‘The Ranjans are the biggest liars ...

There’s more drama off-screen at telly awards functions than there is on the tube these days. Anu and Shashi Ranjan of Hero Honda Indian Television Academy (HHITA) have slapped a legal suit on Balaji head honcho Ekta Kapoor, for preventing her actors from attending the awards show. The Ranjans even claim that Kapoor demanded a list of Balaji winners prior to the event. Now, Ekta is in retaliation mode.
You did not attend the HHITA awards because Anu and Shashi Ranjan refused to show you the awards list. Comment. That’s rubbish. Anu and Shashi are the biggest liars in the world. I think too many people are asking them why I didn’t attend their function. They are scared to tell the truth because it’s dirty.
So what’s the truth?Yes, I boycotted the show. I was in Delhi all day, but I returned in the evening. I could have attended the show. The Ranjans kept calling me to know if I had a problem but I didn’t tell them anything.
Why didn’t you attend?That’s because my flagship show Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, which has been India’s No1 show for six years, had not been nominated in the Best Serial category.
Isn’t that a petty reason?That’s not a petty reason. My fury did not stem from the fact that Kyunki had not been nominated, but from the fact that Anu and Shashi axed Kyunki’s nomination simply because Star Plus did not buy the telecast rights of their show.
How are you sure about that?Somebody working with their telecast partner Zee told me about it.
Is that the way awards are being conducted these days?Yes, and I wouldn’t be comfortable being part of such a show. Kyunki is India’s No 1 show and deserves respect. If it has not scored from the public, that’s fine. But if personal interests are the motives behind such acts, I am not going to allow it. Even Zee was shocked that Kyunki was axed from the nominations list. Some people connected to HHITA and Zee told me beforehand that Kasamh Se is going to get many awards. I didn’t like that fact either. Just because a show is being telecast on a particular channel is not reason enough to give it a biased preference.
Did you instruct Balaji actors like Shabbir Ahluwalia, Prachi Desai, Ram Kapoor, Akashh Deep Saigal and Sanjit Bedi not to perform at the HHITA?That’s another lie. I have better things to do than interfere in the personal lives of my actors. It was very essential that Ram and Prachi shoot for Kasamh Se that day. Yet, I personally went to the studio where they were shooting, reworked the script and asked them to go for the show. But by that time, Anu and Shashi had made alternative arrangements (pauses).
Go on…Anu and Shashi wanted some of my actors to sign exclusive contracts with them, which would debar them from performing at the Indian Telly Awards (ITA; of Anil Wanwari). Some of them even signed those contracts, but later felt uncomfortable. That’s not my fault, is it? The ITA and the HHITA have always been at loggerheads. There is tremendous competition between them.
So you have been made a scapegoat?Yes. There’s another reason for that. Anu and Shashi are frustrated that their award function wasn’t as good as the Indian Telly Awards, which I attended.
Which of the two awards shows is fair?I am not passing judgment. I am only bewildered as to how low the Ranjans (HHITA) can stoop when they are at a crossroads with Anil Wanvari (ITA), and do not get the broadcaster of their choice (Star).
So what are you going to do about it?I am taking legal action against HHITA. I had high regard for them, but I am shocked and hurt by their character assassination of me. I will never send nominations for any of my shows to them henceforth.

