Damaged.

A drop of sweat rolls down from his forehead down to his cheek. His face is already moist, mostly from the tears. Thomas tries screaming again but the duct-tape and the gag within muffles the sound to an inaudible shriek. His limbs are tied to the cold metal chair, allowing no movement. The large hall is empty except for a couple of chairs to the side and a wooden table behind him. He does not see the steel instruments kept on the table, but knows it to be vicious. The single light bulb hangs above his where he sits, shedding grave light across the room, fading as it reaches the ends, where the darkness engulfs it once more. Distant laughter echoes through the walls, and his eyes widen. He knows who's coming. The maniac. The psycho. The clown.

The door at the end of the room opens slowly and the room fills up with a bright light from beyond the doorway. A tall lean silhouette of a man steps through. Thomas can't make out the features, but he feels the figure's eyes bore into his soul. The man shuts the door with a bang, the room returning to its former gloom. The man walks towards Thomas now, filling him with an increasing sense of dread. Slowly he walks into the light, visible in Thomas' eyes. The feeling of dread within him reaches its peak as he beholds the Clown Prince Of Crime in all his glory.

He wears nothing but a purple canvas trousers. His skin is bleached pale white and his hair a bright green. He grins with to reveal the horrible metal teeth he had fit in. His chest is a cesspool of tattoos depicting the sick depravity of his mind. A disgustingly wicked smile is tattooed on his lower right arm. A death's head with a clown's cap on his upper right chest. The words of the horrible laughter, that is his anthem, is imprinted on his left chest. Numerous other psychopathic words and depictions can be seen all over his back. On his forehead is tattooed the one word all the shrinks had described him with. DAMAGED. All those shrinks were now mysteriously missing. He stopped visiting them a very long time ago. An eternity has passed since then. They couldn't help him. Nobody could help him. Not anymore. He helped himself nowadays. Helped himself to whatever he saw fit. Everything was his for the taking and the whole world was his stage. But the time for that came later. Right now he had more important matters at hand.

Thomas starts whimpering with fear as he beholds the face of his captor. The Joker bends down to look into Thomas' eyes. His stare burns down on him like hot coals. The Joker's face is inches away from his when he bursts into maniacal laughter. The sound reverberates around the room, echoing off the walls. The intensity of laughter increases into horrid cackles and finally into a loud raspy shriek, during which the expression on the Joker's face changes to one of rage. His hand curls up into a fist and smashes into Thomas' face, cracking his cheekbones. Thomas screams out in pain, but his cries and drowned out by the fading laughter of the clown. The Joker pulls up a chair from the side and sit down right in front of the terrified Thomas, in a sangfroid manner. A grin is still on his face as he watches Thomas, intensely.

"Why, Thomas, why? I liked you, I really did. You were a good kid.....Its a damn shame." He says, with a mock tone of sadness in his voice. "Tell me, how long were you working for the Gotham P.D.?"

Thomas stares into the Joker's eyes, not daring to move a muscle.

"ANSWER ME! HOW LONG?!"

Thomas mutters something unable to be made out.

"Oh, for God's sake!" He cries in exasperation.The Joker rips the tape off and removes the gag without grace.

"I swear, Mr J, I swear to God, they forced me to do it, please, please, please, you have to believe me, please...." Thomas stammers.

"Hush now, child. This is not the time to ask for forgiveness." The clown deepens his voice and speaks out in a mock pastor's voice. He gets up from the chair and walks to the table behind Thomas. He picks up something shiny, glinting off the light from the lamp. And then with a voice to be feared of, he says "This is the time for punishment."

With the scalpel in hand, he walks around to face Thomas again. "You know, I'm not a crazy person. No, sir, I am not. I might be a lunatic, but not crazy. Never crazy."

"Oh, god, please, no no no"

"Sanity is not the purist regime everyone makes it out to be. It's chaos. It's disorder. It is anarchy. But you people hide it. Deep down within yourselves. Controlling everything in the world is not order. Its criminal. Look at me. Why am I so happy?" He brings the scalpel to Thomas' forehead.

"Please, Mr J, please...please..."

"I am happy because I embrace the chaos. I am alive because disorder is what I preach. Why should we stop what is to be? So, imagine how I feel when control freaks like you mess with me. It hurts me. It really hurts me, Thomas. And I don't like being hurt. Therefore, in return, allow me to make you feel the pain." And with that, the Joker brought the scalpel down on Thomas' face, mutilating it, disfiguring it. His screams ring through the night, all the while. By the time the Joker was done, his face was such a mess of blood and tears, that his own mother would have hardly recognized him.

"I hope you've learnt your lesson, Thomas." And with one swift move, he plunges the knife into Thomas' heart. Blood spurts onto the Joker's chest and face, but he does not blink, not even once.
He twists the scalpel, painfully ending Thomas' life, and with a long horrible blood-curdling shriek, the light goes out from his eyes.

The Joker paces back a few feet and stops to admire his work.

"What a horrible mess. I love it." He grins a grin of malice and mirth and turns his back on the corpse, just as one of his goons enter from the door.

"What is it?" The Joker asks dismissively.

"I'm sorry, boss, but we got news from the eastern bank. Somebody messed with our boys. The shipment was destroyed."

It was all he could do not to choke the life out of him. The Joker takes in a long shaky breath, and as calm and composed as he could be, asks "Who. Were. They?"

"Uhh, our guys are saying it was one guy."

"One man?"

"Yeah, some nut dressed as a giant bat, apparently."

The Joker lifts up his head. He's heard of this guy before, but never working so close. He senses a nemesis here. The perfect enemy. The good to his evil. The Batman.

A smirk appears on his face.

Hell Is Other People.

