Julie , Julia and Me !

I was gravely disappointed this Oscar Season. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t seen Hurt Locker nor have I seen Sundra Bullock’s performance for which she won the Academy Award !! But I was anxiously waiting for Meryl Streep to win this award. Julie and Julia – the movie in many ways has changed my life. For one, I find solace in Julia Child’s character. Much of her zest and enthusiasm to live life – rather love life, to love her husband, to prove useful, to find happiness in whatever situation one is put in.. these are things I see myself doing on a day to day basis. The movie Julie and Julia is around 2 different lives, connected with one book and one blog.

Meryl Streep stars as Julia Child, a determined American chef who spent some of her most exciting years in Paris, where she attended cooking school and started an ambitious cookbook while her beloved husband Paul (a phenomenal Stanley Tucci) worked as an exhibits officer with the U.S. Information Agency.The second story the film focuses on is that of Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a New York writer whose boring cubicle job and passion for cooking eventually inspire her to start a blog documenting how she uses Julia Child’s cookbook to try all of her 524 recipes during a period of 365 days.

The movie, blog and book run beautifully the parallelism of life in 2 different time generations. In many ways, I see myself critiquing cooking ( somehow I don’t think I can ever be a good cook or rather I don’t want to be a good cook ) and blogging ( definitely I’ll attempt to achieve excellence in this field) and living a lovely life ( something I’m pretty good at already )with my partner to be. On many occasions I find myself thinking, maybe I won’t be able to write now. Inspiration sometimes runs out. And each time when a new idea crops up, I wonder what tomorrow has in store for me.

When life gets busy your love interests for other things take a back seat. And that’s when you know what you love the most, cause you miss it the most ! And then you make attempts to getting back to it. When I feel this way, I feel like watching this movie. It’s about passion. Julie Powell’s life of New Yorker is very much similar to my life in Mumbai. Crowded with so many things ! And yet she finds her right way. When people talk about striking a balance, the movie shows how she stuck her balance. All my life I thought I loved reading, but I just realized I love Writing, and I miss it the most.

But there is a whole irony of the situation – Success comes at a price .. The price of becoming Anti-social at times. She literally ran home after work, planned days in advance what is to be cooked, carefully planned the ingredients in such a way that there would be no left overs or an overly cluttered fridge. How to reduce clutter from your life is also an art, which in many ways I don’t know how to. I have memorabilia from the vaguest relationships, places and people I have met.

People find me, my love for things very intense. Something most people can’t digest. To be frank I can’t digest what they cannot digest. So yet again I drew inspiration from this movie – Do what you love, love what you do. Julia, despite being rejected from a professional culinary skills course and being in the middle of so many Men, stuck to what she has always wanted to do.

Julie, after having sulked for a couple of days when her boyfriend leaves her, gets back to her blogging – and that got her out of her misery. It’s when you change yourself completely for someone else and don’t remember what you were in the first place that you realize it was not worth it ! I have been in that situation a couple of years ago. And I said to myself, Never again !! And Life has been a happy one. I found myself throwing away one piece of paper the other day, a very dear memory for a couple of months now. But I just realized at this very moment, while typing this line, how bad I felt after doing that. I don’t have to change me. I don’t care if people die of Indigestion !

One movie, so many facets ! Julie Julia and Me.. !