Sanjay was stress,simultaneously positive

Few people know that even though Sanjay Dutt and Rhea Pillai have divorced, they still remain close friends. Dutt continues to be an important part of Rhea’s new family with husband Leander Paes and daughter Aiyana. In an exclusive heart-to-heart with HiTLIST, Pillai recounts her emotions post Dutt’s verdict in the 1993 serial bomb blasts case.
What was your reaction when you first heard the news?Initially, I was shocked to hear that Sanjay had been found guilty. However, when I spoke to Satish (Maneshinde, Dutt’s lawyer) he told me that it was a conviction under the Arms Act and not TADA, so I heaved a sigh of relief and was really happy. Of course, I was hoping for an acquittal but this is the next best thing.
Were you apprehensive before the verdict came out?No, I wasn’t. I had a very good feeling about the whole thing, which I communicated to Sanju time and again. This feeling defies logic, because the conviction rate in the case is over 80 per cent. Now that it has gone fairly well, it feels great.
Did you speak to Sanjay today?I spoke with him before and after the verdict. Right now, he’s still trying to figure out the ramifications of the situation. He was stressed, but simultaneously positive.
You were there with Sanjay during the darkest moment of his life. How did you cope? You just do, you know. It’s been emotionally draining for all of us, but it is nothing compared to what Sanjay has been through. Considering that he spent 18 months in jail, there was a lot to be done and understood by all of us. But it all boils down to having faith in Sanjay, myself and believing right from the start that he is completely innocent. I am still with Sanjay…
What do you mean by that?Although we agreed to disagree on our views about our marriage, we remain steadfast in our belief in each other. I am always there for Sanjay, with the support of both Leander (Paes) and Aiyana (her infant daughter). It’s difficult for most people to understand our relationship, but even though Sanjay and I have divorced, we remain friends and will continue to support each other. Sanjay and I separated four years ago, but that kind of love doesn’t change, it grows deeper, wiser and more mature. That’s unconditional love.
Did you ever feel frustrated when Sanjay was in jail? Yes I was, but that frustration was never towards him. Actually, I think it was confusion, as we were trying to understand what was going on. There was confusion about the system too. Anybody who knows Sanjay knows that he is an amazing human being. You can’t call him a terrorist. That’s a crime in itself. That the honorable judge, P D Kode, acknowledged this is very heartening, even though the verdict has come over a decade later.
How has Leander reacted to the verdict?Lee has been amazingly supportive. He was very happy when he heard about it. He got to know about it before I did. He was the one who called me up and told me the good news.

Reflections on the legacy of Harish-Chandra

The theory he created still stands --­ if I may be excused a clumsy simile -- like a Gothic cathedral, heavily buttressed below but, in spite of its great weight, light and soaring in its upper reaches, coming as close to heaven as mathematics can. Harish, who was of a spiritual, even religious, cast and who liked to express himself in metaphors, vivid and compelling, did see, I believe, mathematics as mediating between man and what one can only call God. Occasionally, on a stroll after a seminar, usually towards evening, he would express his feelings, his fine hands slightly upraised, his eyes intent on the distant sky; but he saw as his task not to bring men closer to God but God closer to men. For those who can understand his work and who accept that God has a mathematical side, he accomplished it. [Langlands on Harish-Chandra.] Professor Robert P. Langlands of the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, will be giving an Institute Colloquium talk at 5.15 p.m. on Wednesday, March 08, 2006, at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. The talk is titled "Reflections on the legacy of Harish-Chandra". The venue is the Institute Auditorium (IRCC Building). More from the department notices:
About the talk:
Harish-Chandra and Srinivasa Ramanujan were easily the two greatest Indian mathematicians of the last century. While the latter is a household name in India, Harish-Chandra, despite his sustained and seminal contributions to "Representation Theory" remains relatively unknown. A former student of Dirac, Harish-Chandra started his research career as a physicist in Cambridge before moving to an enormously succesful career as a mathematician at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Although the talk will not be free of references to mathematical concepts of varying degrees of sophistication, most of them should be familiar to anyone, physicists, chemists or students, with some undergraduate training in mathematics. The talk will be an attempt to understand Harish-Chandra's place in the mathematical firmament and not an occasion for technical explanations.
About the Speaker:
Robert Langlands is uniquely qualified to give this talk having known Harish-Chandra closely for more than 20 years as a friend and colleague at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. While Harish-Chandra made "Representation Theory" a central area of research in mathematics, Robert Langlands introduced what is now known as the "Langlands Programme", a vast mathematical framework of conjectures which connect representation theory, analysis, geometry and number theory in remarkable ways. The Langlands Programme is one of the high watermarks of Twentieth Century mathematics, unrivalled, perhaps, in its scope and breathtaking in its vision.

