The Magna Carta Joke

From about the age of 10, I could remember that the historic signing of the Magna Carta happened in the year 1215. How? Thanks to this joke which I read in Reader's Digest:

A tourist guide is with a group of visitors at Runnymede, where the Magna Carta was signed. He tells them: "this is where the Magna Carta, or the Great Charter, was signed in 1215.

One visitor looks at his watch and remarks: "Damn, we just missed it by about an hour, then".

"Genome" by Matt Ridley

"Genome" is undoubtedly one of those books that will change the way you look at the world and yourselves. The triumph of the book is keeping the matter accessible to lay readers, without dumbing the import down. Though I thought Ridley's discipline ran out towards the last couple of chapters in terms of accessibility, it's still something you should pick up at the earliest.

After all, it's your "Autobiography in 23 Chapters" (Flipkart link here).

San Diego Zoo and the suffocation of choice a.k.a the buffet problem

Visited San Diego Zoo, considered by many to be among the best zoos in the world. There's always something conflicting about zoos: on one hand, however gilded the cage, the animals are in captivity, but on the other, we get to be so close to them and feel why its worth conserving as many of them as possible (which this zoo is also famous for).

Saw my first ever gorilla, toucan, and polar bear (partial list here). It's also one of the most accessible outdoor spaces I've ever seen, with even an escalator segment that helps you navigate some of the steeper parts of the zoo.

We must have seen about 40-50% of the zoo, given the size of the campus. That's pretty much the most you can do in 4-6 hours, especially with children in tow. Which means you have to choose. With a dazzling array of choices, this act is very difficult. You have this problem at large buffets and bookstores (ok, *I* have this anxiety at bookstores).

People have been studying the problems of abundance - when we can't have it all, it makes us uneasy, for making a choice implies saying no to something else, and thus a potential loss - what if you made the wrong choice?

Sheena Iyengar's book Buy The Art Of Choosing sums this up nicely.

The usefulness of naivete

Just completed an exercise of collating all the questions we did for Doolally's weekly pub quiz in 2014. Realised how much our thinking has changed, evolved, even transmogrified since Jan 2014.

And how naive, new, and noble we once were! But it's good to know that state of mind, which accompanies anything that you begin from zero, can be rediscovered. Gives you a chance to refresh and scrape off cynicism accumulated in other aspects of life.

Passive Aggressive

The great thing about passive voice in bureaucratic writing is how it allows for the person doing the writing to not attribute any responsibility to any persons(s).

Consider:

"It has been decided to remove access to xyz"

Not "I have decided" or "we have decided", but "it has been". Borderline euphemistic, don't-come-complaining-to-me. Blame the ether.

Richard Attenborough

Sir Richard Attenborough passed away in Aug 2014. Until my early twenties, I only knew of him as the man who directed 'Gandhi' (I hadn't even seen Jurassic Park.) Then, I happened to read a book about him, which opened up his acting life and shone light on his other films which had been out-dazzled by 'Gandhi'.

In 2002, for my Mastermind India final, I was fast running out of ideas for a topic in the specialised round (there were just 3 weeks between the semi-final and the final, and it would have been premature to think of the final before). I eventually ended up opting for "The Films of Richard Attenborough". It could have been a disaster, considering that these were the days before movies, especially less popular ones, were easily available all around you as is the case today. I was banking on that book from the library and IMDB to get me through.

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It didn't happen - I got a call from the producers asking me if I would mind switching to another topic ('The Tommy and Tuppence Stories of Agatha Christie'). I didn't know why that happened, but I had no hesitation in accepting - it was an easier topic to prepare for and I just needed to ensure I had all the books of the series (I had 3 of them already). Incidentally, there is a tiny connection between T&T and Sir RA: his wife of many years Sheila Sim and he had portrayed the detective duo (on stage, I think).

Later, I watched a little more of his work and would have no hesitation recommending the following for your viewing pleasure:
1. 10 Rillington Place - he acts as your uncle next door who is also into serial killing.
2. Chaplin - directed by R.A, features Robert Downey Jr. in a well-acted biopic on the famous Charlie
3. Shatranj Ke Khiladi - as General Outram, the no-nonsense imperialist
4. The Great Escape - leading the secret escape committee in a PoW camp

I have yet to watch Brighton Rock, his big breakthrough performance.

