Coldplay Rant

I love Coldplay. I really do. I once spent a good chunk of my meagre savings as a grad student to go watch them perform live in Manchester. They made it worth the effort. One of the best evenings of my life.

BUT BUT BUT. That doesn’t mean I like everything they do. The previous album was rather boring. Their brand new song is not. It’s catchy and hummable and pleasant; but the video. Oh my God. This stuff sets my teeth on edge. Like Danny Boyle and Katherine Boo weren’t bad enough, we now have this ignorant piece of shit.

Yes, they enjoy creative freedom and can do whatever they want. I’m not offended. It is annoying though. We’ve had enough people from the West making India look like a prehistoric place filled with godmen and snake charmers — a population rebelling against a “civilised world”. A world so removed from all that is “modern” that it seems to offer some sort of enlightenment to those from the first world. Rubbish.

Sure, religion is a huge part of who we are. But India is hardly the only country where that holds true. What’s with demonising Islamic nations and exoticizing Hindu ones ? Is everyone really so short of ideas that they feel the need to redo these stereotypes over and over again?

Coldplay’s new video also manages to sprinkle a few dilapidated cinema halls in between all the colourful hermits. Because how could an Indian stereotype be complete without a shady reference to Bollywood? They even went as far as to call Queen B “Rani”, the Hindi word for queen. So creative, no?

Oh, and I have complete faith in the idiocy of Sonam Kapoor; it’s hardly surprising to see that she’s a part of this phantasmagoric circus. Also, it seems the song was shot in Mumbai. One of the busiest, most densely populated urban centres in the world. I don’t know if the makers of this video were ignorant of this fact or just chose to ignore it when they decided to only focus on people dressed as rainbows. Beyonce included.

Anyway. I’ll just enjoy the song, and try to forget the video. I still like Coldplay and Violet Hill continues to be a favourite. Though I do prefer toy elephants in the videos.

Update. And Some Musings.

Sorry about being totally MIA this past month. I had some legit reasons though:

1. I participated in a moot court competition. I kicked ass. It was awesome. Law student pheelz just got super real.
2. My stomach kicked my ass. I was down with gastroenteritis for a whole week. All better now 🙂
3. I was disappointed about not completing my 2015 Goodreads challenge. So I plan to target reading an average of 3 books a month this year (minus exam months). So far I’m on track – 2.5 books down in Jan.
4. I recently bought a new iPad. So I spent more time fiddling with it and my laptop was largely ignored. That means less typing. That means no blogging.
5. I like lists of 5. So…

 

On a totally different note –

One of my judges in the Moot Court asked me an interesting question. He asked me what I found most fascinating during my research for the case. I cannot remember exactly how I answered that one, since it was one of the 50000000 questions he threw my way (To my credit, I must have answered well. He gave me a fabulous feedback.)

But his question got me thinking. What did I find most fascinating ?

One of the many reasons I love the law is because it holds answers. It holds solutions. There is solid text which sets the ground rules. It sets principles. I can refer to it anytime a question arises and it will point me in the right direction.

What happened during my research for this competition was the total opposite. I did not find answers in the law. My solution lay in my problem – in the facts. The only thing I could use to my advantage was my version of the facts. Nothing written in any statute could do for me what that could.

Does this change my perspective of the law? Not change… broaden, perhaps. Does this make me question my motivations? No… it does make me introspect though. Does it make my rethink my decision? Absolutely not. If anything, I think I am more fascinated than ever before. Because I felt most independent when I came to that earlier realisation.

While I’m sure that’s not the norm – and more often than not I will have to turn to the words of the law to find what I need, but I still learned something wonderful. That I can work with what I have in hand and that will show me how to get to where I want to be.

It’s the kind of kick you get when you crack an important clue in a crossword puzzle. Or you begin to see that rubik’s cube finally come together. It isn’t completely solved yet and there are many more steps to take. But each of those steps is fascinating and full of discoveries. It’s wonderful.

Rant over. Kthanksbye!