~*Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog*~

"When God had made the Earth and sky,The flowers and the trees

He then made all the animals, And all the birds and bees

And when his work was finished, Not one was quite the same.

He said, 'I'll walk this earth of mine, And give each one a name'.

And so he travelled land and sea, And everywhere he went,

A little creature followed Him, Until his strength was spent.

And when all were named upon the Earth, And in the sky and sea,

The little creature said, 'Dear Lord, There's not one left for me!'

The Father smiled and softly said: 'I've left you till the end.

I've turned my own name back to front, and called you DOG, my friend."

~*Author Unknown*~

How many of us can correlate with this poem???
How many of us have a dog while we were growing up?? May be not much.

Even we don’t have a dog of our own, but yes we use to play with the little puppy (an Alsatian called as Robo) at the neighbors house and that puppy meant a lot to me those days. We played with him, ran around him, ran with him, fed him, bathed him, irritated him and watch him growing to a full matured dog. Few days back I got a call from mummy and she told me that Robo died a few days back. I was just shocked to know bout the death of a beloved friend, be him human or not. I remained sad for a couple of day and after that life carried me along with it and I have almost forgotten bout him till yesterday when I got my hands on DVD of MARLEY AND ME, a movie that drilled right to the heart of that relationship.

About movie: Marley and me is adapted from John Grogan's debut bestselling book, Marley & Me where he described a pragmatic depiction of life, friendship, love and death through the connection between the author and his Labrador Marley.

Plot: The movie revolves around young writer couple John and Jennifer Grogan, who after their marriage shifts to Florida where Jenny got prominent first page assignment but john use to write obituaries and some crap local news. When jenny decided to expand their family, on the advice of his friend Sebastian, John gets his wife a Labrador puppy to take his wife's brain off family and named him Marley after Bob Marley.

There after the movie shows that how incorrigible Marley grows to a full mature dog while running away with Jenny’s undergarments, eating up his anniversary pendant, tearing up the carpets and sofas, scaring the dog-sitter, destroying their privacy, chewing up the dry wall along with his unconditional love for his owners expanding family where he stood by his owners sick child for whole night.

In the mean time, john started writing the columns bout his relationship with Marley and his mischievousness and became quite famous and jenny left the job to hold up his family and started growing impatience with Marley and John but later on realizes the indispensability of Marley. This movie covers all the aspects of ones life keeping Marley in the main frame and in end it shows the end of Marley’s existence and the loss of family at having him let go. A truly touching movie…

Acting:
Owen Wilson as John Grogan was a welcome change for this guy who is known for his slapstick comedies (Wedding Crashers, You Me and Dupree, The Darjeeling Limited and Drillbit Taylor) but here he brilliantly displayed the portrayal of John Grogan who is tired of writing obituaries and his wife’s wish of expanding family and her planned attitude and his unconditional love of his dog Labrador specially while holding his foot when he was dying.

Jennifer Aniston was at her best in the role of Jennifer Grogan who have plans for each and every minute of life. The way her face changes from mis-carriage (sad) to first successful pregnancy to the frustration that strain her relationship (without breaking it) was simply great and she didn’t looked like acting.


Eric Dane as Sebastian was the man who will remind you of the joy and freedom of marriage-phobic bachelorhood (the way he woos the girl and advice john for not starting the family).

And yeah how can I forget Marley, whose role was played by 22 dogs to show his transformation from a puppy to a dying old dog. You will not be able to stop your smile to this world’s worst dog.

Direction: This movie is directed by David Frankel who is known for his movie The Devil Wears Prada and the famous sitcom Sex and The city (a few episodes). And the way he showed the dynamic relationship between John and Marley, John and Jenny, Marley and his family was outstanding and when the movie comes to end I ensure you that won't be a dry eye.

My Take: Movie has several amusing moments that one can correlate with him/her and it showed a brilliant portrayal of life and love in spite of difficulty. This movie shows that there are lessons in each moment of life (family, relations, compromise, alteration and love) which are meant to be learnt. We smiled through the movie and even cried at the end (may be I am an emotional fool) but truly speaking if you want to see a grown man crying, go with him and watch this movie. If you want to remind yourself how important and rewarding the little things can be in life, just rent the DVD and watch this one..

~*A dog has no use for fancy cars, big homes, or designer clothes. A water log stick will do just fine. A dog doesn't care if you are rich or poor, clever or dull, smart or dumb. Give him your heart and he'll give you his. How many people can you say that about? How many people can make you feel rare and pure and special? How many people can make you feel extraordinary?*~

~*When a Lawyer Falls in Love*~

Don't find love, let love find you. That's why it's called falling in love, because you don't force yourself to fall, you just fall. ~ Unknown ~

I think most of us will agree to some extent on this quote. Love is like playing the piano, first learn to play by the rules, then just forget the rules and play from your heart. For me, Love is an untainted commitment for a person for the whole life with whom I would like to share everything my decisions, my goals, my aims, my every desire, my joy and of course my pain.

