The best war movie ever!

The Bridge on the River Kwai

If you are a fan of war movies no better treat than to watch the said movie which is ranked one of the greatest films of all time and arguably director David Lean's best film.
At the heart of the film is the performance of Alec Guinness as the obsessively principled Colonel Nicholson. In a lesser film, his character might be simplified into a heroic martyr, but The Bridge on the River Kwai revels in its moral ambiguity: no significant character is either purely a hero or purely a villain.
Filmed in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the film features brutal prisoner-of-war work camps that are nonetheless considerably nicer than their historical counterparts, a good decision since it frees the audience to focus on the battle of wills, at first between Nicholson and Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), later between Shears (William Holden) and Warden (Jack Hawkins). The film's closing line ("Madness... Madness") is among the best-known and most enigmatic closings in screen history.
The film received seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor (Guinness).

The coconut hawker

I went out of my place to freshen up myself from the tormenting studies that are what we master's student have to go through for our final exams. The idea to do that is to have a smoke in the pathan's 'dhaba' nearby with a soft drink. I got the coke and lit up my Marlboro cigarette and got myself seated to enjoy the smoke filling up my lungs.

Across the table, was a guy busy cutting coconut pieces and arranging them in a bowl. Definitely he was a hawker who sold coconut pieces at bus stops around the city crying at the top his voice "Narial waley, Narial ley lo".

My eyes were fixed on him as he cut and arranged the pieces while he effortlessly did the job oblivious to the fact that my glare was on him. He was a beared man, very slim -- somewhere around the age of 40.

Finished with the job, he satiated himself with tea that he had ordered and lit up a Morven Gold cigarette. If the cigarette brand was an indication of a person's social status, this was it!

Pakistan's lower-class population looks no further than Morven Gold, Diplomat or K-2 for a good-old smoke. The high prices of Gold Leaf, Marlboro and Benson & Hedges along with the inflation, lack of jobs and the restlessness amongst the people has certainly meant that a 4-5 rupee cigarette is somewhat of a luxury!

The man nevertheless seemed content with what he had. I could not resist the temptation of asking this man how his life was.

Abdul Sattar was his name, he told me. A labourer during the day-time, the man sold these coconut pieces from dusk till 1am in the morning to make ends meet in this day and age of rising prices.
Making an average profit of around Rs.250-300 a day from the sale of coconuts, Abdul Sattar was thankful to God. He went on, "Allah bara hai. Bus itni madad kar daita hai kay hamara ghar chal jaye."
For a guy who works seventeen hours in a rigorous schedule which makes him travel from Karachi's one corner to the other in this sweltering heat for a mere 300 rupees, that is some belief!