Stragglers and Caravans

Breakfasts on weekday mornings are usually accompanied by a quick look at movie trailers. Akshay Kumar usually appears in every alternate trailer, but these days he seems to be getting stiff competition from the likes of Priyanka Chopra & John Abraham. Among the three of them, they're giving me lots of incentive to go back to watching The Drew Carey Show.

However, to stop being unfair, some of the teasers aren't all that bad. I found the riffs Teraa hi karam from Karam to be quite catchy (anyone know who the singer is?). That and the other songs from the same film seem to follow a trend these days of picturising songs like music videos would. Though one would expect such a non-filmi style oozing effort from Sanjay F. Gupta.

Another set of similarly shot trailers are from the cheesily titled Lucky - No Time For Love (par for the course considering that Sohail Khan is among the producers who earlier gave us a gem of a title : I - Proud to be an Indian)). This Salman Khan feature has created some anticipation because of the uncanny resemblance of the new actress to a certain Aishwarya Rai (and to be fair, Mayuri Kango as well :-) ). Is this intentional or just a clever gimmick is left to speculation. However, another interesting aspect is that the music is scored by Adnan Sami (his first in Bollywood?). The music seems decent but sort of conventional. I found the Lucky Lips (Asha Bhonsle) song reminiscent of another Asha song called Bas Ek Baar Kahi.n ek baar.

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I'm only making a mention of Deepak Tijori's latest film called Khamoshi because looks like it's a remake, nay a ripoff of Identity.

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Who is Ayesha Takia and why is she winning awards and getting a lot of coverage in filmi news articles? I'm quite intrigued. I first noticed this actress on ESPN-Star of all places where co-star Abhay Deol and she were plugging their film Socha na tha there (a trend originating from Dhoom and Mujhse Shaadi Karogi).

Her last name is a little unusual and has a potential bag of puns to spark off. For e.g.,

Q. if she was a superheroine working undercover, what would her nickname be?
A. Ayesha the Pillow

or

Q. What would've happened if President Kalam had a son and she married the son?
A. She would have her own signature phrase by becoming Ayesha Takia-Kalam.

I know, I know. Those who know where I live have marked it for instant annihilation. I think I should add my post to the Jade Project.

COEPian tragedy

Today when COEPians and other members of the public gathered at the COEP Boat Club to witness the highlight of the COEPian cultural year The Annual Regatta, there was an extremely unfortunate accident in which a third year student fell into the river. Apparently some people were being ferried across to the opposite banks when overloading seems to cause some people on the boat to topple into the water. Among which seems to have been this boy who by some exceedingly unlucky oversight was not rescued until some minutes passed since no one seems to have realised he was missing. He was then taken to the hospital where his condition was said to be serious. The Regatta was cancelled as a result. News filtering in from the hospital wasn't very upbeat. Harish & I had reached the place a little after the accident occured and had waited for a while before hearing the cancellation was announced. Details were told by friends who'd been there earlier.

The Regatta has been the big event of the college for a very long time (this would have been the 77th) and no one can recall such an accident ever happening in the past. I guess we let that blind us to the real dangers that organising the show has always entailed - the pride in the novelty of the event and the mostly successful results have probably never alerted us to the possibilities of any undue events like today occuring. I've participated in the Punt Formation myself, where even non-swimmers like me were encouraged to take part. My initial apprehensions at being in the middle of the river despite being unable to fend for myself in case I was to go overboard were soon dimmed - for the punt is the most stable of boats. But the fact remained that we hardly had any major safety equipment on standby as far as I can tell. Even the Telematches with some bravado acts with fire were always bordering on the dangerous (once in my TE, a guy had got himself burnt in the middle during one such act).

I'm sure someone's going to get hauled up for negligence etc., but I think to be fair, the levels of organisation have typically been the same for many years and since nothing's gone wrong so far, we have never woken up to these eventualities.

This would have been my 7th Regatta in 8 years - it turned out to be the unhappiest. I wonder for the future of the show itself. I feel awful for the guy and also for the current students, especially the Boat Club & Regatta guys.

Update - 7 Mar 2005
Most of us there yesterday guessed this would be the outcome but didn't want to mention it until it was made official. Sadly, the person in question, Mayur Kamble could not be saved.

Oscar de la Goodfella?

Now that in his fourth attempt, Morgan Freeman picked up an Oscar, is Martin Scorcese alone at the top of the current list of damn-why-hasn't-he-got-one-yet?

Thing, one

Actually, one p-uh-thetic thing.

There is very little in this world that is constant. Change eats away the constancy & consistency of this world. But if there is one thing that will remain for a long time, it is that during the Filmfare Awards telecast, every shot of Rekha will be immediately followed by one of Amitabh Bachchan.

It's been 2 decades now. What I'm saying may actually be considered anti-social and unaesthetic in certain circles, but isn't it time the producers of the show moved onto showing Akshay Kumar whenever they show Raveena T/Pooja B/Shilpa S?

Mars Attack

This season's politico-historical-film controversy is likely to emanate from Ketan Mehta's Mangal Pandey a.k.a The Rising when it releases in June this year. I have my reservations about the plot, essentially because it poses a serious question: is this going to be a fair depiction of Mangal Pandey or just a fictional exaggeration?

First, what do we really know of Mangal Pandey? His story has been a important footnote in Indian history textbooks, which portray him as the first revolutionary, a brave man who sparked off the rebellion of 1857 leading to a larger War of Independence rocking the Victorian empire. Now, how much of this are we really certain of? That the biting-the-bullet incident actually took place, there seems to be no dispute. That there was a mutiny, there is no questioning. But did Pandey actually play a central leadership role; what part bravado and what part randomness?

A book called The Proudest Day: India's Long Road to Independence (Anthony Read and David Fisher) questions this claim. Matter-of-factly, the authors state that (and I paraphrase from memory, so this may be a little inaccurate - I merely mention the gist) Mangal Pandey was actually under the influence of bhang when he attacked superior officers and wasn't really in his senses. The principal reason does seem to have been the serious infringement of religious sensitivities by being asked to bite the animal fat coated bullet, but the actual intent comes out as far from noble - merely the act of an greatly disgruntled soldier (like the stories of a CRPF jawan and others like him temporarily losing their heads in extreme frustration).

This incident seems to have coincided with plans among leaders of certain groups to raise the flag of rebellion in opposition to the occupying British. Again, inspite of all the accounts you read, you will discern that some part of this attempt was to regain lost influences and a return to old feudal structures. It becomes more political than nationalistic. Here, I don't doubt the bravery & military prowess of names like Tantia Tope, Nana Saheb of Peshwa, the Kunwar Saab and the Rani of Jhansi (leaving aside the debate on their methods and documented massacres). These people were rulers or generals or leaders of their own little groups and commanded the clout to gather their people together in fighting a common enemy. But I find it hard to believe this of Mangal Pandey, who seems to have been an ordinary sepoy and seems to have merely lit the fuse of the growing resentment against the imperialistic & condescending East India Company by his open flouting of discipline. Perhaps this was used well by leaders to fan the simmering rage among the people.

(Now, do I have to completely believe the account of some Englishmen of whose antecedents I have no idea of? No, I shouldn't swallow the accounts without being sceptical, but I have no grounds to reject this thesis yet. Nehru's Discovery of India indicates that "an outburst" was not part of the larger plan, but says nothing specifically about Mangal Pandey. I wonder what Savarkar's account of the same says about this episode. I would like to know if there are any other accounts of this episode; I could find none on the Web that went beyond a laudatory character sketch.)

There is the issue of the choice of description: "Mutiny" vs "First War of Independence". It seems to me that it was both - there was a well-documented mutiny and there was a genuine attempt to fight the British. What the result would have been if the Indians would have won is left to speculation. But denying that either happened is incorrect, as incorrect as saying that only one of these happened. But where does Mangal Pandey fit in? Was he an inadvertent revolutionary, the spiritual spark of the Mutiny or a true Independence warrior?

Coming back to the film, there is no doubt that we will see Mangal Pandey invested with the best that humanity can offer. Brave and fair, intelligent and forthright with hardly any weaknesses. Partly the problem lies in the choice of lead star. That Aamir Khan is playing will, I think, automatically lead to the above (and I'll be the gladdest if I'm proved wrong). The trouble is that Aamir Khan has never yet exhibited the broad range that people have attributed to him. He is a pseudo-thinking actor and it's tough to say how he got that label. He's a talented actor, but I have never seen his roles characterised differently, only the situations change (read Paanch paise worth on Aamir for some more musings on this topic).

The synopsis of the film is that Mangal Pandey befriends a British officer, romances a young lady and raises the banner of revolt. So we will definitely see an erudite Mangal Pandey, holding his own with and against Toby Stephens and generally being representative of the harried and oppressed Indians of the time who did not surrender their dignity. Hmm... where did we last see this? Let me see... Bhuvan?

The point of this post is not to run down Mangal Pandey or be critical of Aamir Khan's acting styles. The point is that the film will most probably not be sold as a work of fiction. We would like to see another account of one of our forefathers giving the fira.ngs a generally nasty time, and even better, it would all be quasi-real. Toby Stephens saving Rani Mukherjee Ameesha Patel from Sati? Could have happened. So where are these re-interpretations of history based on? I wish Farrukh Dhondy, the scriptwriter, will elaborate.

