For about two years, Sapna Kamdar has maintained a rigid, unvarying schedule. Every evening she travels from her house in Wadala to Pali Hill in Bandra where she waits to catch a glimpse of the star. Sometimes she’s lucky, most times she’s not. It’s a lonely vigil, standing outside his bungalow, waiting, just waiting with faith and love and hope in her heart.

Full story here.

Part of the project was to make posters, trailers, and a website for the film. We even went so far as to create our own production company, as to look professional. Somehow the legal team from the studio found out about a student project, in a small private college in the Midwest, with no budget, being shot in a warehouse basement, and decided to issue a cease and desist order. Basically, what that means, is that the studio’s lawyers said to us, “You’re using our property. Stop, or we’ll sue you into the stone age.” I responded by sending them the consent form from the Asimov estate, and explained that it was a student project, not a commercial venture worth litigating. I turned over our script, our shooting notes, our shot list, copies of our tapes and even the concept art drawings.

Instead of the letter recognizing our valiant efforts as students that I expected, I found myself on the tail end of a phone call that changed my life. I was contacted directly by the lead of the studio’s legal team, who explained my situation to me very clearly. He told me that I was technically in my legal right to use Isaac Asimov’s material. However, if I chose to proceed, they would file multiple lawsuits totaling over 2 million dollars against me. In the end, I might win, but it would take hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees just to fight it, but would cost them nothing more than the salaries they already pay their lawyers. It would be 10 years before any type of verdict could be levied, and by then it wouldn’t matter what the outcome was, since their film would be long since released.

This is how creativity is encouraged. This is what happens to aspiring small-time film-makers whose paths cross with the big studios.

/via @nimbupani

“When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a short period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being.
We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves. That’s when illnesses and psychoses arise. What we sought to avoid in combat – disappointment and defeat – come upon us because of our cowardice.”

— Paulo Coelho in Killing your dreams.

The recent Pune trip gave me glimpses of some Maharashtrian villagers. I’ll never fully comprehend their life and problems but this guy had a serene calmness in the way he rested. Perhaps, there was a storm brewing within his mind but he didn’t let it show.

Choose your best friends among those who bring something to the party. It’s not so easy to make new ones. As you grow older, a relentless narrowing takes place, until if you grow old long enough you’re reduced to your original state when you first boarded the vessel: Those who feed and care for you.

— Roger Ebert on friends, life and death in O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done

“There is nothing in her appearance but perfect rest. You would suppose her quietly asleep.”

— Charles Dickens in a letter to his wife, Catherine, breaking the news gently about their 8-month old daughter’s death.

Read the entire letter. One of the most painful letters anyone would have ever had to write.

“Reading is an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction.… It requires us to pace ourselves. It returns us to a reckoning with time. In the midst of a book, we have no choice but to be patient, to take each thing in its moment, to let the narrative prevail. We regain the world by withdrawing from it just a little, by stepping back from the noise.”

— David Ulin via How to Survive The Age of Distraction

“The vessels we create often determine the things that contain them. Also, changing the vessel can change our perception and our experience and what we place in them.”

— Patrick Rhone in Vessels, Names, and Frames

If you are the messenger, remember: the medium is as important as the message.

Me: Uhh…

Guard: Sandals not allowed. Go back, change and come.

Me: Err… Really? I stay at BTM… So far!… And imagine the traffic at this hour! Are you sure you want to put me through this?

Guard: Go back, change and come.

Me: But I wore these accidentally…

Guard: Accident-aa?

Me: Yeah, yes! Accident!

Guard: Okay. No problem.

Me: [mutters as I walk past the checkpoint] Achievement unlocked!

“People who know what they are talking about don’t need PowerPoint.”

— Steve Jobs quoted in Walter Isaacson’s memoir Steve Jobs.

This quote has become fairly popular after it was featured in a post by PresentationZen. If you think there is reason enough to ban slide decks altogether, I’d say no.

I too, like most white-collared workers, have been subjected to one too many sleep-inducing presentations with wordy slide decks that never seemed to end. But are we right in blaming PowerPoint? Isn’t it just a tool that is harmful when it falls into the wrong hands? Shouldn’t we be blaming poor presenters instead?

The hypocrisy of Steve’s statement is evident when you realize that he loved using slides:

“We had one rule that really bothered him: We never allowed slides, which were his main presentation tool.

One year, about an hour before his appearance, I was informed that he was backstage preparing dozens of slides, even though I had reminded him a week earlier of the no-slides policy. I asked two of his top aides to tell him he couldn’t use the slides, but they each said they couldn’t do it, that I had to. So, I went backstage and told him the slides were out. Famously prickly, he could have stormed out, refused to go on. And he did try to argue with me.”

— Walt Mossberg in The Steve Jobs I Knew

Yes, the very same person who appears to be blaming slide decks was irritated when he was not allowed to use them.

Of course, there is a difference between Steve’s slide deck and the common office meeting slide deck. Steve’s were always beautiful and often narrated a story. A successful presentation is nothing but a story well told. And slides can help you in the storytelling process if you use it right.

By blaming “PowerPoint”, Steve is just poking fun at a product developed by Apple’s competitor, Microsoft. He could just as well have mentioned Keynote (or simply ‘slides’) but he didn’t. He phrased his words in a way that people would identify with and, at the same time, show Apple’s competitors in a poor light.

That was the genius of Steve Jobs. And everyone fell for it.