Arbaaz gives Malaika guru gyaan

Days before the new season of Nach Baliye was to go on air, Malaika Arora-Khan had confessed to not knowing Hindi to well. “I am trying hard to speak more Hindi, this time though,” she had said.
But ever since the show went on air, we’ve seen a marked improvement in the sexy dancer’s diction and turn of phrase. And she’s got no one else but hubby Arbaaz to thank for doubling up as her Hindi teacher.
She’s trying!
A source from the show reveals, “He has taught her five Hindi lines to use on the show. He is a big fan of Nach Baliye 2 and keeps giving her tips to improve her Hindi diction. During the first season, it didn’t matter much, but this time around he was keen on her speaking Hindi more fluently.”
Confirming this, Arbaaz says, “It’s true. I did give her some easy lines to remember.” Talking about his wife’s Hindi diction, he says, “She isn’t fluent in the language, but she’s definitely trying. Because of her family and modelling background, Malaika is more comfortable with English.”
Sharing anecdotes
Khan says that since the other two judges — Saroj Khan and Kunal Kohli — converse in Hindi, it’s important for Malaika to be able to speak the same language. “I admire the fact that she’s attempting to speak as much Hindi as possible. There are a couple of easy lines that I have told her which can be used in every situation.”
When asked what he thinks of the show’s second season, Arbaaz says, “It’s very entertaining. In fact, it’s more competitive than the first. Malaika is enjoying her experience on the show and even shares anecdotes when she returns home.”
Interestingly, in tonight’s episode, Malaika and Saroj Khan are so impressed with Yash Tonkk’s performance on the One Love track that they leave their seats and join him in the act!
‘Line’ dancing
Here are a few line that Malaika uses (courtesy Arbaaz) for different occasions.
1. Mere hosh uda diye (when a performance impresses her).2. Mein mere kursi ke edge pe thi (after seeing a riveting dance act).3. Aapne bahut lagan aur mehnat ki (to praise a performer).4. Mein mehsoos kar sakti hoon (to show compassion to the jodi)5. Aap bahut sundar lag rahi ho (praising someone’s look).

Unruly crowds

Describing how the situation got out of hand, Sameera says, “Akshay and I were on stage and the energy from the crowds was electrifying. The organisers were fantastic and everything was going beautifully. We were leaving the stage after addressing the crowd, when we realised that we would have to walk a little distance to reach our cars. That’s when things got a little serious.”
Says a source close to the actress, “The crowds came rushing in and they couldn’t reach the car. Akshay and Sameera had to run through the crowds. Sam has a phobia of crowded places as she’s had some bad experiences. The crowd was getting too close. It’s not that they are unruly but they just want to touch the stars.”
Sam is all praise for Akshay. She says, “It was truly amazing the way Akshay took over. He’s a thorough gentleman. I have only interacted with him during shows, but this time I came to know him personally. They were going at him, but the first thing he asked was if I was okay. Akshay took my hand, pushed me in front of him, started walking fast and fought off the crowds so that they wouldn’t come near me. He was literally pushing people off. About 10 security men formed a human chain around us but the crowd couldn’t be stopped. It was nobody’s fault. It was just one of those freak incidents when things go out of control.”
Adds the source, “Sameera couldn’t talk for some time after sitting in the car with Akshay, but he kept talking and joking so that she could relax. Apparently, such things are worse in North India where people are much more aggressive.”
Sameera flew off to Kolkata later that day, to shoot for Buddhadev Dasgupta’s next untitled film with Prosenjit. “I will fly in to Mumbai for a day to celebrate my birthday with my family on December 14,” says Sameera.
What’s the Hyderabad 10K Marathon?
The Hyderabad 10K Run Foundation is run by a group of socially conscious citizens. Film stars, politicians, sports personalities and people from all walks of life participate in the run. The mission of the run is to promote Hyderabad city as well as to promote sports, fitness and healthy living.
A part of the proceeds go to Mission Sports. Mission Sports helps children in government-run schools by providing them access to sports and fitness facilities. A part of the proceeds also go for treatment of poor children with heart ailments.

Early Morning Good Morning

On Sunday morning, Sameera Reddy almost had a panic attack while attending the 10K Marathon Run at the Hussain Sagar Lake in Hyderabad. Surrounded by a huge crowd, the actress almost fainted with fright till knight in shining armour, Akshay Kumar, galloped to her rescue.
Freak incident
Says Sameera, “Akshay and I had gone to attend the same marathon event that Salman (Khan) had attended last year. We were called to address the 30,000 odd crowd that had turned up. It’s a great event where nearly the entire city of Hyderabad gets together on Necklace Road, by the lake. Children, physically handicapped people, adults and corporates in Hyderabad come together in full spirit for a good purpose — to raise funds for charity. It’s also one of the best-managed events and security is very tight.”