For some reason, I'm uncomfortable with such characterisations where there is so much doubt. I perhaps wouldn't be making such a point of a film on the Rani of Jhansi. Of course, historical films have always been errant and highly sympathetic to their protagonists. But especially when Aamir Khan provides a sketch of Mangal Pandey, more people are going to believe him outright than not.

And questioning it will probably invite the wrath of a few people.

[PS(1): BTW (biased opinion): I think the music of the film is going to be special!]
[PS(2): I would like to be corrected/informed about any points made above]

Read Manish Chauhans's pertinet & interesting rejoinder to this post.

Filmfair Awards 2004

The choreographed farce that is the Filmfare Awards will be upon us shortly. Given that it's been over a decade that I lost both faith and interest in them and given that I watched more new Hindi films last year than ever before, here's my own choice of winners. The picks are obviously narrow and mainly restricted to the films I saw, so they will be quite contentious, but definitely more believable than the FF bash. Here goes (* indicates Films I haven't seen):

Best Film: Maqbool (Ab Tak Chappan is second for me)
Best Director: Vishal Bharadwaj, Maqbool (... and likewise Shimit Amin)
Best Actor: Nana Patekar (Ab Tak Chappan) (Hrithik Roshan - Lakshya, a close second)
Best Actress: I invite entries here. I have no idea. Perhaps Zaara Zinta or Rani M for "Hum Tum". Perhaps even Kirron Kher for "Khamosh Paani"*
Best Supporting Actor: Saif Ali Khan (Ek Hasina Thi) (Toss up with Pankaj Kapur for Maqbool, but I thought Saif Ali Khan really deserved applause what for him was a big departure)
Best Supporting Actress: Rani Mukherjee (Yuva) (Revathy in Ab Tak Chappan came close)
Best Story: Maqbool
Best Screenplay: Yuva
Best Dialogues: Vishal Bharadwaj, Abbas Tyrewala (Maqbool)
Best Music: A.R.Rahman (Meenaxi) (Not Veer-Zaara* simply because of Lata M; S-E-L for Lakshya would be closest)
Best Lyrics: Javed Akhtar (Most of his stuff last year - Lakshya, Swades, VZ)
Best Male Singer: Sonu Nigam ("Do Kadam Aur Sahi", Meenaxi)
Best Female Singer: Sadhana Sargam ("Aao Na...", Kyun! Ho Gaya Naa*)
Best Mass Entertainment Film: Main Hoon Na*
Special Mentions: Christopher Popp for his cinematography in "Lakshya", Rajat Kapoor for the Daler Mehndi Doll in "Raghu Romeo", the ever-persevering Anurag Kashyap for his multifarious dialogues in "Yuva", Kunal Vijaykar in "Ab Tak Chappan", Prabhu Deva for "Main Aisa Kyun huun" in "Lakshya" and Farah Khan & Kunal Kohli for their quizzing-friendly "tributes" in their films.

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BCQC in the Indian Express

Read about The In-Quiz-Itives...

Earlier: The BCQC feature by the Pune Times of India

Bibliotheque

Was just adding to my list of books recently read, and come to think of it, I did get hold of quite a few interesting ones. A sample:

The English Patient

Wait! What is this doing in a list of interesting books? I found this book utterly bogus. I couldn't understand what was so special about this book and the plot. To compound matters, I had also got hold of the film's DVD (which I waited to finish the book before watching it). I hoped it would be less tangled but this was a effort in vain. For starters, you are told the true identity of the English Patient so early in the film that it robs you of that suspense. Plus the general d-r-a-g that is translated from the book to the screen. Apart from the gorgeous sights of desert filming and Kristin Scott-Thomas (not strictly in that order), I couldn't wait to get rid of it.

I will let Elaine Benes sum it up as she exclaims (in a Seinfeld episode titled The English Patient) after having to watch it again with her boss (who loves it):

ELAINE: (quiet vehemence) Oh. No. I can't do this any more. I can't. It's too long. (to the screen) Quit telling your stupid story, about the stupid desert, and just die already! (louder) Die!!

Just For Fun - The story of an accidental revolutionary

Featuring the life and philosophies of Linus Torvalds. A very interesting book about a nerdy guy who suddenly finds himself in the middle of the spotlight and his efforts to cope. It also details, first hand, the story of Linux which is described with a benign parental gaze without getting too involved. His life has essentially been about doing what he wanted to (and it helped that he was so good at it).

An absolutely delightful read. Oh, and as everyone expects a lot of gyaan from Torvalds, he supplies his one personal take on L, the U & E: that the human life progresses from survival to social standing to entertainment, and that almost everything stems from the succession of these phases.

Death Is Now My Neighbour

This was my second Inspector Morse book. I've watched quite a few episodes of the famous TV show recently and have officially become a fan. Colin Dexter's detective cop is somewhere in between the sanitised Agatha Christie settings and the seedy & noir ambience of American crime writers like Raymond Chandler. You get a liberal dose of literary references, snatches of Western Classical music, crossword puzzles, beer and depressed cynicism in Oxford - all in all, much more believable & likeable.

Incidentally, I also watched a TV version of this story days before I saw the book at the library. Inspite of knowing the plot, I checked the book out simply because there's a lot in the book that is of great merit such as the detailed character development and literary allusions that speaks of careful construction. The denouements are usually satisfying too. Can't ask for more in detective fiction. It turned out that the TV version was slightly different and omitted some of the elements, but the quality of the adaptation was so good that it hadn't mattered at all.

Once Was Bombay

Pinky Virani wrote this book in 1999. It was considered to be one of the earliest "faction" books in India, another notable predecessor being Virani's "Aruna's story". I also encountered the book then, but for different reasons. The film Satya which had released about 6 months before had already become a landmark in the history of Indian cinema, as had the performance of Manoj Bajpai. So it was hard to pass on the chance of seeing this newest acting sensation which a reading of this book at Pune's Crossword Store provided as bait.

Of course, I saw Manoj Bajpai in the flesh (he seemed a completely unassuming man and no, I didn't pick up an autograph) and heard Virani & him read out passages from the book, in particular, the passages where the gangster Pakya asks Virani to help get in contact with "Bhiku Mhatre", "aise hi".

Back to the book. The biggest emotion that hits the reader is of anger. Pinky Virani ko gussaa aata hai jab woh Bambai kaa haal dekhti hai. The book is in segments. In the one with her thinly-veiled autobiographical account of life in a Mazagaon house with her father & sisters, she is the "Loud One" that the father is both infuriated with and scared of. "Who killed Bombay?" she asks. And dedicates it to those journalists who still care about the megapolis. Gangsters and dons like Karim Lala, anonymous actors, Veeru & Ajay Devgan, a traditional Azhar, an airy Shobha De & a miffed Simi Garewal are to be found in the no-holds barred look at the state of the city. And of course the politicians.

Transmission

The storyline as read from the blurbs & gists was compelling - an account of virus attacks, Bollywood filmstars and paranoid Westerners. Hari Kunzru weaves a global tale, but the tale ends up short of promise. There are great moments of course - Asperger's syndrome obsessed programmers, cliche-spouting Chief.*.Officers and throwaway lines. But on the flip sides, there are the usual stereotypical caricatures of Indian families and film production units. You need to suspend some of your scepticism to believe the pivotal plot element of a virus cooked up at short notice with original internals defying both detection and solution and spreading/mutating at such colossal speeds. It is a little short on believable detail, so unless you look at it as a comedy, you'll be held back.

Still, there's enough to keep one occupied for a while.

Foucault's Pendulum

I didn't think I'd pick up another Umberto Eco so soon after the laborious effort of finishing "The Name of the Rose", but I did. I'm saving up comments for the Lit Blog that can explain why I couldn't join the rest for last month's Book of the Month.

And as it turned out, despite wanting to stay off Eco for a while, have now with me his "Baudolino" which I only heard about a couple of hours before I saw it staring from the rack at the library.

"Left" turns

I remember reading this article that one of top reasons why people leave organisations is because they don't get along with their managers. Of course, this is a sweeping generalisation and masks a variety of complex factors underneath, but there is a large strain of truth in this.

A major factor comes out of this important question: Is your superior willing to go bat for you, sometimes even on a sticky wicket, given legitimate situations where you need his support? Most times, a person responsible for leading people has to fulfil two functions: to carry his team with him and to be responsible to his own superiors in order to achieve larger goals. Ideally, you want to be able to do both properly. But on many occasions, it's a trade-off, mostly because of perceptions of slant towards either end and due to genuine conflicts.

So do you want to have your troops swear by your fidelity to them, or do you want to be "recognised" by the generals as a tough go-getter who can even trample on toes to get things done?

As time goes by, different people end up having different experiences. The ones who get a raw deal from either side end up looking out for themselves wherever they go, probably spelling the word (as the cliche would suggest) as "tiim". For it's tough to find a team that really gels together.

Marple and the concept of human similarity

Like every fictional detective, Miss Marple has her own characteristic modus operandi applied to the solving of cases. This happens to be the slotting of people by their resemblance (in behaviour) to others previously known to the old spinster. Since there is a strong autobiographical influence in almost all Agatha Christie's stories, it is fair to assume that the Dame believed strongly in this theory and applied it herself.

