The Kite Runner- Movie

Hello friends,

The Kite Runner is one of those books which I just randomly picked out not expecting to be changed by it. Alongside with Life of Pi and The God of Small Things, The Kite Runner encapsulated me into its world, experiencing life and that one moment in childhood which you never forget, through the eyes of innocent children. The book so perfectly captures the world of pre-Taliban Afghanistan that I could imagine myself being there. When they announced a movie was being made on the book, I was hesitant, yet excited at the same time. I was relieved to know it was being directed by a British director (means nothing will be Hollywood-ized) and the author Khalid Husseini had creative input.

I just saw the movie last night. One word: perfect. I’ve got other words too, but perfect was what I could think of at the end of the movie.

The choice of casting the two young boys, the locations, the costume, the supporting characters, and most importantly the kite flying sequences all brought to screen exactly how I imagined the book to be. I won’t get into a detailed review of the movie, for there are loads out there, but there were definitely some scenes that provoked me, in particular the scenes where Hazaras are mistreated, and the scenes with the Taliban leaders having their own amusement with the children at the orphanage outraged me.

The Kite Runner has become one of my favorite movies of all times now, purely for personal reasons and for the issues it raises in this movie.

Mansur

Law of Attraction? The Secret?

Hello friends,

I had written earlier about the best selling book The Secret by Rhonda Byrnes. I remember mentioning how the book is really about “praying” to “God” and how the author had taken the basic principle of praying and remolded it for the New Age generation by asking the readers to speak to the “Universe.” It also talks about the power of thinking positive, or the “law of attraction,’ which states that the more positive things you think of, the more positive things/events you will attract to yourself. On the other hand, the more negative things you think of, the more negative things will happen to you.

I will cite you two examples in which this law of attraction could be applied.

1. Too many times I’ve been put in a position where I tell myself “I must email xyz. I must email xyz” or I tell myself over and over “I must call abc. I must call abc.” I tend to put off the emailing or making that important phone call, when xyz and abc would email me and call me respectively. This has happened so many times to me I start wondering if my thoughts are connected to the world somehow that eventually brings the person I think about to contact me. A friend, who I didn’t hear from for 8 months, suddenly wrote to me when I spent a few days thinking about him intensely. Another friend called me out of the blue from the States as I spent a few days thinking about her. Random people crop up in my head and I wonder in my mind how they are doing, and I get an email from them! I am still trying to figure out how this works—it can’t be a coincidence because it happens all the time, and there has to be a rational explanation for people who I think about calling me up.

1. When I saw the Mac book Air in Dubai in March 2008, I knew I had to have one. I thought about it a lot. Do I really need one? Is it wasteful spending? So I just left it at that and didn’t get one, though I would think about it a lot. There would be days when my mind would divert to the Mac book Air and I would think to myself: I will get one eventually. It became my mantra. Lo and Behold, just last week, a friend gifted to me MacBook Air— totally random (or coincidence or pre-planned!) I mean, I had intended to purchase the Mac book Air in August this year, but because I had been thinking about it a lot, I eventually got gifted one. I wasn’t expecting this at all, and the gift was a surprise gift. My friend didn’t know I was secretly craving for a Macbook Air, nor did I tell anyone about my desire to have one. What are the chances of my friend getting the exact same thing that I had been desiring for weeks? Or better yet, is there some force out there that ultimately links my thinking power to getting the desired results?

So I don’t know how these things work. I don’t have an explanation for any of this. But in my mind, I clearly would like to believe God is at work and He certainly works in mysterious ways!

Mansur