Friday, August 8, 2008

When it's time to hang up

Life keeps dialling. But once in a while it helps to hang up.

I LOVE MEG RYAN.
And before you think, I am turning a vagrant right in the first line, let me make it clear that this digression is not only deliberate but a much sought-after one.
Come on now, when and where do I get a chance to venerate the masterpiece that Hollywood is blessed with. She's awesome. Just superlative is the way she charms with a gauche gait, boorish ways and the way she stands miles apart from other screen belles. Give her any hair-style and she would look beatific. Give her Tom Hanks or Russel Crow and she would make the Love story as absolutely convincing and touching as one can imagine. 'You've got mail' or 'When Harry met Sally', she sweeps every one off with hers signature romantic panache. I tell you what. It's all in her eyes. One of the most beautiful pair of eyes God ever created. Specially, when she looks ponderingly down after uttering a crsip-deep line. I LOVE MEG.
Ok, back to the point now. So, it's because I adulate her head-over-heels I never lose a chance to get handcuffed with my remote whenever HBO or ZEE Studio plays one of her movies. So one idle Sunday when I was grumbling and surfing the TV channels, Voila! I catch Meg's face and I stop. It's some movie named 'Hanging up'. Habit-stricken, this die-hard-devotee just dumps every other chore aside and squats at ease.
It's been quite some time and I still don't get the drift. She appears to be a typical woman. Sandwiched between her garbs as a sister, wife, mother, boss and daughter. Trying to multi-task as she emotionally and singularly struggles to keep her bed-ridden Dad in high spirits while she juggles work, home and two ingrate sisters (one of them is my another all tiem favourite...Lisa Kudrow, I love you too!)
Ok no more wandering about.
So back to the movie.
So, Meg like a true-blue woman goes on, and on and on. Her life shuttles between calls from sisters, from the hospital, and from her dumb secretary. The fantastic bit is that no one, not even she, notices how her emotional strength and stamina is crumbling beneath each great mandate she takes up.
And one fine day, a stranger, a woman, elderly and experienced, lends her a shoulder out of the blue.Without realising, that is probably the one cradle she is long seeking, she crashes down and sobs. Sobs liek she never has done. Sobs like she should have done long back.
And then the sage lady pulls out her words of wisdom.
"You know what you should do?"
She takes out her phone, and presses the red button.
"Hang-up."
It's almost an epiphany.
Meg rushes back to her home and furnishes all her telephone sets to the dog to gnaw at. Her secretary calls right after and she tells her to shut up and manage everything alone. Her sister calls and she gives a cathartic response before cutting off the line that leaves the caller dumb and stupefied.
In short, she hangs up.
Now is that all I got out of the whole plot? And if so, why the heck I am writing a piece on it? Just to lionize Meg under a new pretext?
Well, the truth is that even if for just a moment, the line really penetrated me deep down.
Life is important.
Tasks beep on.
Duties are serious.
Relationships need attention.
Chores can not be just wished away.
People around us need us.
Problems need solutions.
The pillar-to-post lifestyle is of our own making.
And the network of life's constant telecom line never goes weak.

But once in a while, it helps, ..........it really really helps, to just HANG UP. And it's more emotional than physical.
After all, a break is better than a break-down.
Before the mind turns mechanical. Before the heart goes shallow. Before life tunes into an auto-pilot. Before the sap of life drains out in the mud of relentless headaches.
Shut out the noise for a while.
No matter where it is coming from - traffic horns, mobiles, friends, work, people important, people unimportant, your own strenous benchmarks, or the daily race of life.
Go inside. Shut back. And enjoy the silence before it goes silent.
Hang up.
You will know it's worth when you hang in again.
And that's why..
I LOVE MEG:)

2 comments:

Pratima said...

Ok folks, Some snags with the edit. Ignore the typos please and enjoy the message:)

Punit Soni's Adventures in VCland said...

Its funny how relevant this post it to my state of life right now. Except that I am raring to hang up and finding it incredibly difficult to find the red button :)
Good post..love it.