Essentially, the premise is that someone's temperament or behaviour reminds you of another from your experience and you then predict the unknown sides of this new person based on what you know of the original. Miss Marple of course has a high rate of success at this, and probably that's why her stories are quite boring or monotonous.

Anyway, can this theory be practised in real life? Sometimes, it does seem possible. Sometimes, I meet people who remind me of others in their mannerisms, speech patterns and reactions. Though I don't remember if this is true of all cases, but there are a few startling "coincidences" where predictions of behaviour based on previous empirical data matched future actions of these fellows. Wonder if the world is indeed partitioned into such sets.

P.S for BC junta: any T&T comments on this post will be mercilessly censored :-)

Red Riding Hoods

Ever since most traffic signals in Pune started to count down to seconds left for the green signal, I've found myself playing a little game. Invariably, one will find people who cannot wait till the count goes down to zero and will set off 10 seconds early. The object of the game is to guess which of my fellow riders will jump the gun (should I call them sons-of-guns)?

My predictions are usually wrong and have at best uncovered a lot of my inherent biases. Pony tailed rider in leather biking gear on a jazzy bike? Highly likely to jump the signal. Result: Highly conscientious. Demure girl with typical bandit queen getup on Scooty? Looks like the obedient type with poor road confidence. Result: zooms off leaving us in smoke. Auto driver spitting on road - prediction: will fly off the handle. Result: of course he doesn't.

Further evidence that I have no idea how my race really functions. Of course, I'm battling my little devil (remember cartoons where you have a twin pair of a mini-Satan and a little cherubic angel debating such issues on either side?) which tells me to push off myself and follow their worthy example. Somehow it takes a lot of courage to stay back for 135 seconds and endure the honking of the irate truck driver behind. In such cases, I'm glad for the implied moral support of the dude with the pony tail on his bike.

Crease, na

Harish points out a typo (one of my many) in this post where I write "PIET-quizzing warrier". Perhaps I was a little influenced by the purported Malayali influence on the film Kisna.

Still, the ad in the newspaper advertising the show had the film as Kisna - the Worrier Poet. Guess Vivek O didn't know the film wasn't going be this bad, eh?

Aakhir Q?

Indians cannot queue. Fundamentally. A line is a mere collection of points for us, and something whose ultimate appearance is so nebulous as to be a wriggly shape unconquerable by mathematical definitions. Somewhere along the way, in evolving our survival skills at the village market, the neighbourhood grocer and even upmarket coffee counters, we've dropped the gene for the orderly queue.

This is irrespective of class hierarchies. I wonder how Indian comp. sci. students pick up the concept of the queue in their Data Structures class (except for the priority version) and imbibe sub-optimal FCFS algorithms. Salim-Javed only articulated a cultural trait when they got their man to equate the beginning of the line with the self.

This has been a simmering peeve of mine which first vocalised itself loudly at COEPian fee counters and now recurs at petrol pumps and cinema theatres. Most intensely at last year's PIFF given the mad rush for free seats leading to commotion and even accidents. Miraculously for the last show, some of us managed to whip a serpentine mass into some shape. The immediate provocation for this post was when a smart middle-aged lady cut in at the coffee counter where I stood patiently after yesterday's cinema show. That emboldened another chap to try and attempt the same, puncturing my dam of sabr. When cautioned, he drew back sheepishly. Chuffed at this minor victory, I grew courageous enough to tell the lady off too - she apologised profusely. While this was happening, yet another lady tried to sneak through!

I have a feeling that we Indians think queuing is something to do only while vacationing in Doha.

Chakravyuuh

I have to re-enter the circle (or spiral?) again. Was on leave for the last couple of days and my brain just feels a great deal lighter again. Effingly awful to go back!

I'm also shuddering at the thought of piles of email in my mailboxes, all the unread blog posts and the general cyberspace-catching up.

Chiaroscuro

I watched the movie making all the news i.e. Black along with Nikhil this evening and truth be told, I found it ok-to-good rather than great. I expected to feel this way despite some glowing reviews from friends whose opinions I trust. Black is, fittingly, a palette of shades and we're going to differ in the ones we prefer.

So a note of dissonance from my side - primarily because of the level at which the film operates. This incidentally is my first Sanjay Leela Bhansali film, having never completely seen any of his previous works. I've seen fairly representative samples of them so for me this film is still distinctive of his style, different (paler?) though it may seem in comparison to the earlier films.

How do you express the plane at which the dialogues work, the actors play "it" and how the director offers his compositions? Perhaps a cinematic decibel scale of sorts with "loud" and "muted" thresholds. These levels are a huge factor in determining one's reception to the film (more than any other visual medium) - films appeal personally when they match your amplitudes, but some of them can even get you to temporarily leap on to theirs. Black and all the audience reactions to it essentially revolve about this aspect.

Black wasn't "loud" like I think Devdas must have been, but it still operated at a level or two above what appeals to me. I don't have significant first hand knowledge of how challenged people behave, but inherently I'm sceptical of cinematic interpretations which present such characters as para-normal and so completely different. Ayesha Kapur as the young Michelle plays it with head askew and lost eyes which I found unreasonable. I can understand untamed displays of behaviour and confused, unintelligible expressions of emotions, but not such physical bearing. This is something that the director obviously shapes, so I can't see eye to eye on that. My mind invariably goes to Naseeruddin Shah in Sparsh or Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot. Of course, those films didn't have "intensity" leaping out of the screen, so maybe Bhansali is in keeping with his film's tones. It also recalled Anjali where again I wasn't too impressed with the portrayal.

Of course, I have the same issues with the older Michelle; however Rani Mukherjee showed great agility in some scenes that require her to emote despondency and resolve and inner struggle. I thought Amitabh Bachchan got it more or less right - the character's eccentricity and capriciousness has been established and he does little that jars, except in a couple of places. Especially so in his descent into the maw of Alzheimer's.

The "look-I'm-making-a-different-film" aim is furthered by the cast of good but unfamiliar to audiences actors. I thought Shernaz Patel was good as ever, and it was pleasant to see Dhritiman Chatterjee back, but I thought he was disappointing. The adequately miffed Nandana Sen completed a family for which the casting director must be applauded - if you look at the trio of women and the young girl, the facial resemblance is better than in most films. The reds, ochres, saffrons, yellows are replaced by lots of black, white (nice ending shot contrasting the earlier mood) and grey with streaks of red. You can trust Bhansali to get these things consistent.

I read an article in this week's Outlook on the film where the core Bollywood cliques go ga-ga over the film. The article begins by asking if this is a "new idiom in mainstream cinema" and claims that it provides a "redefining moment in commercial Hindi cinema, pushing its frontiers of narration and style". I beg to differ. The redefinition has been happening for quite a while. But the fact remains that the Bollywood setup and indeed most of the Hindi film watching audience still view the people behind these new dialects (such as Ram Gopal Varma and his Factory, Mani Ratnam, Vishal Bharadwaj, Anurag Kashyap) as "outsiders" and do not embrace them fully. However, Bhansali is from a mindspace that these guys can relate to and such a deviation from him is naturally hailed as pathbreaking, for it strikes home much closer. Indeed, one of the dissenting notes in the Outlook article is from Kashyap who says that "They've seen it all in the West. There's nothing new it offers".

This debate is like the one that accompanied Shwaas. We hardly see themes like these being explored locally, so such efforts can be explosive and grabbing. The next logical step is Oscar talk (which has already begun in this case as well), but from an objective view, this is not the best effort yet. Bhansali says that this is a "small" film for him, and in essence, a vacation from his usual higher register scale. On the other hand, as a viewer, I'd rather that films are made tending towards these alternative themes and settings, not just be summer projects. There's much to behold in Black despite my scepticism but let's not do a Shwaas on it. If like Shwaas, it can offer its parent industry the guts and hope to explore other ranges, I'd consider it a landmark. Right now I'm afraid it's (to use a quizzing analogy) as if Derek O' Brien said "right, let me stop my glitz-oriented Brand Equity style performances and do a quiz with 50% workable questions and with Infinite Rebounds". But if it's just a one-off, then fine - I'm going to stop this crazy analogy right here!

To end what I began, I think the majority of Indian audiences resonate to the range of expression planes that Bhansali works within - probably just it's that I'm not part of that range. I felt the same with Koi Mil Gaya in which most people liked Hrithik Roshan's performance. (To this day no interview of his is complete without a crib about missing the National Award last year which everyone in the insular Bollywood world assumes was superior to the rest.) Black certainly didn't hit me as it seems to have done others. Perhaps there's a little cynical crust developing on the old heart or it was just a little too affected for me...

Asides

* A moment of unintentional irony when the lights went out during the show plunging us into blackness

* Got to see the early teaser for Mangal Pandey a.k.a "The Rising" with Kailash Kher going "Mangal Mangal..."

Kisme kitna hai dum-dum?

Bullet - Ek Dhamaka is the first instance that I know of where the usual <Hindi title> - <English transl(iter)ation> has been reversed. Who says moviemakers are not being creative?

Apparently, the movie is gaining fame for tangentially influencing the Bihar elections.

Blog article in the Indian Express

Nikhil and self got quoted in an Indian Express article on blogging in Pune. Read it here.

Though technically I must clarify that I wasn't covering PIFF this year except for stray remarks (for reasons of work) unlike Salil, Kunal T, Nikhil K, Siddharth and the rest of the BC gang, I did do so last year.