I got somewhat tired of watching the slightly too-positive 'Gandhi' over the years, but it's a tremendous piece of cinematic work - kind of like watching a long, carefully constructed Test match innings by the likes of Dravid or Gavaskar. And like their notable performances, there are a lot of great behind-the-scenes stories of how he went about putting it together.

Now that would make a great movie.

My Mint Lounge articles and the benefits of an editor

In the past, I've occasionally contributed travel-related articles to some in-flight magazines and wrote some short stories for some publications and contests. This year, thanks to a personal resolution to begin writing with more purpose once again and thanks to the fact that I know the Travel editor for Mint Lounge (Shamanth Rao), I pitched and published two articles for Mint Lounge.

The articles are:

1. about the 'Waadaas' (traditional residences) of Pune

2. about the Computer History Museum in California

Unlike in my earlier submissions, this went through a slightly more intense editing process. Mint Lounge has a very clearly stated set of guidelines on what the article's typical 'voice' should be like: it should read like a personal narrative, not like a travel guide's summary or neither an extremely autobiographical piece. The first version of my first article fell through so many of these guidelines that I think we had to send out a rescue mission and some oxygen. Based on the editor's pointed inputs, I reworked the entire structure almost inside-out. What you see in the article above is largely that structure (and if it works, I can't take much of the credit for it).

The second time, I had a fair idea of what worked, so the process was easier and shorter. This time, most of the follow-up work was spent on fleshing out details: 'it's still not vivid enough', 'describe that object in greater detail', 'who was around and what were they doing' and so on.

Having someone skilled looking at your work really helps: it's a mix of an outside-in view, detachment, the ability to see what works and what doesn't, what can be emphasized and what can be thrown out without remorse, and most importantly, in my case - someone that I, by pitching and researching and writing, had made a personal committment to in terms of seeing this through to the end.

I was one of the earliest bloggers in India. That was a decade and more ago. About 7-or so years ago, I joined Facebook & then Twitter. The last time I blogged - seriously that is - was in Sept 2013. I made over 300 posts in 2003 and just 9 in 2013 (2014 - has just one before this - that too for some contest).

I think I'm coming back here now. One is that it doesn't get too many hits now, which is good. Plus, I won't be suckered into hankering for likes and RTs (which I anyway don't manage to pull). There is just so much volume (and hence noise) on every other media (social, news, etc.) that I think this is like a slow-food version that I like.

Plus I think I'm ready to write a little more. Let's see - 90% of my projects fizzle out soon, so let's give this another shot.

A new way to vote - Indian General Elections 2014 with social mobile apps

This entry was written for a contest organised by IndiBlogger and WeChat: here's the contest page

Ok, so everyone (above 18) can vote, and presumably everyone who can vote (at least in urban and semi-urban India) has a phone. Some of them also have smartphones with apps that can do everything from entertain you, to inform you, to keep you in touch with friends (on a second-by-second basis), and even show you pictures of cats doing Aarti with Alok Nath.

So how do you put this massive infrastructure to get people out to vote? For, if past records are any guide, voting in a General Election isn't necessarily always high in priority for people.

Here are some ideas on getting butts to booths:

1. Mobile+Social is a great way to show off your achievements. How about making the casting of a vote as an achievement worth bragging about? And even something that gets publicly commended? Here's one possibility:

- Let's say you go to an election booth to cast your vote. You get 'indelibly' inked on your finger.

- Now, get out, and take a pic of your finger with a mobile app. This sends it to a special a/c (say, a person/group on WeChat) or a twitter a/c or a FB page or an email id.

- Get a personalised autographed pic as a 'thank you' from your favourite film/sports star - people who have signed up to be election ambassadors. (Remember the BCCI-Sachin Tendulkar autographed digital picture). Perhaps even the Chief Election Commissioner or even the President of India!

- Now share that around on your network!

2. Mobile is a great way to get people banded together, to plan for a trip. Use a mobile app to find out when your friends are planning to go visit the polling booth. Or use it to get a lift to the polling booth from someone in your neighbourhood, in case you don't have easy accessibility to the location yourself. Use Mobile for Mobility!

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3. Finally, sign up as a volunteer with the mobile app to help (gently) get people in your network out to vote. The app tells you who among your n/w is yet to go out to vote. Give them a call or message them on election day and see how you can get them to go and vote. You can even get a series of avatars in which to make this plea: for example, the Arnab Goswami avatar will help you ask: "the nation demands to know why you haven't yet voted!"