But when you fall in love with your closest friend, then you are in danger. Happiness or Sorrow?? Lucky or Unlucky?? These are the only probable result when you fall in love with your closest friend. Once you fall in love with your friend, things can never go back to the way they were. Although one may wish for her friend’s happiness, and be lucky enough for his/her wish to come true, they won't always get it. Exactly same feelings floated through my mind when I was reading "When a Lawyer Falls in Love", a book by Amrita Suresh..

Plot: The plot of the novel was formulated around six friends (Ankur, Sonali, Souvik, Jaishree, Vyas and Pavan) and their journey through the final year of their Law college life. Keeping college life in backdrop, the main plot evolves around two love story, the first one between Ankur and Sonali and second one between Souvik and Jaishree.

Ankur and Sonali were best friend and Ankur was falling for chubby Sonali but somehow she got engaged with one spoiled brat Rohit and left Ankur as a moping covetous aficionado. Souvik Bose was inarticulate and shy guy who is man of written words not of spoken silently loved Jaishree, who falter even while proposing. Vyas, Ankur’s roommate and his best friend is a charming lad whose girlfriend emerges from graveyard and some times from almirah of their hostel but finally left him for her rich cousin from Dubai and Pavan who is always fail to do right thing on right time. This novels talk about their journey not only in academics but also in professional and personal life and how they find their perfect love in the last.

Characters:
Ankur: a cute chubby Arian with diminutive baby face, whose cheeks were pulled by everyone (and yeah, he don’t like it) and the one who is deeply in love with Sonali (Sonali Shah, in a word was his life") but he knows that if he was too shabby in his approach, his lioness was likely to roar. So Ankur is always confused bout his love life and his punch line is "a woman's love should never be trusted...since it has no empirical evidence to support it"

Sonali: the Leo, portrays a lady lawyer with a strong interest in Astrology (you will love her when she talks about "A person’s star always correspond to the bio-rhythmic process of the body, that affects thought". She is a topper who is confused bout her relationship with Ankur (her best friend) and Rohit (who helped her during her Internship) and wanted to be wooed in style.

Vyas: a lanky, loony, moody and inquisitive Aquarian who is confused bout her girlfriend Caroline’s swings between him and her cousin from Dubai

Pavan Nair: whose Ambassador has been the source of public transport for all the friends, is always confused bout which girl to eye when and whose family speaks fluent hindi with malyali twang as pro-blum, bo-eez, curry-er, larn to aarn and kaapi.

Souvik Bose: Who wants to get out of his family tradition and wanted to marry a girl whom he love and finally he fall for Jaishree Subramanium, a Tamil Brahmin for whom marrying out of her society was just impossible. But being a person of actions not word he always fail to speak out his heart (when Souvik was with Jaishree, silence was the only thing that did all the speaking) but the way he expressed his heart to woo the lady love was just awesome. See

In life if one is fortunate one knows
Beauty of both body and mind
And in the little I have seen of the world
That’s the rarest blend one can find
I am just one of your silent admirers
And you’ll meet others along the way
Whose life you’ll touch in the manner
More than words can say

The Author: This book is written by Amrita Suresh, a 23 year-old Hyderabadi writer who is at the moment pursuing her M. Phil from University of Hyderabad (As far as I know) and this is her first novel which has been kept very low profile (I don’t know the reason). The best thing about her writing is austere allegiance with the common everyday slangs and phrase of young graduates. See the example
Ankur questioning Vyas when he was busy searching for a gift from her strange girlfriend in gloom ridden graves "What did she gift you...a space in this grave yard?" or be it describing the starting of a Kick starting of a session with a lengthy formal speech by the Dean, which the collective crowds wanted to 'kick stop'..." or A bulb is easy to fix A male ego isn’t it”

My take: "When a Lawyer falls in Love" is a delicate jovial fiction that brilliantly untangles the ins and outs that makes a base of human contemplation and deed. Though there are around four stories going on together but nowhere they are unrelated. While reading this one, one can easily associate the characters with someone you have already met during your college days and will rejuvenate the memory of every little happening that make you smile. Before changing the ritual bound Indian culture one needs to change his/her feeling, and have to trust his/her relationships and author fabulously conveyed this message. A nice read for a lazy afternoon………
To say good bye, to the college I’ve knownAs the time gradually nears
I am left with nothing but memories ,Of my life’s finest years