The article also mentions the Quiz blog which is about an year old now. I now wonder if the journalist would have been interested in the Pune Times fan blog ? :-)

It's back!

Update - feb 4 2005

Lone PIET-quizzing warrier Abhishek clarifies with a 2nd-hand views in the comment boxes that the CM merely said something about the name ought to go back to COEP. In fact, I read the Indian Express coverage from yesterday's paper (I get to read it a day later) in which they report that Mr. Deshmukh says that the govt. has no objection to the name going back to COEP. (IE's edition on Tuesday had a good report about the whole issue and what the bureaucratic problems really are.) So there still is a lot of fog on what has been achieved post the merry announcements.

But hopefully, like in the case Narain K, speculation will be followed by concrete news.

Original post - feb 2 2005

Yesterday, at the valedictory function of the sesquicentenary celebrations of COEP, it was announced that PIET will be renamed back to COEP. Yippee!! That's a big victory for the alumni.

As has been lamented in detail in the past, the name was one of the few assets of the college, which hardly needed to be diluted. This turnaround is more than welcome. Now please turn to making the institution more effective.

Now Mistah Shakespeyah, that's what's in a name.

Kaali ghoDi dwaar khaDi

Last Friday was a black day for all ticket scalpers in India. They had expected Black, Black Friday and Blackmail to release simultaneously, giving the black marketing industry a big boost.

But Mr. Bhansali postponed his film's release and the Bombay High Court extended the same courtesy to Mr. Kashyap. Leaving these guys miffed. Now the money's on Black Magic.

Yo! (gawd!)

There are so many programmes on so many channels about fitness, exercise and yoga that it is impossible to not start burning calories just on switching on the telly. But as most stuff on it, they can be inadvertently funny. This is especially so on interactive shows where 50% of the time is spent in host, guest and phone-in participant hollering at each other 180 degrees out of phase, usually over echoing of the conversation through the caller's TV.

DD's Tamil channel Podhigai is the local answer to Saturday Night Live, only it is not made up. This morning, I chanced to see one caller phone-in to ask a remedy for her tendency to feel sleepy all the time, especially (and this is what caught the ear) before interviews.

You will be happy to hear that the yogacharya was upto the task and prescribed certain exercises to be done before sleep and after getting up.

Do we have enough trees?

In some perverse way, it is good that no Indian tennis player has made it all the way in a Singles Grand Slam - after the TOI gave Ms. Mirza an entire Sunday Times to guest-edit and set the threshold for a third round place, how do you reward a seventh-round finish?

Kahaa.n se aaye badaraa

Looks like Sir August de Wynter has been playing with the meteorological dials again. For Pune's gone icy cold over the last couple of days.

When you thought the pleasant Puneri winter was making a graciously exit, a spell of rain has hit us leading to a cold spell that hangs all through the day. Winters normally hit you hardest during the night, but this cloak has been shrouding us even at 12:00 p.m.

All caps a strange year weatherwise for Punekars - we had so much rain this time and a longish winter with this as its valediction. What next, hail in summer?

Rest unassured, and the rest

I have ended up going to my office for the past 15 days in a row having been pursued by an avalanche of tasks, some of them expanding through my incompetence and some being thrust on my head. Pressure valves were few and far between but one in particular was interesting - the humour in one dissenting email that I ended up penning during this period was completely lost on certain circles (it was fun doing it though).

But enough of vague allusions to work. It ain't all over yet, so I'm taking this chance to update this space before I get sucked in again.

*** The students among the local quizzing gang seem to have had a great time at PIFF while I was submerged in debugging infested code. I have got to watch Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday before it gets banned or curtailed (with someone challenging its viewing on the strange premise that it affects the Bombay Blast cases currently in court). You can never bet against Kashyap's luck. Somehow forgot to nab the Indian Ocean soundtrack (maybe I should be out getting it instead of typing this), but saw a clip on TV.

It also looks like Page 3 is faring well with opinions. The PIFF gang said they liked it, and Sarika mentions on her blog that it is uncannily similar to her world. Since she's teetering on the fringe of Page 3 reporting herself, she should know.

*** I caught NDTV mentioning the "legacy" of Parveen Babi. Please. She was a glamorous yesteryear actress with afflictions, both mental & physical. She certainly did not deserve (no human does) to be forgotten by friends and family, but we don't know what happened there. Please report the incident and move on. *** Is no one (except BVHK) watching the Premier Hockey League? I've caught a few matches (not in their entirety, I must confess) mostly involving my team of choice The Maratha Warriors (why? because it's led by Viren Rasquinha and had the best goalie until he withdrew because of injury). I was looking forward to the Warriors clash with the Hyderabad Sultans and the match didn't disappoint. However, the Warriors did. They lost 2-1 despite dominating the match and then lost in penalty strokes to the Sher-e-Jalandhar team yesterday and dented their chances a great deal.

The matches are in the evening from about 8:00 pm, which is when the suds start to envelope TV which the renders the match visible in 5 minute packets. But then, the matches despite being easy on the eye haven't completely caught the imagination yet.

*** Another casualty of the saabuns was an interesting short film called (a little referentially) "A short film". It caught my eye for being directed by Ashutosh Gowariker ages ago on a amateurish video camera. This was on a programme called "Indie Film" on NDTV's new business channel NDTV Profit. It featured Amin Hajee (Bagha from Lagaan) and someone who looked a lot like him and they were strangling people one by one in their 2 room flat. Interesting? But I don't know what happened next with my ad time having expired. By the time I got back, they were showing another short called "Birju", which I gathered had been nominated at the Academy Awards a while ago. Later a discussion with Gowariker and the director of Birju about the pitfalls of Indian "indie" film production.

I like these business channels - they tend to have alternative programming from a less sentimental perspective and are more watchable. "Profit" had one more interesting tale, that of HPCL's endeavour to set up community kitchens where village women can cook on LPG stoves for Rs.4/- an hour instead of needing to burn wood. It was a little distressing to hear from some women that they cannot always assure even that amount, and they have to go back to gathering wood and sitting beside the smoke & grime.

Despite what Zayed Khan claims, the lowest priced pizza at P'Hut is > Rs. 50. That's about the cooking expenses of 13 homes.

*** I'm convinced that there is a secret factory somewhere in Rawalpindi or Faisalabad churning out off-spinners in the Saqlain mould. And what's worse is that despite the previous clones are being carded for suspect bowling actions, they continue to drop in from the production line. The latest, Mohammad Hafeez, has also been reported.

Harbhajan Singh lashed out against Chris Broad last week on being reported for a suspect action as well. I must say he has a point. The ICC announced that they are planning to revise the whole thresholds of the flex. But since the current levels continue to apply, any bowler that might be allowed if the new proposals were to be implemented could in the intervening period be asked to modify his action. Only to find out when he comes back that under the new rules he need not have bothered.

[The above two items may be a little factually incorrect - I haven't caught up with my news reading completely and this is based on snatches of what I managed to hear & see recently.]

*** I finally have a theory to explain the sadaa-haraa nature of Dev Anand saab. It's called the Phantom theory. No, I'm not going to claim there's something supernatural about all this, but just like Kit Walker, this isn't the original Dev saab. This is probably the 3rd or 4th generation. They all look the same, talk & shuffle-walk the same. (In fact, the sideways-shuffle - remember "chOD-do aa.nchal"? - is all too reminiscent of the crab. A crustacean walk then.)

What else can explain it?

[Update:] A friend also added Dheeraj Kumar to this list.

*** Yippee! I finally won a quiz after about 15 months. Now, the quiz wasn't a great one and we (Niranjan and Samrat, and this year Harish) usually go to the YMCA annual quiz to have a lot of harmless fun, but when you have had an arid year, any sprinkling of water will do. Better to win Queen's Club than to just dream about Wimbledon, eh?

I'm not sure if requirements of maturity frown down upon expressions of joy at winning not-so-significant stuff like this, but then it would just confirm the lack of onset of the afore-mentioned quality in my personality.

*** For some reason there has been a sudden invasion of mosquitoes at home. Not sure why. I unequivocally consider mosquitoes as the number one enemy and will chase them around in deadly pursuit all night (they always win because of sheer numbers). So much so that I'm a bit of an expert in this dangerous sport. Let me share a couple of tips with the populace:

a. Wetting one of your hands (if not both) will dramatically improve your hit rates. The reason being that about 50% of the pests escape even though you knock them down. Make sure you crush any ones with any signs of life - insects are very sturdy even though they may look shattered.

b. If you walk into a room knowing that the buzzers are around but you can't spot them, make your way to the nearest mirror. There are extremely high chances that you will spot a couple of them perched on the glass, peering intently at themselves (not each other, at their own selves). Not being a insect-psychologist, I can't be sure but there may be latent narcissistic tendencies being expressed there. However, it gives the hunter a chance to end this pleasant soliloquy and wash traces of the elimination (not possible on walls).

Remember: eliminate with extreme prejudice. And watch Hun Hunshi Hunshilal (a.k.a Love in the Time of Malaria) starring Mohan Gokhale for inspiration.

*** Last Monday, when we ended up working about 20 hours (this has happened to me before: you think it's done, and then find there's a little bit left - this happens over and over again), everytime I would look up at the clock in the hall, it would be at the exact beginning of the hour. I was living my life by the hour that day-and-night.