Ok now, go out there, and vote. That's the least you can do for yourself.

A.R.Rahman - Coke Studio 2013

A.R.Rahman's production for Coke Studio's Season III (which also inaugurated the season) is an almost perfect capsule of his career's work: the accessible innovations, the spiritual reference points, the C-L-A-R-I-T-Y of the sound, the difficult balance between styles, the new faces, the do-I-need-to-tolerate-this rap, the sincere yet often bad diction, and those irresistable, unavoidable goosebumps.

I sometimes think we are fortunate to have film music in India: this allows talented musicians a potentially expansive breadth with the option of breaking rules, traditions, formats, and boundaries. Part of Rahman's success has been the willingness to push beyond existing playbooks, collaborate with a diverse range of creative people, and to use his influence to bring new voices and sounds to the fore. In my limited knowledge, I can only think of Pt. Ravi Shankar and R.D.Burman to have exhibited a similar creative diversity while being hugely successful at pulling it off. What they can also do is guide you, the listener, if you are so willing, to new places, gently and gracefully.

Take "Zariya" - a Tibetan nun, a Jordanian singer, a continuum, a set of talented backing vocalists, Hindi lyrics, Sivamani. Soaked in abstract thought. It took me a while to get used to all of this (individually and together), but it works together. Ineffably so. And that deep, haunting sound in your ears, that is a Rahman trademark.

"Naan Yen", set to the questioning words of the late Vaalee, asks questions and draws from rustic metaphors. This song clearly underlines the value of knowing the language of the lyrics: unlike someone like Vishal, Rahman has been more of a 'onomatopoeic' composer, by which I mean that often, the combination of the song's lyrics and its musical neighbours is because of how they sound together rather than to underscore the semantics of the lyrics (if this was hard for you to parse, it is harder for me to explain). This is more so with non-Tamil lyrics. In "Naan Yen" (and in the other Tamil song), the music is not just a guy-in-the-next-seat to the lyrics, but is in an intimate embrace - each fits in snugly with each other. Add to that, Rahman's much improved singing (with the gamakams), and his sister Rayhanah's opening and backing vocals.

"Naan Yen" is a potential top-10/top-20 contender on that hard-to-break-into list of "The Best of Rahman". That, for me, is saying something.

"Aao Balmaa", a multi-generational classic, has in it so many things to rave about that one needs to properly sit down, focus, and make a good fist of it.

There's Rahman's piano-playing. There's the spectacular 'Guitar' Prasanna, who is an absolute joy to listen to, solo or in jugalbandi mode. There's the bass guitarist, Mohini Dey, who, if you factor in her age (she's a teenager) seems almost unreasonably talented. The family of Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan, three generations of it, completely at home in this left-field take on something they've probably sung a hundred times in a traditional manner. I am completely bowled over the percussion (Sivamani can often be too gimmicky for me, but not here). But what hit me between the eyes was the jazz-like dance between the piano and the guitar.

That's when you realise this isn't mere Hindustani-meets-Carnatic-meets-Western-meets-jazz, but something that you don't take a scalpel to.

In "Ennile Maha Oliyo" (that is one heck of an opening line), Rahman decides to show that his other sister, Issrath, can sing too. It's feels like an abbreviated song (is there more that will be revealed in the album that the siblings are working on?), but powerful in its quietness. The swarams are crystal-clear, the percussion is muted, and the arrangement adds a dimension for which the word 'ethereal' will do nicely to describe. And there's Prasanna.

Suchismita Das - I've never heard a swara-motor-mouth such as her. What a singer! To steal the thunder in a gallery of stars, as she does in "Jagaao Mere Des Ko", is an achievement. Rahman's opening for the Bengali section uses Tagore's lyrics as a prose poem rather than setting it 'properly' to a tune, but when the Hindi lyrics (Prasoon Joshi) kick in, you are ready to forgive his diction because the melody and orchestration soars. The backing ladies, Mohini Dey, Prasanna, Sivamani give the song its wings (do you really need caffeine stimulants when you can listen to this?) and its terminal velocity. For once, just for once, Blaaze's rap is tolerable. Sivamani's kunnakol is somewhat forced on the scene, but the song recovers, takes off. Off the cliff. End of story!

