The Spirit to Fight

 I watched Hanuman Ansh recently.

And I enjoyed it.

Now I am waiting for I Play Rocky.

On the surface, that probably makes no sense.

One is a film inspired by Neem Karoli Baba — about bhakti, seva, surrender, compassion and finding something larger than yourself. The other, judging purely from the trailer, is about an unknown Sylvester Stallone being told no and essentially replying: I don’t care. I know who I am.

Two completely different journeys.

Or perhaps not.

I admire surrender. I also admire the refusal to surrender.

I have always admired Neem Karoli Baba.

There is something extraordinarily powerful about the idea that you don’t have to conquer the world. You can serve it.

That strength does not always need to announce itself.

That sometimes the greatest power comes from surrendering the ego rather than feeding it.

That is the world Hanuman Ansh explores: bhakti, seva, humility and surrender. The filmmakers themselves describe it not as a conventional biopic, but as a spiritual journey inspired by Neem Karoli Baba. (⁠Anupriya Nagar)

I connect with that.

But then I watched the trailer of I Play Rocky.

And I connected with that too.

Because sometimes surrender is the answer.

And sometimes the answer is:

Fuck you. I play Rocky.

Arrogance is not always bad

We have turned arrogance into a universally negative word.

I am not sure it is.

There is the arrogance that says:

I am better than you.

That can be ugly.

But there is another kind.

I know what I am capable of, even if you don’t.

That can be beautiful.

The premise behind I Play Rocky is already part of cinema folklore: an unknown Stallone has written Rocky, people want what he has created, but he refuses to give up his insistence that he should play Rocky himself. The new film turns that fight behind Rocky into its own underdog story. (⁠Amazon News)

Think about the apparent stupidity of that position.

You are unknown.

People with money know the business better than you.

They are offering you an opportunity.

Take the money.

Be practical.

Don’t be arrogant.

Know your place.

Except Stallone apparently knew his place better than everybody else did.

His place was Rocky.

There is something wonderfully unreasonable about that.

Maybe we need a little more unreasonable

We live in the age of the template.

Best practices.

Benchmarks.

Algorithms.

Personal brands.

Career paths.

AI-generated answers.

Everyone studying what worked for everyone else and then producing a slightly modified version of the same thing.

There are too many Me Toos in the world.

Too many people asking:

What should I become?

when perhaps the better question is:

What am I?

And that question requires brutal honesty.

Not LinkedIn honesty.

Not Instagram honesty.

Not the honesty that sounds good in a bio.

The uncomfortable kind.

Maybe you aren’t as talented as you think.

Maybe you are.

Maybe you aren’t spiritual.

Maybe you desperately need spirituality.

Maybe your dream is ridiculous.

Maybe the sensible people around you are absolutely right.

And maybe you should ignore every one of them.

Nobody else can answer that.

Curse if you need to

I don’t believe spirituality requires sanitising yourself.

Nor do I believe ambition requires becoming an asshole.

You can fold your hands before something greater than yourself and still raise your fist when life requires it.

You can say Ram Ram.

You can also say fuck this.

Context matters.

Intent matters.

Honesty matters.

A curse is just a collection of sounds until you put intent behind it.

Arrogance is just confidence viewed from somebody else’s chair.

Even ego isn’t always the villain.

Sometimes ego makes us unbearable.

Sometimes ego gets us off the floor.

The difficult part is knowing which one is operating.

Hanuman and Rocky

Perhaps that is why these two films sit comfortably together in my head.

Hanuman Ansh asks us to consider what happens when the self becomes smaller.

I Play Rocky, at least from its trailer, asks what happens when your belief in the self becomes so large that rejection stops mattering.

One whispers:

Surrender.

The other punches back:

Fight.

I don’t think we have to choose.

There are battles in life where you need Neem Karoli Baba.

There are battles where you need Rocky Balboa.

And the real wisdom may be knowing which version of yourself needs to enter the ring today.

The spirit to fight

I have received blessings and gifts in my own relationship with Neem Karoli Baba.

I value them deeply.

I enjoyed Hanuman Ansh because it made me revisit that side of life — faith, grace, service, surrender and the possibility that not everything needs to be controlled.

And yet the I Play Rocky trailer excites another part of me.

The unreasonable part.

The part that believes there are moments when consensus is useless.

When advice is useless.

When being liked is useless.

When the only person whose belief matters is the person staring back at you.

Maybe that is arrogance.

Good.

Sometimes we need it.

Because humility without self-belief can become submission.

And self-belief without humility can become delusion.

Somewhere between the two is the person we actually are.

So watch Hanuman Ansh.

And when it arrives, watch I Play Rocky too.

Don’t watch them as competing philosophies.

Explore both paths.

Learn to bow.

Learn to fight.

Learn to serve.

Learn to say no.

Learn when to surrender.

And learn when to look the world straight in the eye and say:

You can have your opinion.

I play Rocky.