And like in some graceful Chinese art film, I could see my reactions slow down. Despite consciously trying to avoid mistakes, I could see myself making them. And more and more. I have never felt this helpless with work stuff before.

You end up thinking it will never ever be solved.

It didn't help that we went home (mostly hungry) during the most coldest night Pune had experienced in the season (a record broken later in the week). Even brass monkeys were spotted taking cover.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall

Update: The matter is now closed. If you read this post, please do read the required apology and Amit's clarification

This is the strangest case of "mirroring" anyone's noticed on the blogosphere. A blog-post complete with comments has been reproduced on a different blog. Later, this turned out to be serial behaviour. Could it be that Plagiarism has hit the blogosphere?

Read about it on Amit's blog. Amit happened to discover that an entire post from Shanti Mangala has been lifted to this blog. A flurry of emails among a few bloggers debated what to do about this. No innocent explanation could be deduced, so it was decided to give this Rohan Pinto a chance to set the record straight or to delete the offending posts/credit the originals.

No replies were received, so some of the bloggers decided to go public. We know that blogs aren't mainstream media yet, however, our content (good or bad) is important to us and flattered initially as we might be, the principles of fairness demand this right to recognition be preserved. Personally, I find this sort of blatant copying so bizarre (why would anyone lift innocuous personal blog posts!) - so bizarre that I'm still waiting for an alternative reasonable explanation.

Interestingly, I was planning a post last week (before work forced a complete shutdown of blogging activities) on the possibilities of bloggers being forced to confront journalistic realities. We've heard how blogging is giving rise to alternative (still amateur) journalists. Will a day come when the top bloggers are sought by product-makers to quietly promote/endorse among blogging circles? Right now, I give more weight to the opinion of a friendly blogger than any reviewer or ad gimmick. Or what do you do about bloggers fuelling rumours (even w/o malafide intentions) to maintain popularity?

All that for a different post I guess. This one is about why Mr. Pinto is making copies of content without credit. We still don't know for sure, but right now we have got to treat it as being intentional. This is not a witchhunt, but an attempt to nip this sort of thing in the bud, or to at least not take it silently. But the lines here are really blurred. Do I have to get a Creative Commons License?

A dish best served legal

When you've been vexed beyond remorse and are repeatedly shown the tarnished spots in a silver cloud, you seek a person or entity crossing your path with a legitimate reason to vent your destructive energies upon. Legitimate, so as to avoid the inevitable feelings of guilt of having dished it out where it wasn't deserved.

And when such a desired opportunity presents itself, you fill up with the anticipation of the perverse pleasure. You rub your hands and get down to it with glee.

I've finished rubbing my hands.

Like having a really bad cold all the time

Simon Tatham is (or should be) well known for developing the popular telnet (and others ) client "PuTTY". Just following links from here and there, I chanced upon his personal FAQ page. Which is essentially about one question & its variants: "Why/How doesn't he have a sense of smell?"

Evidently having got a lot of this, Tatham patiently explains that this is called anosmia and there are other people who have it. The rest of the FAQ is educational even if you aren't olfactorily-challenged.

Wonder if he can smell a rat.

We're going around faster

The next time you complain to your boss that there isn't enough time in a day these days, convince him/her with this pedantic proof.

The review is dead...

Move on now. Don't crowd around, move back sir! That's right, you step back please. Yes, it's dead. Ought to be taking you into custody too really. You, and you, and you there. But we all did it. So who will fling pebbles at the tinsel?

That's right - we killed the movie review. The Radio Star sympathised. It wasn't the Year of the Blog, it was the year of pre-emptive publishing and incontinent interpretations. Wielding which, we nailed it right through the middle.

We learned to write, some in KG, some earlier and some later. Writing was a chore for most of us. But we liked to think. And we liked to watch movies. Then we liked to think about the movies we had watched. Last year, all of us discovered we also liked to write about movies that we liked to think about. Evoking "flood" metaphors wouldn't be appropriate at this time, but words swirled around in overwhelming quantities in a delusive deluge.

The hubbub became a disconcerting bourse-like rabble: what my "cool-tech-lingo" friends would describe as an alarming increase in the S/N ratio. I wanted you to know what I thought of yesterday's film (and day-after's as well). I wanted everyone else to know that as well. You wanted the same too. Together we were all happy - and the disk blocks in unnamed server farms somewhere on this Earth got really busy.

Add to this the tendency of film correspondents of commercial websites to be invited to pre-premieres who would then rush to core-dump their "thoughts" via the nearest available Word instance. Unless if they were beaten by me who saw the same film a week earlier at a film festival. But being professionals, they had to watch & digest Thanksgiving offerings of Shaadi Ka Laddoo as well.

Many reviews were motivated by youthful indignation at injustices done elsewhere. "The slowly sinking branch was not a wasted motif; instead it was an allusion to the frailty of life itself with the river being representative of the wetness of the world" and so on. I cannot believe I wrote a 2500 word Master's thesis on the film "Yuva", which all said and done, was a film! When the story of my life is force fed to juvenile delinquents in the year 2090, the ability to faithfully reproduce those golden words will be their ticket to parole.

From hype to hyperbole, it was a short distance. Our opinions fumigated through the smogosphere and created a combination of heady expectations while paralysing the mind into composing real-time reviews in the darkness of the theatre. Result: we sought yetis while we saw pandas instead. They were cute but cliched and definitely not as abominably alluring as the Snowman.

So guys, the reviews these days tell us the story and what was apallingly wrong with the execution. Proceeding thus in in their own Chinese mutational styles, they made it hard to believe that they're all about the same exposed reels. Picture-perfect pandemonium. We're all cooking from the same recipe, but the broths are all so many and tastt so different.

But wait.

Watching movies in 2004 was a scary experience. I watched 80 films (down from 117 the previous year) and was I a jinx! Every newly released film that appealed to me immediately hit the iceberg and headed for Davy Jones' locker (and I didn't even like "The Titanic" that much). This year I'm inviting producers to pay me off to not watch their offerings. Year-end analysis after "told-you-so" analysis from trade analysts told MR-VB-FA-RK-SA-SR-AG to stop being so shy and to explode into skin-coloured Technicolor like the successful rest.

Which is where I got a chance to protest. Hey! I wasn't sleeping through those films. I enjoyed them and didn't mind paying for them. My friends liked some of them too. Fine if you want to get off the fence and go pop (like the weasel) uninhibitedly, but don't stop making stuff for us. Maybe I'm not from the "masses" so I must be from the chattering class of '04. Perhaps I didn't write to convince, but to justify. I wonder if you guys showed them a boring version and showed me the cool one. For I didn't get those guys and neither did they return the condiments.

Fat chance that you'd have read my lyrical odes among all the doggerel and felt good about them. So good that you'd want to sink the equivalent of the GDP of Bhutan into another black-ball-hole just to earn our limited praise and the collective denunciations of the rest.

Amidst all the foggy expanse of the exploding world of blogs, tune into us to hear sympathetic strains. We're putting out all the signals in a noisy (and just got noisier *now*) world. Perhaps only the web-arachnids are consuming them. But I have the satisfaction of having aimed the antenna high.

(This post is about 800 words, I think. Enough for a short note for the future deli-juves.)

The movie review is dead. Long live the movie review.

Yea, rend ro und up

Brilliant Dave Barry-esque 2004 review by Vinod (who also was among the Mood-I quizzing champs this year and from what I've seen of the questions, should be trying to bury that fact from public attention).

Circ-and-us

I haven't been to one in 20 years (or so I am told) so Sunday's visit to Rambo Circus was indisputably a novel experience. I don't think this is a nostalgic hamaare zamaane me.n recollection, for how you wax on remembrances if they've been wiped clean before?

I am sitting by the ringside, mouth a little agape, expressions and frenzied applause that adults prefer not to openly subscribe to any more. For the acts are nothing short of awesome, more deserving of the description even in adjective-saturated writings.

The excitement (if you are paying attention) faces no immunity in the mind. If there was any such attempt, our defences will fail. Practitioners of stoicism will find their "dhairya" eddying away, replaced by a wish to see the performers make it through unscathed and successful. Why do we wish anonymous people with obviously "showy" names such victories (which they have earn again in 2 hours time)?

I'm struck by the relative lack of enthusiasm among the people beside me. How they keep their hands from breaking into involuntary applause at the sight of that contortion is beyond me! Perhaps it can be explained by the hands being busy digging into the tangy depths of potato chips. Mothers show great assiduousness in the incessant feeding of their young, reminding ornithologists of nestlings and their busy moms.

It takes quite a lot of daring and creativity to induce chewing audiences to smile and clap furiously. Unless, like me, everyone was pondering over the impossibility of replicating even the lightest of juggles or the mildest of back-flips. Being innocent of their ways, sweetly straight-driving elephants lifting the ball over mid-off brought a cheer to me. Russian beauties (probably from Ukraine) delicately sliced pieces of cloth using whips and stepped happily on beds of nails. Flaming torches, large rings, cutlery and balloons flouted Newtonian rules evoking Heisenbergian questions.

The sight of the chimp cycling about only to stop and rest the wheels on the cycle stand aroused the cynical question: was it a man in a monkey suit? (is it too pedantic to say "ape suit"?) Does the audience yawn because even Hindi films have men tumbling about attached to invisible wires these days? Has the distinction between reality and other forms blurred that much?