"Soz-e-Salaam", not telecast in the first episode (it will be on the season-ending episode), but available on the Coke Studio website, is a soothing balm from the Mustafas. It ticks off many Rahman boxes: the spare orchestrations, the higher-pitch voices, the interesting sounds. It touches, ever so lightly, on many of his best works, reminiscent of the Bombay theme and his 90s songs of the 90s that so prominently featured woodwinds.

In summary, this tells you what some Indian film musicians, when let loose, can do even if they have the baggage and expectations of two decades of work. And when you hear Rahman ask "Naan Yen Piranden" ("why did I come into this world?"), you know the answer to that.

Also see Karthik's review on Milliblog.

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(A note: if you've heard the songs on TV or from the internet via your PC speakers, do yourself a huge favour and listen to them through your head-phones. There's so much happening that you can risk permanent tinnitus if ony to have this ringing in your head.)

Verbal Lice This

Does the modelling agency have a ramp up plan for its new models?
Does a book club meeting end with all its members on the same page?
Did the jail superintendent keep the hangman in the loop?
Did the stunt supervisor send out the action items to his team?
Was Mike Tyson thinking out of the box when he decided to give Holyfield an ear-ful?
Does the HLL distributor have any leverage over company salesmen?
Did that sherpa touch base with the mountaineering expedition?
What was the outcome of the parachutist's blue-sky thinking?
Just how much bandwidth did the fat drummer need?
Just how did the epidemiologist's slide go viral?
Was Dolly the sheep the best-of-breed option?
What is the obstetrician's next major deliverable?
What is the telepath's mind-share of the market?
Wasn't Cain who made the first killer app?
Going forward, get it into the marathon team not the tug-of-war team, ok?

(posted elsewhere, some time ago)

Poetry by numbers

My one-liners are one-dimensional,

My dohas are so square,

My trivenis are trivial,

And my quatrains are four-gettable.

Just like this one.

Posted a while ago somewhere else.

The World That Week

After about a year or so of telly-abstinence, I have once again begun watching the news on TV, that too at that traditional hour between 9-10 pm. Things really are the same: the conflicts of Afghanistan, global recessionary trends, Indian film awards, and young Sachin Tendulkar's plans for the summer.

Yes, young Sachin.

I have, you see, stumbled upon the fact that at 9 pm each weekday, NDTV Profit airs episodes of "The World This Week", that 90s show. Mercifully, there are still those of you old enough to remember a time when news studios were not like the set of Hollywood Squares and when someone read out the news to you instead of behaving as if they missed those days of quoting prices on the floor of the BSE. Right into your malleus-incus-stapes. 

So yes, I have been watching news from around the world; only that it is from two decades ago (they are currently in 1992 with the Barcelona Olympics around the corner). It is instructive to note illustrations of both "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" as well as "plus ça change, +1 change". Afghanistan stays rocky, Scotland is still looking for independence, the Tories are back in power. But there is no Gabby Sabatini, Narasimha Rao is forgotten, and terrorism is prime-time news every week. 

"The World This Week" was anchored calmly and patiently by the psephologist-turned-mediaman Prannoy Roy, whom history will now only recall as having unleashed upon the us the likes of Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai, and He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named-BUT-SHOUTED-OUT-WITH-EXTREME-OUTRAGE-NOT-TO-MENTION-PREJUDICE. There was the bearded special correspondent Appan Menon, whose preferred style of letting his interviewees say everything would soon be rejected by every media school's syllabus in the last decade. TWTW was an example of how news could be interesting, even if it was about the elections in France or South Africa, and relevant, with reports on the then emerging AIDS epidemic or rap music from the US. Where breadth of coverage didn't mean sacrificing depth, and listening to the news just once a week meant a chance to let the substantive events surface above the knee-jerk flavour of the day.

This may be the nostalgic rumblings of a Doordarshan-era apologist who forgets that then, news could often be staid and unimaginative, or worse, dangerously status quoist and propagandist. But programmes such as TWTW and production houses such as NDTV showed us the light at the end of the TV camera and laid the foundations for TV news media as we know it today. If they turned me on TV, their successors have sadly turned me and the telly off at 9.

But not any more. Tune in to TWTW: the good thing is you know how most things are going to turn out, so there are no worries. You can see a somewhat random collection of sports clips from alpine skiing and Italian Serie A action, and the occasional entertainment hilarity such as the inaugural "Natraj Awards", billed as India's answer to the Oscars. You can live in the past with the assurance that you made it to the future despite the news.

And for once, the nation should demand to know how.