Whilst recently reading up on a few subjects of philosophy, I stumbled upon a popular author, playwright, and philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, whose intellectually captivating works mostly focused on the topics of existentialism and ontology. One of his most famous plays, No Exit, deals with the concept of death, the supposed afterlife, and the being of one's own nature and personality.

The title 'No Exit' aptly describes the state of the three characters in the single-act play, who are sitting in a room with absolutely no way out. Perhaps the most famous line of dialogue uttered among them would be "L'enfer, c'est le autres" which literally translates in English to "Hell is other people". At first glance, this sentence would seem to be nonsensical, ridiculous, and even incorrect as a sentence. But when read in context, by a person with a firm grasp in French, this simple sentence transforms into one of the most important philosophical ideas ever put forth. You see, the actual phrase in French, taking away the literal meaning of the words and replacing it contextually, gives it a whole new meaning - "Hell is the other" or "Hell is the other's". This, although, not much different. gives Sartre's words the proper weight it deserves. In an actual interview in 1965, Jean-Paul Sartre explicitly stated that the exact meaning of his words has been twisted into something completely different from what he originally meant. He goes on to say that it has been commonly misunderstood that his sentence meant hell was the insidious relations an individual has with other people, as if to say the purest relation a person can have would still contain traces of adulteration. However, according to Sartre, what he actually meant was that if a person has a wrongful vision of himself due to the relations he has with certain others, then hell, with respect to the individual can only be the others. What we know about ourselves, what we think about ourselves, essentially what we are, are the products of "the Other". So, if what people think of us, our mindsets composed and published by others, are purgatory for us, then aren't the people who do so hellish? If we weigh ourselves without bias, do we not do so based on others' view of ourselves? If we judge ourselves impartially, do we not judge ourselves on the testament of others? This does not mean we cannot refrain from relating to other people. We meet new people, almost everyday, and in doing so, put ourselves at the risk of being poisoned by their views and their judgements and their opinion. Gradually, but surely, the poison accumulates, past a point of sufferance, until death comes as a welcome respite. Ergo, the usage of the word 'Hell'. (Hell, here, means the feeling of depression and lack of self-identity following the failure to meet up with societal expectations.)

Fundamentally, this simple four-word sentence, followed by its rather elaborate and rambunctious explanation, is a campaign to keep one's own opinions to himself, rather than blurting it, possibly damning another person to 'hell'. Now, given the rather exuberant rant on how we are what other people think of us, this leaves us with a very important question.
Do we have our own identity? Of course we do. We think, therefore we are.
But more on that, later.

Varun.

Furious 7.

A few days back, my friends and I went to see the seventh installment of the Fast and Furious series, unsurprisingly titled Furious 7 or Furious Seven, directed by James Wan, starring the usual folks Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Jordana Brewster, along with newcomers Jason Statham, Tony Jaa, and Kurt Russel.

The movie delivers on the whole action package, the one we all subscribed for since the first installment of the series, but then again it always does. Explosions, bullets, stunts and sexual innuendos are indiscriminately thrown in without much reasoning.  A small seasoning of humor wraps a neat little bow around the film to be served out to the audience. A well-shot, well-lit, well-acted film with ridiculous action sequences consisting of a car jumping between three buildings, and Vin Diesel surviving multiple falls in various backgrounds. While some people of the audience may love such movies, I personally am not a big fan of action films. However, this movie does recieve a seven out of ten, on my scale, considering the emotional depth and the heart-wrenching ending it serves out.

**SPOILERS**

The movie begins with the new baddie Decker Shaw, brother of previous baddie Owen Shaw, now comatose, promising to avenge his kid brother. Letty and Dom are seen back at Race Wars, and Brian is trying his very best to be a good father. 
(The scenes with Paul Walker are physically discomforting to watch, given his death in a car crash in 2013. While Paul charms the audience with his blue eyes and disarming smile, as always, the fact that he's dead, drops a dark veil over the eyes of the viewer.)
The Toretto family house is blown up, the team gathers, and the movie picks up pace. Kurt Russel comes in a few minutes later to provide for the cliche character of the government guy requiring help from the protagonists in return for his own favors. Exotic location. Hot babes. Awesome car getting trashed for no real reason. Finally the deux ex machina arrives in the streets of LA, with The Rock pumping lead into a terrorist helicopter, Diesel going mano-a-mano with Jason Statham, and the rest of the team driving round town with a drone on their ass. Sounds dumb? Kinda is. Until, of course, the final 5 minutes which turns the whole emotion of the movie and stirs of the hearts of every audience member seated. The team is now seated on a beach, seemingly a while after the LA incident, with Brian and Mia further down the shore playing with their young son. The group discusses how life should remain as it is right now, with a not-so-subtle nod to Paul Walker's dying young. The discussion provides for Brian's absence in the following films (if any are made), retiring Paul's character rather than killing him off. Dom then silently gets up and leaves. The movie sort of merges the ending with a tribute now. Brian notices Dom leaving and catches up with him at a crossroads, both in their respective cars, and jokingly says, "You're gonna leave without saying goodbye?". Cue tears. For the first time, the usually stone faced Dom reveals a sad smile, as they both drive down the road, Dom remembering the memories he shared with Brian (Wiz Khalifa's sentimental ode "See You Again" plays in the background), not so different from the ones shared by their real-life counterparts. They share one last heartbreaking look as Vin/Dom finishes up his monologue, and they both go their separate ways with the camera following Paul/Brian's car, representing Paul's ascent to heaven. A final title card reads "For Paul".
You may sob now.

That final 5 minutes is so powerful and breathtakingly beautiful that it's worth watching the rest of the cesspool of flying cars and insane stunts. Exit theater with misty eyes.

Rest in peace, Paul Walker.

7/10.