Focussed bride

Phadnis has been Emraan’s designer since Murder. But Parveen is a first-time client. “One day, Parveen accompanied Emraan to my studio. He was doing his fittings while she spent time looking at my outfits.
She liked the funky, zardozi bridal stuff and told Emraan that she wanted both for her bridal outfit. Most brides are confused or unsure about what they want, but Parveen was very clear right from the beginning. She’s very focussed,” says Phadnis.
Emraan is happy to allow his designer to dictate terms to him, but he adds, “I don’t dress up for occasions as I am not a suit person. But since this is a special occasion, I will have to bear it!”

Mama cancels bhanja’s wedding reception

Mahesh Bhatt is known for his unconventional ways. So we weren’t surprised when the director decided to cancel Emraan’s wedding reception. Says Bhatt, “I have played the devil’s advocate and cancelled Emi’s wedding reception on December 14. The family is angry with me.”
Though he doesn’t want to disclose the reasons saying he’s been “gagged” by Emraan, a source close to him says, “Bhatt saab cancelled it because the reception was an unnecessary waste.
It’s an outdated tradition of calling people who neither want to come nor care whether you are getting married or divorced. He would rather they spend the money on themselves. Though Bhatt saab fell into a minority, fortunately Parveen was sensible enough to agree with him.”

Emraan’s ‘dress’ rehearsals

Vikram Phadnis has designed both Emraan Hashmi’s and his fiancée Parveen Shahani’s sangeet and wedding outfits for December 12 and 13. The sangeet will be held at J W Marriott, while the nikah might be held either at Emraan’s Bandra flat or at Taj Land’s End with close family and friends in attendance.
Here, Phadnis gives HiTLIST readers an exclusive glimpse of the couple’s wedding outfits and the reason behind Emi’s dramatic weight loss.
Golddust
Parveen has two outfits ready for her special day. Says Vikram, “I’ve made two outfits, one each for the sangeet and the nikah. We are yet to take a final call on what she will wear for which event. There are two lehengas, one in red and gold and the other in maroon and gold. Gold and red are Parveen’s favourite colours.
She selected everything from the colours to the fabrics. The dupattas have intricate zardozi work, diamantes, opaque stones and cutwork on the edges, while the lehengas have patchwork on them. Parveen’s jewellery will be accessorised on December 1.”
As for the groom, Phadnis says he’s designed a formal black suit and a beige sherwani. “Emraan will wear the sherwani along with Pesha-wari sandals for the sangeet. For the wedding, he will wear a formal black suit with a champagne gold tie,” says the designer.

Last Wish

I was slated to die by end of the month. That was in August 1996. The fact that you are reading it now, means that such diagnoses, to quote Mark Twain, were highly exaggerated. However, recently, my 'good spirits' have been waning. By now, I am dead and hopefully you have given me a fit farewell. I had instructed Raj to hand over my last letter to you fourteen days after my funeral. I hope he, in his usual style, wasn't late!I must say at the outset that you two have made me proud on many counts. I haven't been very vocal about this and you might have well imagined that I am disappointed by the way your life has turned out. That is not so, on many counts.While I was lucky to be born into a rich family and became quite successful, you outdid me by some margin when it came to living the high life. The obligatory Mercedes, the yearly trips to London, the farmhouses. It was all laid out. While I have asked a few questions on these in the last few years, you must not worry. Such displays are neither new nor revolting. After all, isn't your marriage talked about in Allahabad even now? However, what did surprise me was the eagerness for our old house which you two have exhibited recently.Besides your riches and your fame, I have also been proud of the fact that you have raised five really wonderful grandchildren for me. They are independent and fair, qualities which I look for in people. Yes, one of them did display a rebellious streak as well, but you were quick to prevent independence from turning into rebellion. Much to quick, in my opinion, considering how firebrand we have been and I still am! I would have stopped you if I could have, but then there is a line when my my family ends and your starts. It is your call.I would have done differently, though. I am just sad that you have given up on logic for what you call beliefs. Ritesh, if my daughter had decided not to get married the Hindu way but by reading poetry to her love, I would have been okay (though it would have been corny, like that film whose name I don't remember). In fact, your steadfast refusal surprised me. I remember you first tried to blame your wife's family but failed. Then you got Mitesh to support you. Poor Divya, even she couldn't stand up to Chote Kaka's advice.In fact this incident was the proverbial last straw which broke my back. You call it a reason to live. I would refrain from calling it anything, now that I am away. I remember your youth when you had become card-carrying members. Comrade you used to call me. I hated it. For me, the centre was where I wanted to stay. Not for me reactionary activities and dreams instead of policies. We used to stay up all night debating this. Yet, I was happy that you had found your cause. I hoped that with age, some logic will find its way into the cause. When I told you that I could not imagine that both of you will take up religion.You said that this was your reason to live. That you couldn't take the death of your youngest. I protested. You compared the belief to my belief in Darwin. Which was quite funny as I didn't ever feel the need to believe something which I could explain. I made you carry out all those smoky rituals outside my house. Now, I will forever hold my quiet. Plus, you could take the house and do whatever you want there. I have one last wish though. You see, this particular will (which you will get soon from Raj) gives away all my property to a couple of trusts. It is a large amount of wealth for them so they will not spend it all at once. Instead, they will get only a minor part of the wealth and the rest as income on an annual basis. However, I am happy to come back, remake my will and give it to you. Can you please ask your God to bring me back to life once for a few minutes as my last wish? Just ask God to conduct a minor miracle.I am hoping this will not be a huge inconvenience. You will continue to be in my thoughts, if what you believe is true.Love,VIJAY