1000+ days at Infinite Zounds

Some of you know that I run a daily quiz blog called "Infinite Zounds". Over at the blog, I'm celebrating going past 1000 days & questions - this week, I'm asking readers there to give the blog a little pat on the back in whichever way they like (by giving us Facebook likes, writing a blurb for us, or telling your network about us).

If Infinite Zounds is something that has educated, entertained, or enlightened you in any way, here's where you can give us some luuvv :-) (click on the image below):

Employee-centric hiring notices

Many months ago, I was asked to draft a hiring notice for a position in my group. Now, I've been working in teams whose raison d'etre is 'innovation', so it is reasonable to assume that we not only do innovative things, but also are seen to be innovative (i.e. creative/different/novel/better/more effective) in everything we do.

I don't like most job postings, especially in the tech world - they are never candidate-centric. The average job ad will give you a dry list of expected skills and tell you something about the group looking to hire. They don't give you even a fraction of a hint as to what it would be like to work there, and why you would consider it worth your while in a life-changing way to work there.

They don't market the job in an engaging manner and they don't treat you as a human, or at least a human that thinks beyond keywords.

So I drafted what I thought was an engaging note, trying to succinctly describe what it would be like to come work for us, what someone could reasonably hope to achieve, and why someone should consider all this in the first place. Especially, since we were a off-beat team (or so I thought) that was both 'cool' (in theory) and 'challenging' (not being run-of-the-mill).

The ending of this story isn't hard to foresee: the notice went up to my supervisors who, in their wisdom, edited most of it out and in the end, we were left with a desiccated list of keywords. And yes, we did hire someone eventually (it's always hard to say if he was the best man for the post - time will tell), so it wasn't as if that was ineffective. But I thought we lost an opportunity to signal so many intangible attributes about who we are and what we do. Perhaps the people in charge of the notice didn't share those feelings with me.

A job notice is perhaps the first engagement that a candidate has with a hiring manager or a group or a company. First impressions are a great way to strike a chord. Don't lose that opportunity.

Blockboard

So you sit there, literally at the eleventh hour, wondering: how do we get here once again? The blackboard of the mind, so fresh and unsullied in the morning, brimming with the promise of a plan, a straightforward journey chalked out in white, red, yellow, and green, where all you had to do was to show up, follow the dotted line, and pick up the pot at the end of the rainbow.

But here we are, sitting in front of your laptop/book/slate, watching a tangled mess that even Jackson Pollock would refuse to entertain with kindness. Visual evidence of another day spent idling, in neutral, in reverse gear. And when the engine spluttered to life, it took you elsewhere, on paths in black and grey, fun but guilty nevertheless. Or so you claim.

So here you are, with the clock's hammer poised to strike down upon your head with vengeance, when you decide to sleep over it. Tomorrow, the slate will be wiped clean, freshly gleaming, waiting for your stratagems which it shall spoil - but only by the end of the day.

Business as unusual.

How Tendulkar helped me retire, unhurt

I call my generation of Indians as the "Doordarshan generation", because of the shared monoculture embodied by the national broadcaster and the overwhelming nostalgia for the DDiot box. "Tendulkar generation" may be another good candidate: we came into sporting consciousness by surfing the after-wave of the '83 Cup victory and helped make cricket a single-minded national obsession.

In the centre was "Sachiiin, Sachin". He was the only child prodigy we could tolerate and not feel envious of. He became a solitary and tragic soap operatic figure - Fate, doubtlessly clad in rich georgettes and heavy makeup, constantly conspired to thwart his success and tried his sincerity and talent in every episode. Like our moms would with Tulsi and her ilk, we stood by him, knowing Sachineva Jayate. There were those who doubted him, and fought from the shoulders of Sourav or Rahul, but we knew we'd win in the end.

And look who is still padding up. The end has come and gone.

My relationship with sport has changed dramatically. It may be a dreaded sign of becoming a grown-up or an inevitable cooling off. The first signs came when I realised I had accumulated very few stories of watching sport from recent times. No more I-sat-up-and-watched or did-you-also-notice or I-still-can't-believe-it. The few stories that stuck featured Federer, Nadal, and Messi. Where at one point, I had shelves full of daring cricket stories, now I had the woodwork being gnawed away by the termites of apathy.

