Day: April 10, 2011

The Trotsky

- Roshan

Jay Baruchel is one of the best young actors around. During the last few years, the 29 year old former child actor has been creating a name for himself, playing roles in movies that have been varied and diversified his resume. Among one of them roles is that of Leon Bronstein, a high school kid who is utterly convinced that he is the incarnate of Russian political leader Leon Trostky. That is what the theme of this movie, The Trotsky is all about. Don’t really see a lot of movies like this, eh?

Directed by Jacob Tierney, this Canadian flick set in Montreal also stars Saul Rubinek as Leon’s clothing factory owner dad David, Anne-Marie Cadieux as his sympathetic & loving step-mom, Emily Hampshire as Alexandra an older graduate student who becomes the love interest, Colm Feore as the principle of a public school & Geneviève Bujold as the school board’s chairperson. Leon messes things up by staging a foiled hunger strike outside his dad’s factory along with some reluctant workers and claiming that they needed a union. His dad has him taken away by the cops and this causes a rift between father and son. Leon’s sister is quite taken by her brother’s protests and she often joins in on them.

Leon’s main purpose in life is to have his life lived out quite similar to that of Trotsky and among one of the steps is that he has to fall in love with & marry an older woman named Alexandra, just like the Russian did. He finds such a woman in 27 year old Alexandra, the daughter of a lawyer he goes to for counsel. Meanwhile, fed up with his son’s behaviour, David takes Leon out of boarding school and enrolls him for his final year in a public school. However at this new school, after standing up to the unfairly strict vice-principle for some harsh detention, Leon gets some students to join a new union in order for the students to have equal representation. In a memorable scene, they organize a student walk out, much to the chagrin of Principle Berkoff.

Leon manages to get Alexandra to go on a ‘date’ with him and much to her surprise, not only does she start liking him but they also have sex one night. Alexandra finds out that she is reluctantly falling in love with a boy, 10 years her junior and confesses to her friend Laura (Jessica Pare) about her feelings. Leon soon becomes something of a local celebrity, being on the news and interviewed by Ben Mulrooney. However he creation of his union is shut down by the school board and later he & Alexandra fight. Leon manages to get things back in action by staging an abduction of the principle and demanding to the school board that the students need a union. He is later thwarted and arrested but his charges were dropped on one condition – he has to move out of Quebec to complete his studies.

Alexandra supports him and Leon patches things with his father. He leaves his family to go and finish school in Ontario. In the last scene of the movie he goes to seek out a person called Vladimir Ulyanov, which was Lenin’s birth name. In order to complete his re-living of Trotsky’s life, Leon needed to meet a person of the same name as Lenin. Thus ends a funny, witty & intelligent movie. I’d suggest that you watch it and experience a different take on the normal disillusioned but well meaning teenager story. 7 out of 10.

Is The Search For A Place To Rent Over?

- Roshan

If you remember a couple of weeks ago I wrote about looking for a place to stay somewhere in the Angamaly-Koratty area. When I had initially started working at the new job, I had thought that finding a place to stay would be a piece of cake as the place was not too expensive and I got reports from a lot of people that I could even get a house for the kind of budget that I was planning on keeping for my rent. I didn’t want a house as maintaining it would be a big pain in the ass. By March 18th, when the blog post was written, I had given up looking for a 1BHK apartment/flat and looking for either a 2BHK apartment or a portion of a house as a paying guest as these seemed to be more common.

Well in a few more days I would start getting frustrated as I wasn’t getting anywhere in finding a place. I ended up asking all & sundry for a place to rent in Angamaly, my preferred area to stay in. It was just a 15-20 minute bus ride away from the office and seemed like a nice town to stay in with many shops and stores nearby. Surely it isn’t this hard to find a place there. My dad also started asking people he knew to find a place for me. I spoke to auto drivers, security guards at the office complex, colleagues and finally a broker or two. The brokers both told me that they would get a suitable place for me soon and within my budget range as well. I was like ‘ok” and waited more days. The only call back I got was from a broker, who was referred to me by one of my closest friends, and he called me within 30 minutes of me contacting him. I thought, wow that was quick! But it also turned out to be way past my budget. He  had called me to inform that there was a 2BHK apartment in Angamaly for Rs.5000/- and that wasn’t something that I wanted to pay at the moment.

So I am still traveling back & forth from Ernakulam to Koratty and getting tired of it. Doing it everyday is a pain in the butt and I am so tired of it. However there is hope on the horizon and I’m looking forward to trying them out. On Friday, while having lunch at the cafeteria, me & a colleague spoken to a chap sitting next to us. He told us that he is from Ottapalam (about 3 hours away) and was renting a place in Chalakudy. It’s a single bedroom with bathroom attached, a hall and a sitout/balcony area but no kitchen. It’s part of a house that the owners are giving for rent and he is just payig Rs.2500 –and guess what? He also gets 3 meals a day included!! What??? Turns out that the owners are a couple in their 60s whose children are all abroad and hence they give out their two houses for rent. And it turns out that they have a vacancy there as one tenant had just moved back to his hometown.

Is that lucky? I would not mind staying there at all. So he said that he would put in a word for me and that I could probably go by Monday or Tuesday to go look at the place. I was game and said that I would. And then yesterday, someone my dad knows called him up to inform that a friend of his is willing to rent out a 1BHK apartment in Angamaly and that it would be in my budget range. I could go meet this guy and see the place for myself on Monday/Tuesday, post which the owner would discuss the rent with me. Finally I think I might be getting a place for me and I’m kinda excited about it. I’m keeping my fingers crossed and I hope I land one of the two and maybe even move in by the end of the coming week.