Mera baap chor hai

Friend Maverick points me out to the fact that Chelsea FC has tied up with Yash Raj Films for Bollywood Film. I think it's a great idea.The one thing which Chelsea did lack was stars. No, just kidding.However, now, Jose Mourinho has a chance to go potty-mouth in Hindi. In fact, he will gain shorter punchier lines. My friend who works in the Yashraj stables has started writing the script for Jose already and he brought this to my notice."And I think because of the passion of every English player and every English supporter, and every English journalist for the game, most of the game is played with passion, love for football and instinct, but in football you also have to think."or,"Humein abhi jasbaat se nahin, dimaag se kaam lena hoga""I think I am the special one."or,"Hum jahaan khade hote hein, line wahin sey shuru hoti hai""I was nine or 10 years old and my father was sacked on Christmas Day. He was a manager, the results had not been good, he lost a game on December 22 or 23. On Christmas Day, the telephone rang and he was sacked in the middle of our lunch."or,"Haan main SIGN karoonga, lekin main akele SIGN nahin karoonga. Jao pahle us aadmi ka sign leke aao, jisne mere baap se SIGN liya tha, pahle us aadmi ka SIGN leke aao, jisne meri maa ko gaali deke naukri se nikal diya tha, pahle us aadmi ka SIGN leke aao, jisne mere haath pe yeh likh diya, ke mera baap chor hai.""As a player I cannot compare to Frank Rijkaard. His history as a player is fantastic, my history is zero. But as a manager you cannot compare Frank Rijkaard to me. My history as a manager is fantastic, and his history is zero. He has zero titles and I have lots of them."or,"Woh ek gandi naali ka keeda hai""I think he is one of these people who is a voyeur. He likes to watch other people. There are some guys who, when they are at home, have a big telescope to see what happens in other families. He speaks, speaks, speaks about Chelsea."0r,"Kutte ki dum tedi-ki-tedi hi rehti hai""I want to give my congratulations to them because they won. But we were the best team. We didn’t lose the game. Ninety minutes was a draw and it was a draw after two hours. We lost on penalties."or,"Har kutte ka din aata hai"

My own little Ravan

I remember using a badminton shuttle can in class 6 to make a Ravan. It bombed. Okay, sorry for the pun, but the anticipated fireworks just didn't take off. But we did have a blast. Okay sorry again.Anyway, we did discover that cardboard shuttlecock cans are better Ravan material than tin cans. We also learnt that whatever the result, the joy is in making the effigy. Plus, ultimately, we disassembled the tin Ravan and lit the explosive powder. It fizzed and crackled and blew silver smoke into the sky.These days however, the joy of painting Ravan's heads on to chart paper and then sticking it on to a shuttlecock can is being replaced by personalised Ravans. For some people, at least.In case you want a look at Ram Leela instead, Akshay has a photospread here.