Like a Nick Hornby character, I could write an autobiographical account purely through the lens of Indian cricket and Tendulkar. The Abdul Qadir over: I was at a friend's place, watching my friend's father howling in delight over this little fella smacking the world's best leggie. Aamir Sohail's wicket to turn around the '92 WC match: at home, during exams, just after a immensely annoying but short power-cut. '93 Hero Cup Semi-Final: at cousin's place the day after father was admitted to hospital with malaria. The Pakistan Test at Chennai: on stage at a quiz final, getting score updates from the only person on stage with both a pager and a complete lack of interest in sport.

And so on and so forth through the nineties and the noughties and what-do-they-call-this-decades, proving wrong uncles who thought India couldn't chase big scores, proving friends right through big-match failures, collapsed in prayer and stuck in superstitious chairs, and choosing to stay away from debates of being "overrated". And a World Cup win, and a 4th innings chase, and some other tidbits. (But never a direct hit: he always sucked at throwing down the stumps to run someone out.)

We knew that one day it would happen: Sachin would retire. This wasn't a Superman comic or a Nancy Drew book or a myth about a Chiranjeev. Things came to an end. And then there was personal business. In these enlightened times where everyone sings solemn paeans to productivity, it was hard to ignore the time being spent in watching your team lose. Or win. It was hard to tell the difference any more. So I knew I would have to move on too. Perhaps, somewhat like with friends from fifth standard, I could promise to 'keep in touch'. But the channel doesn't show Sportscenter anymore and the subcription to Sportstar lapsed two years ago.

So how would I feel? What would I miss? What would I do, post-retirement? These questions circled around me, setting up me up for a soft dismissal that I would weep over.

The Master Blaster to the rescue. I don't know how, but I've been led to a point where I just couldn't care. The fan-muscles had atrophied, but with overuse. No debate would goad me into a response; no allegation would rile me; no snigger would evoke an instinctive reaction. Yes, Tendulkar is still around, far beyond what anyone would have expected a decade ago. He's overseen my transition from naive and rabid supporter to oxymoronic objective fan looking for beauty in sport to a devil-may-care-but-I-don't bystander. This is mostly true of cricket; since my involvement with other sports was relatively skin-deep, they have escaped this fierce U-turn.

100 hundreds, or 24 years not out, or 30k+ runs - the numbers are so big that they are insignificant. Somewhat like the length of the orbit of Jupiter. It makes utterly no difference to my life - and if he hadn't been around for so long, I would not have realised that.

This makes my cricket retirement utterly bearable, and I have, like with many things in life, Sachin Tendulkar to thank for it.

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* Some of my old Tendulkar posts
* A truly illuminating article by Jonathan Wilson on the value of sport to our lives.

During Sunrise, During Sunset

Why do we find sunrises and sunsets beautiful? So much so that we will wake up infernally early to make trips to hill station "points" and brave mosquitoes and crowds at dusk at ends of peninsulas, just to get a glimpse of something that is literally an everyday occurence.

It does not, unlike symmetric faces and rounded hips, take its cue from evolutionary benefits. Nor does it obey any trends of the week imported from Milan or Cannes. These oranges and lemons can be had free, cheaper than a penny. It's not special enough for us to get up each day or escape the workday to admire the sight out of our windows (agreed, it has to stand on its heels to be seen beyond skyscrapers and gets overshadowed by the false tinkle of the neon lights). But, once in a faintly blue moon, when you do get a glimpse of it, it's bigger than you, and you're a part of it.

How lucky, therefore, that we should live on a planet whose sun which is so mad about it that it not only revolves around us like a smitten suitor, but also puts out such a spectacular show at no charge, twice a day, on an accessible screen? That the colours are so vivid, just to suit our taste? Or is this too anthropocentric a conclusion? Did we find it boring at first ("I'm so tired of all this crimson and scarlet and yellow. But it does remind me of last night's supper")? Did we, as one of P.G.Wodehouse's poets did, make comparisons to roast beef?

Would we like a new skin, a different theme, a fresh coat? Perhaps madame would like to see something in purple? Then in "baingani", perhaps? We have a new refraction range, exclusive, just came in yesterday.

The same goes for the greens in the trees, the oranges of the fall, the yellows of the mustard, the purples of the orchids. Just why we should find them so pretty, so sensuous, so soothing, is a mystery. But they've kept poets, artists, and film-makers in business, and counterpoint our boring, whitewashed, concrete lives.

Like a little bit of sunshine on a dull marble tile.