No one waited for the trapeze artists to alight after an aerial show that I hoped would end early so as to rid me of the anxiety of seeing a mid-air miss (that after silencerless motobikes tracing spherical paths that only the truly geeky would point out as a great physics experiment). People were out and off. Bursting against each other. I always feel Gandhiji didn't quite tell them that civil disobedience was over.

I couldn't climb a net in 2 minutes and jump down 10 feet, even to save my life. But even the clowns do that here. I console myself with the thought that I know the full name of P.T.Usha and how to program in C.

Fleshy soft dartboards

There's no doubt that cricketers are easy mannequins to aim potshots at. A Rediff article today by Ashish Magotra says "Our cricketers need to do more" and berates Indian cricketers for being unresponsive in contributing to the tsunami relief efforts.

As I mentioned in an earlier post on how the media likes to talk about the amount of money cricketers make, I find this sort of finger-pointing pretty atrocious. I don't see why anybody should "demand" such services from cricketers. It's not as if the cricketers aren't doing anything, but the writer wants them to do much more. How much more? The cricket community is generating funds by different means, but what can they do if the effort doesn't meet the approval of mediamen?

Cricketers are being unnecessarily dragged into every fund raising controversy in recent times. Sachin Tendulkar was criticised for auctioning a bat for the Oscar campaign of "Shwaas" instead of directly taking money from his bank. Heck, it's his money - he works hard for all that he gets. He is under no obligation to anyone to part with his money if he chooses not to. Does it make much of a difference if he gives the worth of the bat and auctions it out for more two years later? Do cricketers pay their taxes? Judging by the lack of any reports indicating the contrary, I assume they do so faithfully. Do they make their money by fair means? Yes, by all reports. Are we really sure that cricketers aren't without any social conscience? No. So why do people get on their backs so much and demand so much of them in an aggressive manner not applied to other glamorous professions?

It's upto every individual to decide the measure and quality of his/her contribution. Volunteers are urgently required in the devastated areas, so would I be right in vehemently insisting that cricketers (and sportswriters for that matter) rush to affected areas to offer their services? And berate them if they choose to send food and money instead? Is the writer contributing by means commensurate to his own living standards? For that matter, am I?

And when celebrities jump into the fray in high-profile efforts, we can't help but cynically wonder whether ulterior motives of easy publicity are responsible (Nikhil K raised the inevitable question - and I must confess to sharing some of the skepticism myself at times).

Let cricketers go on with their jobs and let them help out in the way they want and if they wish. Or let's start making more demands of ourselves and our representatives for a start.

Retro-titling

(Lunch table conversation isn't always this productive but is usually this funny.)

Several of us have been at various times, greatly amused and slightly annoyed at the trend of Hindi title : English subtitle/clarification/pointless phrase) - one of the most memorable being Daag the Fire (which I attempted to explore earlier)

The question that arose between chappathis & curry a few days earlier was: what if films of the past had the foresight and the warped semantic language skills to apply such suffixes to their titles? We played Time Traveller and cast our minds back to ancient times (imagine wisps of smoke from dry ice here...)

* Sholay: The Flames of Vengeance
* Deewar: The Wall (of ACC Cement)
* Ganga Jumna: Two rivers
* Ganga Jamuna Saraswati: One more river
* Kala Patthar: The B(i)lack Diamond
* Trishul: One 3-pointed instrument, one raging drama
* Dulhan Wohi Jo Piya Man Bhaye: The Daughter-in-Law of Purity
* Chupke Chupke: The Game of "Ssshhh..."
* Golmaal: The circle of moustachioed trust
* Jallad: The hanger
* Mrityudaata: The death-bringer
* Kalyug: The age of tomorrow
* Dhool Ka Phool: The dirty dunce
* Kismet: The dice of fate
* Angoor: The grapes of froth

... and so on.

The fun part is anyone can play this game. Even you.

Blockbuster

This emerged during a post-lunch walk. I offer this without any trace of mockery.

There has been so much talk of "crossover" films in the last couple of years. In essence, it's a euphemism for taking Bollywood bigtime into the US and other Western minds. I have an even better solution. The best possible "international" film would be the following:

Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Mithun Chakaborty, Rajnikanth. Plus one Asian heroine: Michelle Yeoh perhaps. Or even Angelina Jolie.
Produced by: Ashok Amritraj
Directed by: John Woo

The reason for choosing this group is that they have been able to offer unpretentious "ACTION" action successes in the past. Where most of the "global" filmmakers have gone astray has been in applying too much mind-power, shaving off universality because of thought given to locales and dialogues and messy relationships. Whereas action-adventure is more universally liked. You won't quite get family audiences in large numbers but a movie of this kind would pave the way for more meaningful collaborations.

The casting of the male stars is to capture a large geographical chunk: Rajni brings in South India, South East Asia and the Far East. Mithun draws in Heartland India and Africa. Van Damme & Woo bring in the international action audience.

The only hitch will be the film title. How can anyone come up with an explosive, high-octane name that will do justice to all of these guys?

Disclaimer: I'm not a Van Damme fan, have watched only a fraction of Mithun & Rajni stuff than most others, so I'm not an expert on their films. However, this is the kind of billing that would attract even people like me.

GMail at the end/beginning of the (next) year

The folks at GMail have put up an interesting end of the year summary on the GMail homepage. Don't forget to notice the small change made to the logo showing the quiet emergence of "2005" from the envelope.

:-(

UPDATE:

* With my organisation (like many others) collecting money with a view to making the right donations, the main question is whom to give it to? I'm following the thread opened on Ravikiran's blog for an answer. Also, people like Amit Varma will hopefully be posting on their first-hand impressions on the same theme.

I also want to know if rubbishing the PM Relief Fund and government deliveries completely is valid, for most organisations will prefer to contribute to such funds rather than NGOS whose antecedents aren't always well-known.

* Got this link from Ajay's blog. A blog to help collate information on the earthquake/tsunami: SEA-EAT

* Amit Varma recounts some rather depressing memories from an earlier natural disaster affecting India. Let's hope things are a little better this time.

* Lazygeek who's even closer to the disaster areas than many of us has been updating his blog on what he sees and hears.

The dilemma of a contribution

Undoubtedly, this is the season of nostalgia and "what can I do to make a difference". By some strange coincidence, this December has seen more pravaasi bharatiyas (to give them their PC name) of my acquaintance come home for a visit, and plus the well-timed release of a much-discussed film (read "Swades") has made it a bit of a talking point.

A few days ago, someone I know told me that he/she wouldn't want to go watch "Swades" because it might make him/her want to come back. I didn't say anything then, but I found that a little odd. According to me, if you really, really want to come back, you will. When you weigh the different variables, if you find that is the most reasonable decision you can take, you should take that decision - be it staying abroad or returning to India. Surely a film shouldn't push you into that decision. It can at best evoke a sentiment but not one overpowering enough to beat hard-nosed practicality or to support any social discomfort.

This view could be completely wrong though, for I'm not likely to live elsewhere but here, so I have no first-hand view. The attendant thought with this kind of "homecoming" sentiment is one of contributing to one's country. Saket is facing this dilemma and mentions this in a recent post "Do the right thing!".

The problem is in essence the same, be it contributing to your city, your school, your college, your country, this earth. If the urge to contribute comes from within, find some way of achieving that wherever you are. It's not that everyone living in India actually contributes to alleviating problems. The same guys who find a "Swades/Prahaar/Unnaal MuDiyum Tha.mbi" kind of movie emotionally uplifting might spit on the roads and break every signal from here to eternity. If you don't feel like contributing, I don't think it's fair for anyone to emotionally blackmail you into doing so. Stop feeling guilty about this! It's not necessary to be a Mohan Bhargava and head directly for the smallest nearby village as well. It's probably just a question of self-realisation after all.

[Thanks to Daemon, Sujay and Nikhil for some interesting discussions on related topics]

More local notes

First, what does it matter if I liked the film or not? :-). Ok, for the record, I found the film likeable though flawed. There are several points of interest. I sympathise with the style of filmmaking and identify with the "message". Still, the film is seemingly doing not so well, the same as several other films I liked this year. So I will stop my homilies here...

Jottings

* What's with the awful typos in the credits? "A.R.Rehman" and "Bosco-Ceaser" !!!
* Director's touch: Note the presence of Bapu Kuti (the book that inspired "Swades") on the table in the "Pathfinder" shop when Shahrukh is minding the place.
* So Ashutosh G makes another film in which both Aamir & Shahrukh appear ;-). The 1st Asst Director (Kiran Rao) of this film would have enjoyed that!
* Noteworthy bgms, though somewhat erratically scattered. The title piece played in the harmonica (if I'm not mistaken) should've been part of the released soundtrack.

Indigenous commentary

Local maal is never good. Another example is this absolutely pathetic film called Swades. Here's a list of grouses as to why the movie is so awful:

1. "Emoshun, I want more emoshun in the frame!". How do I know what the actors really mean unless the emotion drips off their face into the bucket kept by their feet?
2. "Dermatological reasons". The only skin on offer was during a wrestling match between pahalwaans and when SRK is having a bath. Women are all wearing saris. Unbelievable!
3. "Where is the intense drama at airport?". There is no chase down the highway, with the hero deciding to not board the plane 3 seconds after lift-off. The only nail-biting moment is during the NASA shuttle launch. Honestly, I thought SRK would dive to abort mission by pressing a button when there was just 1 sec remaining.
4. "'I' se hota hai Item!" The only item song in the film is the heroine playing Sita in a Ram liila song. Aisa kaise chalega? According to the a.nguur-wine, there was to be a sizzling number by a former Miss Antartica.
5. "K-K-K Kaun?" What happened to SRK? Was his back hurting too much? They did not let him act at all. The guy can run, cry, sing and leap - all without lifting a finger. Heck, they didn't even let him recite a poem or two. Instead he's selling books, funda-maaroing on electricity generation and typing into Apple laptops. And not once did they let him say "K-K-Kaveriamma!!!"
6. "Yeh Kahaa.n aa gaye ghum?". Who were all these actors no one had seen earlier? This film must have had such a low-budget for what else explains the absence of Anupam Kher, Amitabh in a special appearance, Celina Jaitley, Vinod Kambli, Alok Nath, Amrish Puri and Joginder? There was not even a college-quad-60sprom-pompom dance by Farah Khan on Sharmistha Roy sets. And I paid Rs. 100/- for this!
7. "Itna sannaaTa kyu.n hai bhai?". My ears proudly ring with tinnitus whenever I see a Sunny paaji - Anil Sharma blackbuster (sic) (with Sunil Shetty in a special inspirational appearance). But here, hardly anyone raises their voice. Why should I pay for such low decibel dialogue delivery?
8. "Cut to cut". Were the censors sleeping? Don't they know that their main function is to ensure a minimum level of nudity and strong language in our films? How can they let this film pass without insisting on a few inserts? Sharmila Tagore should be sacked.
9. "Naach na jaane". Where were the trees? How will the hero-heroin (sic) express their undying love for each other. I was very confused when SRK flashes headlights into Gayatri Joshi's eyes. Was it because he likes her or because he wants to blind her into not complaining about his smoking? There was only one corn field in the entire film. And please, I don't want to see a Raasta-haired Mendicant Deshpande getting jiggy with it. Shabbo ko try kiya hai kya?
10. "Samajhdhar ko ishaara kaafi hai". Dude, tell me: who will go to a village with no broadband, no multiplex with pool table, no Indian Idol, no Coke, no Pizza Hut. Flawed, mate, totally flawed.

All in all, I was disappointed. By the very fact that I had to think about all this in the theatre shows you how entertaining the film was.

Why I am not waving/smiling at you

I often get irritated remarks from people who feel I don't "flicker" in recognition when I see them from a distance. Fair point usually, for I am liable to walk past without a hearty Woosteresque "what ho!". The usual explanations consist of sometimes laying the blame at the doorstep of an introverted personality type (which is easier to mention and difficult to justify) and partly to the development of a pair of slightly myopic eyes (easier to justify but difficult to mention if you don't want to bring up the contents of all your latest personal defects).

There is a third angle of course. For I was quite a forthcoming and enthusiastic "recogniser" in the past. Until a few public setbacks. Of which the most embarassing can be recounted to elicit a few cheap laughs on a boring weblog.

I was expecting a friend of mine to drop by home in the evening. An urgent mission to the grocery store caused my stepping out of the house. Walking down the lane, I spied a figure approaching in the distance - essentially satisfying all major criteria of the expected visitor, namely gender, type of apparel, approximate age and make of vehicle. Eager to intercept her before she got the bad (or good - I never found out) news of my absence at home, I took a step towards the middle of the lane and waved cheerily. As you will have already guessed, it wasn't my friend. And judging from the more than slightly freaked out response of the rider nor was she likely to become one in the future. She swerved with an unpleasant look. Embarassment stemmed from the presence of certain highbrow neighbours in the vicinity who observed every bit of this scene with the interest of a film critic looking for a turkey to went his frustrations upon.

Now perhaps, you believe that my subsequent lowering of excited cheering in reaction to this minor incident was too much, perhaps you are right. In which case I offer my senstive (ahem) and shy nature as the culprit again.

Bottomline: wave to me even if I'm not reciprocating. I'm just not sure if it's you or that girl again, that's all.

Spectacular

I've still not got used to my new pair of spectacles. The problem is that without an intervening piece of lens of a carefully specified radius, the world has more clarity but isn't very sharp,. Whereas it is duller but with a sharper detail than before with the intervention.

Lazy-islators?

If the hard work involved in soliciting votes and soaping up the party leadership are among the reasons why politics isn't a favourable choice for procrastinators like me, in contrast the much easier task of attending Parliament or Assembly is very appealing. If only I could walk into work at 11:00 a.m., then pretend to be miffed by an email or disagree vehemently with a colleague (mutually) and walk out of the place. To the canteen for a nice bite of lunch (with the same colleague) and back to the office-owned house or guesthouse with all amenities. And full pay. If only.

If anyone doubted their intellect, please reconsider. The mere fact that Parliament gets called off more and more early each day proves that politicians are evolving and getting it better each year. I wonder how long it will take them to figure out that throwing just one stick of furniture might cause more melee that could result in more days off than they can do currently.

Pesky-centenary

On the last Thursday & Friday, my college celebrated its "sesquicentenary", arthaat its 150th anniversary. COEP (or as the reluctant postscript goes, "Now known as PIET") was the third oldest engineering college in India (after Roorkee & Guindy - though the head of the COEP alumni association claims it is the 2nd oldest). This post isn't an ode to its greatness. In contrast, it is about why hardly anyone I knew, from my class or in adjacent graduating years, was interested in attending this "celebration".

The main reason is that the function is essentially a back-patting exercise for the college biggies to indulge in. Undoubtedly, COEP has been a leader in technical education over many years. But talk to alumni and you will realise that most of the good things they derived from the place was from essentially student-driven activities and there is a sense that things could easily have been much better.

For those who do not know, COEP is essentially sarkaari in its running. But with a name and background that it possesses, it became the college of first choice in the area among engineering students. Unlike its "academics-only" perception among many people, COEPians usually have indulged in academics as an extra-curricular activity, having their days filled with lots of other activities. The college has done well at activities that have nothing to do with mundane engineering, such as Firodiya, orchestra, street play, debating, quizzing, sports (our football, cricket, hockey and several other teams were among the top ones in the city), magazine and so on. Of course, we had our regular share of University toppers & rankers. The point is not to strew laurels about, just to indicate that all of the above hardly included the contributions of the staff.

Ok, to more immediate irritants. The sesquicentenary celebrations seemed more like a fund-raising event among NRIs among the COEPians in the US. I did not attend any of the events, so I may be unjustified in speculating in this manner. However the appeals on the website for funds (and did the President of India come?) seemed clearly that way. The problem with COEP is that the college staff does nothing to inspire loyalty and confidence among its students and alumni and then expects to be cared for like a loved parent.

Most COEPians I know are quite proud about their alma mater; however this pride does not extend to most of the teachers. COEP has now become autonomous and become PIET. They have been cut from the past. Instead of basking in your greatness, please take this opportunity to recognise the gaping problems:

Hire better teachers: The biggest flaw in COEP: poor teachers. Autonomy seems to nowhere indicate that the college will spend money in hiring better teachers. Heads of Dept. have no confidence in most of their staff. Frankly, several profs. don't have the basic qualification to teach - they are here because they would not be good at anything else. Autonomy should not mean just the convenience of setting and correcting exams in-house. I had to re-learn all my basics after leaving college. I may be a bad student, but I know several others who did similarly, and they all were not poor students. The majority of teachers in COEP are either slow-witted or vindictive or unhelpful and so on. This is not a tirade, but an observation.

Bow to common sense in setting syllabi: Autonomy should mean more meaningful & dynamic contents in syllabi, right? Not if you are in COEP. Two years ago, I attended a meeting to guage views of alumni on drafting a new syllabus for CS & IT. None of our (as in all alumni present at the meeting) practical suggestions could be taken on board, for some strange rules demanded that the First Year be exactly common for all depts without variation and that one dept had to "export" a subject to another dept. in the Second Year and so on and so forth. Ideas on revamping practicals, project work and vivas could not be entertained. Bottomline: the status quo could hardly be breached. It was a waste of three hours.

Infrastructure: Funds are being solicited in the name of improving infrastructure. Instead of just spending on infrastructure like laptops for all and more bandwidth (all this seems just IT related infrastructure, btw), spend on getting better instructors. We had no infrastructure to speak of 4 years ago in our dept., unless if you were shooting an attack on a ravaged war camp. But all CS students could afford a PC at home to work with. We need better teachers, or atleast teachers who can operate the so called new infrastructure. I'm willing to wager that hardly anyone in COEP knows network or system administration, and I'm sure the college won't bother hiring anyone with that experience. Result: the new comps that have been purchased will be used as usual by peons to play Solitaire. The rooms are dusty and health hazards. What talk of infrastructure when the CS dept has no classrooms and is housed in what would best described as the outhouse of a bhoot bangla where even ghosts would have asthma in the dust.

Students going elsewhere: Very rarely does any COEP student do an innovative project of any kind during their undergrads. In contrast, there are always stories of such things from colleges like PIET & VIT. It points to probably more motivation for such things there and also a tradition. At COEP, we have been content to just do our "maaz" for being 12th toppers and go to the BC deriding acads. Not that we did any worse, but we didn't do much good as well. I think the best students no longer think of COEP as their top choice - in some courses, other colleges have stolen the show and with far greater justification.

The name: I wonder if the college management thought that Shakespeare is always right. Changing the name to PIET singlehandedly wiped out all the accumulated brand equity that COEP had earned in the past. All recognition among other colleges and universities and corporates has been made tenuous. People think it to be suspiciously the same as PICT or just a typo. Almost every alumnus who has spoken at a PIET/COEP function in the last year has blasted this decision. The decision is devoid of any common sense as far as I can see - just the whims of a few people who want to be seen as taking a forward step. What has changed beneath this superficial nomenclatural adjustment?

I'm more than a little peeved because I've known the place for 7.5 years now. To try making a difference, my friends and I gave much of our time in the last 3 years to teach in our dept. The realisation at the end of it was the place is a mammmoth that does not want to lift its tail to flick the irritant flies. It revels and wallows in its status quo. Autonomy is just new paint on a crumbling edifice. I won't be nostalgic because I go there every week. That's only for people who can be touched for funds without making too many demands. Last week at COEP was probably like a Karan Johar film tailor-made for his audience abroad where you shell out money unquestioningly and feel great about it.

Entertaining Saturday

Last Saturday turned out be an unexpectedly interesting day.

It began with a 4-km walk, the first stage in my plans to be able to walk 10 km at a stretch by Feb without feeling too many side-effects . When my normal, procrastinating self protests, I point out the wonderful early winter morning Pune weather to it. Also the rate of deterioration of civic amenities might mean one had to breathe in as much of this tangy freshness as possible.

BC quizzing later that day was a reminder of how things had been in the so-called golden days, and it had something to do with the fact that George was in attendance.

A friend of George was putting up a play in the evening, so Harish and I decided to accompany the senior to it. Having reached the venue early and finding the place empty, we decided to have a Puneri classic "Sujata Mastani" (For those raising a suspicious eye, it is a food preparation). The service was quite notable, but since George claimed it for his blog, I will not mention them here. The old Pune city is usually a labyrinth, a converted "chakravyuuh" for those as directionally challenged as me. But for some strange reason, I actually got us three around making all the right (as in right & wrong) turns. It also reminds me of the directions someone gave us that included the curious note to make a "sudden left" after going straight.

Back to the small hall. It was so small that people sitting on the floor mat could have reached out to touch the actors. Girish Joshi was the friend in question, an ex-COEP student, had written & directed the play, and was also playing one of the two roles. Tickets were still not being sold, so we went to Laxmi Road where George & Harish wanted to check out the "Pankaj" music collection.

En route, George made the pertinent observation that in "Rok Sako To Rok Lo", Sunny Deol looks like the Phantom (perhaps he will elaborate when he gets over the "lots of time, a lot less bandwidth" problem). I had never been past the electronic goods at "Pankaj" but had heard about the good "maal" from friends in the area. Gaped as George scooped up a bunch of CDs (an American dollar goes a long way in the fist) and thus successfully tempted Harish to do likewise, though not in the same quantity. Something George, in a John Cleese-like taunting, never let Harish forget for the rest of the evening. For the record "99.9 FM" seems like an interesting album just going by the credits :-) . And yes, I learnt that anonymous music shopkeepers and storeworkers can be called "Jimmy".

Dashed back to the play, where people (who seemed more like friends and family and their friends of the crew) were trickling in. Final Draft was written very well and enacted even better. The theme was engrossing - on writing, creativity, originality, passion and the lack of it, manipulation and self-discovery. A great example of what can be achieved without too much fuss and ostentation. My play viewings have been limited and I'm not a critic, but I can tell you that the play never flagged once in its ~100 mins. I hope Girish Joshi and his production crew can take it to more places and people.

Thanks to the ongoing Hathway-ESPN Star blackout, missed both #435 earlier and #34 that day. Compounded by the double the next day.

On Swades's chances

For some unknown reason, like many people I feel Swades is probably not going to do as well as Lagaan. Some feel its story won't stand up, some feel the length (about 3.5 hours) will be a detriment as will the lack of crowd-friendly elements. Perhaps it will be too moralistic & sermon-like. Shah Rukh Khan is the most subdued we have ever seen on screen (in trailers), not necessarily a bad thing. I wonder nervously about the talents of Gayatri Joshi.

One reason why I would like to see Swades triumph is for Gowariker's sake. Evidently, he is passionate about his themes and has perhaps moved away from his 1st two attempts where he picked plots unfamiliar to his sensibilities. I have had no reason to be cynical yet. Atleast, it's better than some Arindam Chaudhari-Vashu Bhagnani credit/debit ledger based effort.

Seven sisters

Humble respects to M.S.Subbulakshmi. However she will be remembered through her voice as long as people play staples such as the "Suprabhaatam".

******** On DD Tamil, another legend. D.K.Pattamal on her life, her playback singing, intense patriotism, humility & modesty, sorrow at the nation's condition and the wish to sing till her last breath. ******** Sawai Gandharva is the place to be in Pune if you are a (Hindustani) Classical music devotee. Bhimsen Joshi ends the 3 day programme today. Nikhil, who's been to all sessions, says it was quite enjoyable. I still don't have the guts or knowledge to last through them, for my musical knowledge is still extremely infantile. Perhaps next year. I did attend a Shivkumar Sharma concert a month ago. ******** December is also the season for the "Marghazi" Carnatic music season in Madras. I had been (reluctantly) dragged to several "kutcheris" as a child - it is a veritable feast if you're an enthusiast. The mixture of free & "in-demand" and the range of virtuosos to nervous debutants must be quite satisfying to all the public. The most memorable of the ones I had attended a decade ago were the ones by Maharajapuram Santhanam and by Dr. Yesudas (the latter was absolutely superb).

The music of Kisna

Probably the only reason I purchased the Kisna CD was to get hold of the Rahman tracks. For I'm not much of a Subhash Ghai fan (though he does manage to get decent music for most of his films) and don't adore Ismail Darbar's work though I have my respect for his productions (my opinion being that "Devdas" wasn't as special as "Hum dil...").

Overall, I came away disappointed. The two Rahman vocal tracks are excellent: Hum Hai.n is pal yahaa.n" is melodious and haunting, though very simple. But the repeated appearance of this tune in the form of other instrumentals is a litte monotonous. Sunita Sarthy makes a name for herself in "My Wish Comes True", an English number whose type I have not encountered in Indian films before. The choral part towards the end is especially good on the ears.

The disappointment then stems from the rest of the album. Apart from "Woh Kisna Hai" and parts of some songs, the Ismail Durbar contribution is below par, though of a certain basic quality. I yawned through some of them, though I'm willing to listen again without reservation to see if they grow on me.

VFM-wise, the CD turned out to be a box of complaints. There are hardly any lyrics, the composition credits aren't very clear and the instrumental credits are not available. Instead of a contest to rank 6 out of 12 songs to be judged by a jury consisting of the director & MDS (!), they could've done a better job on the inlays. I've heard that the cassette at Rs 55 has only 5 tracks which is really crib-worthy (the 12 track CD is 145, and there is a 16 track "Deluxe" version of whose price I am unaware of).

Overall, the album is a "could-have-been", only if ARR had had the time. Though music reviewers everywhere seem to have given the album a big thumbs-up, so perhaps you shouldn't listen to me and just judge for yourself.

Google Groups

And now you can create a group at Google Groups.

Blinding darkness

Deep holes and darkness
Black spots and blue hopes
Looming time, limitless
Bounded acts, gagged ropes

Fickle mind, deserted luck
Forgotten triumphs, lost worlds
Messy futures, unpromised muck
Bleak landscape unfurls

Backseat chair
Unfulfilled talent
Burdened care
In nightly torment

False signs
Desolate times
Dull shines
Mental grimes

Incoherent directions
No writings on the wall
Illegible instructions
Still surely the fall

Now appears the sun
Untrustworthy, eyes shielded
Doubt has you won
Glimmer has yielded

Escape routes
Unknown, invisible
Plastic fruits
Tastless though amiable

Spread the wings
Free from your mind
Sweet falsehoods it sings
To enslave you behind

Carpe Diem
Awake, O' unconscious
Evade them
You, yourselves, so vicious

Out, out, damned spot
Pursue relief and balm
Lest you rot
Between dream and calm

Cursed to stumble
Lack of vision
Left to crumble
Before the intermission

No Deus ex machina
Where the helping hands?
Perennial in-betweener
Fragile thought strands

Pronouncing judgement:
Overhyped in prediction
Just mediocre in element
Expectations mostly fiction

Not good enough to make it
Only smart enough to frown
Not strong enough to take it
Just soft enough to drown

Sad, really sad!

I didn't think it would be this corny even with a name like "Pavitr Prabhakar".

A preview of some of the images from "Spiderman India - I" has some incredibly silly and atrocious "porting" to Indian conditions - by a group of people who seem to have no clue what contemporary India is like. Worst of all, these people essentially seem to be of Indian origin.

Dhoti-clad Spidermen and villains swearing "Chirkut" at each other?

And on top, this amazingly patronising "glossary" that is actually quite hilarious! (Click on the image and zoom in). Though I must say, the artwork is quite excellent.

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"Spiderman India" - Silly Glossary