more international and interviews people like Adnan Khashoggi, granddaughter of Buffett etc. and is quite funny. The bathing corporation is like a huge green club with dreamy country sides just like Switzerland where people play golf, tennis or just relax. Tom Wolfe fictionalized the bathing corporation club in his 80s best seller the "The Bonfire of the Vanities."

In NYC there is a unique club that I have passed many times on 5th avenue walking towards the Metropolitan Museum close to the Frick museum and it is a men's only club where the old worldly come for their cigars and cognac - although I just enjoy as much being at the Pierre next door where it is amazing with the live piano and it has a ballroom that can put almost anything to shame. The Hamptons bathing club prides itself for how difficult it is to get entry into that club and even in the Knickerbocker you have to prove direct lineage to the original Dutch settlers of the 19th century to get admission. Another club that is probably very classy and one where I'd love to be a part of is the Metropolitan Club next to the Pierre. It's the city's grandest palazzo and was organized by J. P. Morgan in protest against not being admitted to some of the city's other exclusive private men's clubs.
Sometimes when I walk on 5th ave. blvd in front of it I carefully monitor my thoughts, to see what am I truly thinking about the grand place - Do I want to be a member here?, Do I want to just enjoy the facilities here? - I surprisingly don't think those things at all - All I truly think is that I should own this building as it will make a nice home, will decorate it wonderfully, and I can walk to the Met each morning and evening, and read a great book sitting next to the huge window looking at the park.

Just felt like writing this to you today, Shekhar. I hope you are having a wonderful time on the Upper East Side.

Best Regards,
Himanshu

Dear Shekhar,
I must thank you for
I have started to understand a
lot of things i never understood before...
All i can say is that..
You create...You are an Artist..
Being right brained...impractical, dreamer...
these are basic nature to an artist..
Its a privelledge..like the sufis..
who live in their own world..
Filmmaking is also like being a Sufi
"JOGI"...
enjoy your state!!!
Best

Anku

Dear Shekhar:

While we are reveling in the knowledge of having our mental facilities at our disposal, often famously so, while we exult in the seamless interaction of our brain’s two sides and thus enjoy the endorphin-producing state of a well-functioning intellect there are less fortunate ones among us. Reading the fascinating book "Musicophilia – Tales of Music and the Brain" by Oliver Sacks it allows me a frightening glimpse into the dark abyss of brains gone haywire. One such episode described in the book is the scary story about the eminent English musician and musicologist Clive Wearing who in 1985 was struck by a debilitating brain infection (herpes encephalitis)that had robbed him, a brilliant mind, of his memory and had left him with a total retrograde amnesia. In essence, his memory bank of the past had been deleted from his inner hard drive and the ability to process, or in staying with the computer analogy, to save new memories to this inner hard disk was forever impaired. There was no clawing back to neurological normalcy as had so fabulously been demonstrated by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor and there was no redeeming moment as it was for Swann, a character in Proust’s book "Swann’s Way" when he woke up in a strange room unable to determine where, who and what he was. And yet his memory had returned "like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped by myself". Clive Wearing had no such luck, there was no rope from heaven coming down to him. The only things that had survived, miraculously so, like some overlooked bytes of information in the otherwise deleted memory bank of his brain, were his speech, the ability to sight read music and to play such music on the piano and recognize his wife and his children. When he was playing music, there was a heartbreaking normalcy that pervaded the moment, as though all was well and sound when in realty all was desperately unwell. His ability to process and retain information for more than one second was impaired. Looking at his wife meant that every time he blinked with his eyes it gave him the impression she had just walked into the room with the attendant joy of seeing her after what he thought was a long time. Over and over and over. When Oliver Sacks watched the 1986 BBC documentary about Clive Wearing "Prisoner of Consciousness" he reflected in his book that "Clive showed a desperate aloneness, fear and bewilderment. He was acutely, continually, agonizingly conscious that something bizarre, something terrible, was the matter."

This story has no happy ending. As Oliver Sacks concludes "It has been twenty years since Clive’s illness and, for him, nothing has moved on. One might say he is still in 1985 or, given his retrograde amnesia, in 1965. In some ways, he is not anywhere at all; he has dropped out of space and time altogether. He no longer has any inner narrative; he is not leading a life in the sense that the rest of us do."

I just wanted to share this sinister story with you and others, and we all may want to express our thank yous that we have providentially been spared such unkind fate and that we can travel through this beautiful landscape of our lives with our minds capable of registering every single, precious moment of it.

With kind regards.

Horst

Dear Horst,
Thanks for the wonderful and touching story of Clive. It is a wonderful post, but I must say that I have never been able to derive any happiness or feel superior by looking at the physical miseries of people.

I much rather enjoy the feeling of discontent by looking at people who are superior. That Himanshu has a IQ of 151 and there are people in Mensa whose brains go upto 180s, so how do I get close to them. That process of setting goals and always looking at people superior to us keeps us going towards glory, even though it gives discontent. As Deepak Chopra says "Discontent is divine" and the starting point of all creation, so I try to follow those truly wise words from him.

Regards,
Himanshu

Dear Himanshu:

Thank you for the kind words.

I believe that our sights should always be aimed at a higher consciousness which does not necessarily have to coincide with a greater intellect or a Mensa IQ. I think divine discontent goes deeper than just being a metaphor for our earthly aspirations. The story of Clive was meant to convey that life is a whimsical creature that rarely listens to our commands and that one terrible moment can forever alter the masterplan we all have smugly worked on to implement. Deepak Chopra said "Respect your mystery. Nothing is more profound but pursue it ruthlessly, trying to rip the veil away at every second. This is what makes life rich, that it has more to offer with each clue it reveals." Clive must for sure have tried to pull down that incongruous veil only to see it replaced by a new one, getting merely a fleeting glimpse of what lies behind the veil, losing the memory of that clue in an instant.

Stay well.

Horst

Dear Horst,
Thanks for your reply and I totally understand what you are saying. It is indeed very hard to live with just a small sliver of time to stand on and without knowing anything about the past. What is really shocking is that Clive feels such deep emotions about himself but can't register them in his mind for more than a few seconds, so he can't even come to terms or understand his state.What is really heartening is that he does recognize his wife but every time he sees her he behave as if he has seen her after ages.

I found this documentary that BBC made on Clive and it is quite nice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDNDRDJy-vo&feature=related

Regards,
Himanshu

@ Shekhar - Guilt and irresponsibility... so true! We keep on living as the "ugly duckling", not fitting in anywhere, until one day we realize that we are a beautiful swan!

@ Himanshu - "when you have arrived nobody cares about when you actually started or what your age is now"! God's ways are strange... you get answers, courage, motivation, inspiration and encouragement from the most unlikely places! Thanks!