Spirituality, Bonding and Fishing

I finished watching this Rober Redford movie "A River Runs Through It" yesterday. This is the screen adaptation of the Novel by Norman MaClean. It's set in Montana and the fly fishing shots were exceptional.Its a story of quite a dysfunctional family but most appealing part was the bond that existed between Norman's (Craig Sheffer) and Paul (Brad Pitt) . It focuses on efforts of the elder brother trying to understand his younger brother and his attempts to get the young one off certain tendencies.If you like Brad Pitt, I can tell you that this is one amazingly powerful role that he pulled off.I am not a great fan of his but this one certainly will be on the top of his movies.

Watching this kind of movie in Solitude does compel you to relate some of the quotes used by the narrator.For example Norman's Fiance quotes the following about her brother :
"Why is it the people who need the most help... won't take it?"..Just in case that whets your appetite you can read more click here.

I was wondering about how good do I understand my own folks. In the last few years I have not quite been out in touch as much as I would like.Its almost a fashion to say that you dont have time.If a person is really intent on something I am positive that he'll do something about it instead of taking the easy way out of saying "I dont have time." Genuinely sometimes its not possible but more often than not its used as an excuse.

It was my sister's birthday today, so I called her up when she was out dining with my BIL.I used to call The Pearl Harbor an international disaster and my sisters' birth a national one.Gosh! I dont even know what to talk to her after the usual inanities like "Happy Birthday", "Howz your kid doing?", etc., Same with my BIL enquiring about his well-being. Its like I dont even know what her dreams are these days.Gone are the days when we were kids absolutely detesting each other's presence, and spent most of the time fighting (Oh those pillow fights!), verbally abusing each other(of course I taught her some four letter words to use against some of her classmates) and trying to hide each other things just to irritate. Of course if confronted with an external party then we would join forces to combat them but internally we used to be so interesting because we both were very different.

The same with my brother. He was a far tougher guy than me in school/street fighting.His head thinks much more on the practical lines than mine I remember him drawing some strength from some external force as if nothing in this world could shake him. His apparent coolness-of-a-british-officer-in-a-war look made me look neurotic Its been more than 6 months, since I talked to him (thanks to email!). He used to call me "MunnaBhai" and "Topi" and some other crackerjack name he had coined.I dont know much about him anymore apart from the fact that he wanna be in the management chain rather than start as a Techie. Thats not much.

I am not really sad that this are this way but just reminiscing how things came about to be this way As I grow older I would accept that this is just the normal way of life and the chasm grows along with age but I think its worth my time wondering occasionally what the rest of the family is upto, listen to them, their stories, their dreams (if any) and wonder what its like to be living in the other person's shoes.Refreshing..

The movies ends with these lines:

"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters"