For love of Hawkeye!

Sriram and I have, many times, been buying 2 copies of things that we liked, for each other. This time around, however, he decided to get me the best gift without duplicating it: a personally signed book (Things I Overheard while talking to myself) by Alan Alda, and his autobiography (Never have your dog stuffed) too! I'm going to be selfish and say that Sriram got his gift in meeting the charming Alda. :)

This is how I took pleasure in hearing out their meet:

Alda: Who's this book for?
Sriram: Its for my brother who introduced me to M*A*S*H and since then we've been big fans of it.
Alda: Where would you like my autograph?
Sriram: Right next to your picture. (He made sure that there were no typos by handing the exact words on a PostIt)
Alda: (signed so): -------------->

To Praveen R. Bhat

alan alda

It turned out to be the best gift from my best friend Sriram and the best actor that Alan Alda is, the Hawkeye I know.

Quo vadis

They say its lonely at the top. As one goes higher up the responsibility chain, lesser are the people left to make decisions. There's not many to share your load then. If we care to analyze this, its true even when one grows spiritually, leaving less and less people to understand you. If ishwara is considered as the highest position in responsibility, He's definitely all alone at the top!

Here's an extract from M*A*S*H season 4; the episode is called "Quo vadis, Captain Chandler". After dropping bombs from a B-29 plane over 50 times for almost 2 years, Captain Arnold Chandler gets some kind of an awakening telling him that he's Jesus Christ and he can no longer kill people. The psychiatrist, Major Sidney Freedman is called in to examine him.

Sidney: You died
Christ: I arose
Sidney: That was a long time back. Where were you all this while?
Christ: I live in all men

... moving on to questions on dropping bombs…

Christ: on people?
Sidney: on the enemy
Christ: I've no enemies.
Sidney: Even the North Koreans?
Christ: (Crying) They're my children

Sidney: Tell me, is it true that God answers all prayers?
Christ: Yes...
Christ: ... sometimes the answer is no!

Finest kind

Scene 1: Yesterday, I planned to order season 10 of MASH, but gave up the idea after seeing it to be 2 GBP over last time's price!

Scene 2: This morning, I finished screening the 3rd season for what maybe more than the 3rd time! The last episode "Abyssinia, Henry" has always been an emotional favorite. The last OR scene, when Radar breaks the sad news about Henry, has been shot without others being informed pre-shoot. The scene brings out the best of everyone's feelings, without a single dialog, and that too from under the OR masks... its just the eyes!

Scene 3: After I walked into office today, I placed the order for season 10!

Abyssinnia, tenth!

Sometimes, you hear the bullet

I postponed writing more on war then, but after watching "Sometimes, you hear the bullet" from season one of MASH once again this morning, thinking furthered.

Hawk's writer friend gets enlisted only to write a first hand account instead of a bystander's. The original title he has in mind for his book is "You never hear the bullet". His experience from the ongoing war is that there's no dramatic sound of gunshot or anything like that -- the way its pictured in movies -- when a soldier gets killed; but later, he himself hears the bullet!

Henry: I just know what they teach you at command school. There are rules to war:
Rule #1 is young men die
And rule #2 is doctors can't change rule #1.

A few scenes from Band of Brothers also suggest that there are times, even in war, when a soldier gets hit without even knowing from whence the bullet came and when. A dialog -- nay, a phoneme -- is left half way when the soldier who's talking, drops dead!

War

Yesterday night, I started screening the Band of Brothers series. Although, I've hated war for.... like ever, still, there is something about it that enthralls me. That something has got to be the discipline: the discipline of the soldiers, the discipline of the medics as projected in M*A*S*H, lets just say the discipline of any discipline that anyone belongs to!

Military arrangements are also proof enough that hierarchies are needed for any system to work, be it a screwed up logic of shooting anyone and everyone for all sorts of godforsaken reasons!

(I wanted to say more, or so I thought, about wars... but after that last thought, I've just gone blank in my mind! So, maybe some other time, or maybe not.)