Children's Day Gulzar Playlist

A little playlist for Children's Day, all courtesy Gulzar-saab and friends:

1. "Masoom" (R.D.Burman)

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2. "Kitaab" (R.D.Burman)

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3. "Makdee" (Vishal Bhardwaj)

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4. "The Blue Umbrella" (Vishal Bhardwaj)

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5. "The Jungle Book" (Vishal Bhardwaj)

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Why I'm nuts about Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron

Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro re-releases today (Nov 2, 2012), based on a NFDC restored version. So re-posting something I wrote about it a decade ago. There's a lot more I'd liked to have included in this post, but that's for a different day. Meanwhile, do read Jai Arjun Singh's book on the topic - a fine read for anyone interested in the film.

It is the Indian quizzer's ultimate Hindi movie. If you didn't know what a "black comedy" is all about, watch Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron. It is comedy with depth and purpose that continues to stand quietly but unforgettably on a pedestal of its own.

A mark of any great film is if one can watch it repeatedly and keep discovering nuances in the story and performances: you can do this with "Jaane...". The reason for this "repeat-vasool" quality is the generously sprinkled collection of in-jokes, graceful lampooning of individuals and institutions, no-holds barred satirical references and an irreverent yet healthy disregard for sacred cows. Indian quizzers have long cut their teeth at movie trivia with "Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron". From classics like What are the screen names of Naseeruddin Shah & Ravi Baswani in the film?" (A: Vinod Chopra & Sudhir Mishra, from the names of director Kundan Shah's friends assisting him in the movie), Which personalities inspired the characters of the scandal-sheet editor Shobha Sen and the cake-eating and apparently gutter-loving Commissioner D'Mello (A: Shobha De and Julio Ribeiro (a joke on his virulent anti-corruption stance) respectively) to the wildly obscure but hilarious self-referential From whom have the photographers taken a loan? (A: a man named Kundan Shah). I can go on and on.

This profusion of trivia doesn't trivialise the film: on the other hand, it underscores the wit and wisdom in the screenplay. If you were so inclined, a viewing of this (may I now start saying "cult"?) movie could provide you with hajaar allegories to ponder over. As a student of film history, you might consider another aspect: an attempt by another fresh batch of graduates of the FTII along with other like-minded friends to make a film according to their sensibilities, also providing a crucible from which their names emerged radiant; any film now beginning with the credits reading Kundan Shah, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Sudhir Mishra, Naseeruddin Shah, Renu Saluja, Binod Pradhan, Satish Kaushik, Pankaj Kapur, Om Puri, Satish Shah, Neena Gupta (and a near miss from Anupam Kher) would be considered pretty top-notch. A sort of schoolboy dream-team, it seems today.

The story is good-meets-evil, innocence-meets-cynicism. Photographers Vinod and Sudhir want to make a living, no one will let them be. Sucked into exposing corruption, they're engulfed with it and only have the body of the man-in-the-middle D'Mello (would it be fair to call Satish Shah's role "deadpan" ?) to show for it. A wonderfully written climax involving a staging of the Mahabharata (fittingly the only Indian epic that embraced realpolitik as a way of life) provides the final nail in the coffin: the common man pays for his optimism again. Kundan Shah excelled at the genre of tragicomedy: his subsequent successes on television revealed his flair for understanding what life in the middle of the sandwich was all about, and why Satya does not always lead to Jayam.

Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron was a singular spark, in retrospect. Its makers had varied kinds of success, some succumbing to the other lunacies of commercial art while some were caught on the fence. Why "Jaane..." works for me is because it is always consistent to its levels of illogic. The phone scene with Albert Pinto (another delightful self-reference with Naseeruddin Shah), the cake-throwing sequence, the round-figure bribes, Om Puri (taking off on his father's Punjabi accent) towing the coffin-on-wheels and the incredible sight of a de-moustached Satish Shah in a sari swaying around on stage are just a small sample of one of the most creative efforts ever on Indian cinema. Also commendable are the slices from reality, with the reference to the collapse of the Byculla Bridge and A.R.Antulay's troubles. Sure, this NFDC-financed effort trips only in the production values, but won its dues from the critics, picking up National Awards. But I cannot help feel a tinge of pathos for the fact that hardly anyone in Indian cinema dared follow this trendsetter, including the makers themselves. But humming the anthem of Hum Honge Kaamyaab Ek Din, in the spirit of it all, if I may say so : Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron.