Jaspal Bhatti, comic revolutionary

It is perhaps a left-handed tribute to the enduring nature of the "Indian system" that even today, the day after Jaspal Bhatti passed away in a road accident, a child watching his immensely intelligent satire "Flop Show" would instantly recognise how similar its India remains to that of 1989, when the show first began. Sure, you can now get a working telephone connection without resorting to shamans, but even today "do-shabd-vaale" chief guests arrive late, people produce fake medical bills, property sharks have only become more bloodthirsty, buildings fall at the drop of a feather, and as for TV serials, well, the tragedy is we still don't know if they were intended to be comedies.

We of the eighties, the Doordarshan Generation, often talk of how good television was during the times of DD. While garden-variety nostalgia is probably to blame for most of it, when it comes to comedy, we do have a strong case. And leading the charge, your honour, would be "Flop Show". Bhatti's creation was preceded by "Ulta Pulta", five-odd minute pieces in DD's morning show that I would often catch while getting ready for school. I can't remember a single one of them now, but I do remember an awakening to the idea of satire, of which, sadly, mainstream TV and films in India have produced very little. Even "Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro" was a fortuitous coming together of youthful insouciance ending in noir and comedy, but "Flop Show", a worthy expansion of the promise of "Ulta Pulta", was a planned and sunny "oye chal yaar" saunter through middle class angst. Underlined by the weekly pastiche of Hindi film songs that was a high point in TV creativity. If you consider that DD, that same media org that often filled entire 20-minute news bulletins with speeches of Rajiv Gandhi wanting to make bananas, has greenlit satire of the highest order that pulled down the pants of most things smug, you do have to give its officers credit.

Of course, "Flop Show" never took potshots at real people or pointed fingers at the highest of places. Nor did Bhatti really touch the high notes of national popular attention again. But he did pursue his talent, through films and notably surfacing during elections to make merry at the expense of politicians. But this part of India had changed: now humour was an excuse to get offended and buy free outrage-time, or just make Archana Puran Singh guffaw - a task achieved even when she watches paint dry. Whatever little had been achieved during the few years of comic liberation had been ceded to buffoonery of the Cyrus Broacha variety, to plagiarised stand-up of the Shekhar Suman style, or to a laughter track stuck in an infinite loop. Note milord, "Flop Show" never needed a laughter track.

You can draw neat parallels in this demise of purposeful and intelligent satire with the withering away of R.K. Laxman, or indeed even in Bhatti's own career. A few months ago, I noticed that he was on Twitter (where a semblance of satire - or at least attempted satire - has gone to live) and still had the occasional touch. Evidence:

"A chair thrown at Nitish Kumar...what else a politician wants?"

"#HappyBdayNamo ..Astrologers say nxt PM again will be bearded.Modi,Nitish,MMS already have.Rahul G's beard will grow with d worries"

People have started using diesel & petrol as body perfume to show off.

Sachin Tendulkar bowled thrice in a row...Members of parliament are not performing much anywhere

One of "Flop Show"'s best episodes was its last one, where it memorably poked fun at itself. Bhatti often did that to himself, and earned a lot of appreciation in the process. One can only attribute his untimely demise to a tendency, also followed by his old comrade Vivek Shauq (who passed away last year), of keeping a meeting appointment too early. Hopefully the gods, who will undoubtedly be the butt of a few jokes now, did him the honour of greeting him, despite this inconvenience.

In his creations, Jaspal Bhatti would be credited with "Misdirection". This was a fitting description, given that the people he poked fun of think of themselves as providing "direction" to society. It was and is an "Ulta Pulta" world, and very few Indians threw a spotlight on it like Jaspal Bhatti.

Yaara da spotlight

I see a revival of interest in an old post of mine because then, as now, the word 'tashan' was briefly in vogue thanks to one of those cheeky Coca Cola ads featuring Aamir Khan (see storyboard here), complete with tune from "Naya Daur". The ad was so popular that it was even spoofed for Mirinda in a Tamil ad!

So if you're wondering, as I was then, what "Tashan" really means, then some help in this post. However, one worries that a film that I'm likely "to shun" is going to wipe out memories of that really cool (or let's say "thanda") ad.

Shortness of breadth

Of narrow interests at home.

Green with disgust

Perhaps they couldn't wait any longer for the IPL. Perhaps they just wanted to get the hell out of Kanpur. Whatever the reasons, the Kanpur pitch allowed India and South Africa to finish their final Test of their recently concluded Test Series in a hurry. However, it wasn't a blink-and-miss affair, and surprisingly turned out to be an interesting match. What I'm not sure is that if anyone really cared about it.

Blame it on the looming spectre of the IPL, whose bosses are firefighting the colossally idiotic decision in restricting how the media can cover the event (more on that later). I did not get NEO (the sports channel which currently owns rights to domestic Test Series) for a while and realised that Doordarshan was not carrying the series. It is a little scary if even the local (not to mention lazily avaricious) dinosaur decides that Test cricket and its ad revenues was not worth the effort. After several years of claiming rights by 'national interest' fatwa, is this a sign of Test cricket dropping down the gutter in a country that claims to now be the biggest shareholder in the game?

As a result, personally, the series seemed to be akin to an umpteenth lunar landing: distant, with enthusiasm having waned, and all the fuss about the surface. Though no memorable (or printable) words must have come out of Graeme Smith's mouth on visiting the middle on the opening day. That said, he must have been relieved not to have sunk in the dust.

The problem is not quite that we shouldn't be having such pitches to play on. It's that each time India trails in a Test series, it has to pull out the powdery nasties from the backshelf, or so it seems. Add to it this completely inappropriate gesture of the debutant home captain sending greetings and money to the pitch curator. Collusion or not, this habit (for I have heard of such 'rewards' in the past) completely undermines the excellent survivorship exhibited by the likes of Ganguly. One is left with a reeking smell of distaste emanating from an already sullied set of team whites.

Why the IPL exists

This blog must admit to a similar distate to IPL Czar Lalit Modi and his methods. At a time when he should be doing all that he can to get everyone (except perhaps Subhash Chandra) on his side, he comes up with these ridiculous media terms. Non-print websites seem to be the hardest hit (see Sambit Bal's latest). It's a pity that some of these agencies are merely protesting when a coordinated boycott would have been sweeter. It's a battle of competing clouts and eventually they will get into the same bed (it would be bad business if they didn't) - it's just a question of how much protection they can agree to.

Nothing the IPL has done so far has pointed out to having any regard for the common paying audience member, and seems to have been born only to further inflate the BCCI's ever-deepening coffers and hubris. Hopefully stadia will at least be friendlier to the bums-on-seats than traditionally seen in India, but with the emphasis being on squeezing each pound out of the game's flesh, it's hard to be optimistic.

AapaN yaannaa paahilat kaa?

A huge favourite of the Doordarshan generation, the serial Fauji is back on air, this time on Sahara One. Apparently, they air each evening, but they also play all the week's episodes on Sunday afternoon (which is what I chanced upon by accident). You will be happy to hear that the series hasn't been affected too much by time - the basic production values don't hamper your enjoyment of proceedings, while the story still has some interest on the repeat viewing. The dialogues are a little stilted for sure, but as a nostalgia trip, it still stands up.

SRK only appears third on the credits in this Colonel Kapoor helmed ode to the armed forces (detailing a commando training course), fittingly behind "elder brother Vikram Rai" (played by Rakesh Sharma) and the brother's lady-love (Amina Kapoor). There are some familiar faces and names, and much of it comes flooding back. We learnt the word "buddy", thought a lot of the catchphrase "I say chaps" and were chuffed at the veiled Pakistani references. Loy Mendonsa wrote a basic but memorable "CASIO" theme tune. So if you want to rewind memories of Lt. Abhimanyu Rai and mates, tune into Sahara when you can.

(tip-off by Sameer DS)

*** Watching Harsha & co. talk about cricket was like finding your favourite chair empty and easing into it after a long while. The collective brain-surgery by Mandira, Charu, Chika and co. has left me with many a migraine. Here it was back to the harmless antics of Gautam Bhimani and the sometimes soporific but usually reassuring accent of Alan Wilkins. Even though play was washed out, you could leave the discussion on and potter about. What a relief. *** News channels carried a few stories on Nov. 19th on the occasion of the first anniversary of Manjunath Shanmugham, the slain IOC employee, reporting progress on the story and covering some new initiatives by the Trust established in his name.

On CNN-IBN, Bhupendra Chaubey interviewed Anjali Mullatti, one of the trustees, and proceeded to ask a fairly annoying question on whether IIM grads only highlight this issue once a year. Now, I haven't been following the activities of the Trust and am as neutral an observer as possible. Even I have read (on blogs) and heard about some of the activities around the year, first in raising money for the case and then for other initiatives. To question this commitment was patently unfair to these people, however large or small their numbers be, and the very fact that new initiatives like the RTI helpline have been implemented speak of much activity behind the scenes. To her great credit, Ms. Mullatti replied that it was just the media that focussed on the story once in a year and that a lot of work was happening.

I think we need to be careful in our cynicism and criticism. It would help more if news channels did not make a spectacle of the grieving family, like one story which ended its piece-to-camera by getting the parents to pose awkwardly with photos of their grieving son in the background.
(Read Gaurav's post on the anniv.)

Retro Night at the Blog Bar

* Browsing old posts by friends. Almost everyone seems to have become more and more opinionated, and their posts seem to have become ever longer. Retro-blog link haulage, though, has been rich. A couple of links from George of Apr '02:
Hindi-Urdu FAQ, Lexical FreeNet, Ten real Rahman classics from the B-side (The now defunct Music Magazine), Dil Chahta review also from the Music Mag.

I'd really like to know if there are reasonably good critical and all-inclusive e-music mags around. It seems there aren't much of these.

* Surprisingly, many of the links (even at TOI!) are still around and functional. Surprised because they don't give a feel of being permalinks (these links are couched in a sort of Botox-for-links encoding).

* I don't quite think we've realised how much of a trend-setter "Dil Chahta Hai" the movie really was in terms of story, narration, music, performances and development. It was supposed to be the harbinger of so much. The others haven't quite responded.

* Jatin informs that Makrand Deshpande can be seen on "Kyunki Saas Bhi...". When and more importantly Why did this happen? John Doe (and perhaps Parashurama) are needed to cut a swathe through. We need a Daanav to say "Well, not anymore. I'm setting the example. What I've done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed... forever. "

* I have also become a cubicle-orphan. In s/w companies around the country, many young people of my age live a greater percentage of their waking lives at their desks. That's because they live away from the city they call home and there's a limit to seeing the urban mass at mall-tiplexes on weekends. Instead, on their holidays, they're in front of their PCs, superficially engaged in something, enveloped in a Scandinavian Winter ambience, with technology that brings them close to something for a while but whose taps run empty for the rest of the time.

This week, I'm a cubicle-orphan too!

* 11 years ago, roughly. Couple of days later. We salute, we salute, we salute those days. What dreams came!

Slow and Steady

Director Shivam Nair talks about life before and during his debut film Ahista Ahista. He has two very "likeable" leads in Soha Ali Khan and Abhay Deol (the music is not so likeable though and publicity seems to have been hijacked by the Ol'Factory - thankfully, the people involved are aware of it)). Nair's own story is one of many who had a confused dream surrounding the film industry, so it's good to see that life has turned out decently in the end.

In the interview, Nair talks about the story of the film being inspired by a real-life incident that happened to a friend of Imtiaz Ali (the writer, and maker of Socha Na Tha). The plot sees Deol playing a professional "witness" at a marriage bureau, while Soha Ali Khan has run away from home and is waiting outside the bureau for her beau to show up (he doesn't). Now, interestingly, I've seen an episode with a similar plot in the Star Plus series Star Bestsellers that aired a few years ago (the series still airs occasionally on weekends on one of the lesser Star channels these days). Imtiaz Ali must have had something to do with that, given the TV work these guys have done.

Star Bestsellers was quite a wonderful attempt at giving many new and lowkey directors and writers a chance to film an hour-long story. There were some excellent efforts such as: by Tigmanshu Dhulia; a typically morbid serial-killer story by Anurag Kashyap featuring Kay Kay; a cool women-oriented tragi-comedy directed by Rajit Kapur featuring Mita Vashist, Rajeshwari Sachdeva and Surekha Sikri; a meditative one with the real-life mother and daughter Seths (Sushma and Divya) playing mother-in-law and daughter-in-law!; a comic psycho-thriller with Irrfan and Deepak Quazir; another plot-with-a-twist with Irrfan, Raghuvir Yadav and Himani Shivpuri; Rajit Kapur and Rajeshwari Sachdeva in a tale about a talented actor laid waste by drink and loss of confidence; more Irrfan as a Bangla director who shatters some myths that a left-leaning art-film worshipping Vrajesh Hirjee lives his life with; and most brilliantly of all, an episode called "Dead End" with Mona Ambegaonkar, Raj Zutshi and many more that is one of the most atmospheric thrillers I have ever seen in my life, and one that would make Hitchcock or Shyamalan proud. I regret to say that I don't remember who made the last-mentioned one (it was some lady), and unfortunately, I haven't been able to see it recently. But for being a heady mix of entertainment and experiment, the series was a breath of scented air.

E!

I think, right now, CNN-IBN has the best programming that covers Indian entertainment. It's down to two shows really: Rajeev Masand's "Now Showing" and Anuradha SenGupta's interviews on "Being XX" (XX: that week's guest)

SenGupta is (was?) more familiar for her CNBC-TV18 shows, and the loaning of TV18 personnel to their new collaboration with CNN and Sardesai is working out well. "Being...", though not meant to be exclusively a means to interview ent-types (I think), features them primarily. Interviews in the recent past have included the missing body part from Cleopatra the Sphinx (i.e. the striking feature of Cleopatra :-)), Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and Ajay Devgan (this week). Thanks to IBN's web-savviness (one aspect where they have successfully differentiated themselves from the pack), these interviews are on their site in full detail. SenGupta is a pretty good interviewer (except for the nasal twang at times).

Rajeev Masand's show is the weekly movie round-up with reviews, the odd star-chat-up and even a DVD recommendation. Now, probably the reason I like this show is that Masand's reviews seem balanced and not of the Taran-Adarsh-Subhash-Jha schmooze-slash variety. Or perhaps the views just happen to match with mine :-)

Theres, unfortunately, a serious lack of good movie talk overall. Movie reviewing and discussion rapidly degenerates into implacable personal biases because of star-contacts and the like. What's more, we do not have a single critical analysis of music in mass media at the moment.