On Nagesh Kukunoor's Dor

A few minutes into Nagesh Kukunoor's new film Dor - after a set of early scenes of great tenderness and beauty featuring two pairs of newlyweds - we see one of his two female protagonists, the Rajasthani girl Meera (played by the marvellous Ayesha Takia), perched on a pile of rocks with a mobile phone in her hand, making her monthly phone call to her husband in Saudi Arabia.She asks for him by name, and is told that he is no longer alive. We see the expression on her face change, and the phone drop from her hand. As if it cannot bear to face her grief directly any more, the camera cuts to a low position behind her. She appears framed against the empty blue sky, which seems to reflect back her great desolation and puzzlement.The camera cuts again to a shot which projects a sharp irony, with Meera in the background, and in the foreground, with his back to her, the man who has given her his mobile phone for a fee. The seconds he is counting down on his wristwatch do not progress in the same way for Meera, for whom time has effectively stopped from this moment onwards. Yet it is not a simple irony, in which the boundless grief of one character and the grubbery of another are unambiguously juxtaposed. In an earlier scene we have seen the man walk away to a distance to give Meera her privacy. This is why, on this occasion, he has no clue of what is happening to her. He is both calculating and kind. From the different aspects of this one scene we can tell that we are going to watch a drama of considerable subtlety.As Baradwaj Rangan has also noted, Dor resembles Iranian cinema in its close attention to the play of human feelings when presented with complex moral dilemmas. Zeenat (Gul Panag, compellingly direct, droop-shouldered and gravel-voiced) learns that her husband stands accused in a foreign country of the death of another Indian man, and the only way in which he can be reprieved is if the dead man's wife will consent to his pardon. She sets out from Himachal Pradesh for Rajasthan (Kukunoor's use of the two contrasting landscapes to create mood is one of many good aesthetic decisions) in search of the unknown woman who holds the key to her own future. In a marvellous scene in which the two lead characters meet for the first time, Zeenat reveals she is in search of her husband but cannot bring herself to explain the circumstances. Meera innocently asks, "Why, do you think he can be found here?" And we know that yes, in a sense it is only here that he can be found.
Takia's is the most naturally expressive face of any actress in Hindi cinema currently. Here it radiates innocence and simple faith, and, covered at first by a gauzy pink veil and then by austere blue widow's robes, is the subject of many striking close-ups. On several occasions she conveys the state of being overcome by strong feelings, in long takes where the camera stays fixed on her face, by nothing more than a flicker of the eyes and a slight dilation of the nostrils.
Her character has a highly developed moral sense, and also a natural moral sympathy - one does not necessarily eventuate in the other. In one scene where the two women are talking about their husbands (Meera does not yet know the entire truth), Zeenat remarks that they are both consumed similarly by memories. At this Meera pipes up: "But there is a difference: you still have hope, but I don't." This is quite true, but then she becomes aware of her impetuosity and, reaching out to the other, says, "I shouldn't have said that. Loss can't be measured out and compared in this fashion."The depiction of Meera's many moods and facets make this one of the best character studies of recent times. Meera lives in a world of restricted choices, and admires Zeenat for her freedom and independence. Later, when she learns the truth, she is inflamed, and exudes a heavy contempt. She declares to Zeenat that it has been her dream to slay her husband's killer with her own hands, and refuses to comply with Zeenat's wish. Later, when she rethinks this decision and delivers to Zeenat the letter of pardon just as Zeenat's train about to leave, the image of the life-giving letter exchanging hands is framed against the very sky that seemed to echo once with a sense of Meera's loss. If the first shot suggested human powerlessness before fate, this one attests to the ability of human beings to transcend their circumstances and to change the world.
The last drama of such force I saw was the Iranian filmmaker Tahmineh Milani's Two Women, and indeed Dor might have gone by the same title. Kukunoor is correct, I think, in pointing to how unusual it is in Hindi cinema for two women to work out a conclusion without a man's intervention - in fact the film as a whole carries a bracing feminist message. He is also to be complimented on his use of Indian landscapes (some thoughts by Amrita Sher-Gil and Satyajit Ray on its depiction on film can be found here in this old essay on Sher-Gil), on Salim-Sulaiman's unusual background score - it is a great pleasure to hear the sarangi given such prominence in our synthesiser-and-drums times - and Mir Ali Hussain's beautifully turned-out dialogue. Yet his work also has some faults.His villains are too simply bad. Girish Karnad, who rarely appears in any other Hindi films these days, seems to take a special pleasure in playing utterly unsympathetic characters in Kukunoor films - the corrupt and conniving coach, shavenheaded like a baddie of old, in last year's Iqbal, and now the bullheaded and tawdry patriarch here, tempted into quoting a price for his own daughter-in-law. The irony is that Karnad is himself a playwright of great distinction. In Dor the exuberant tomfoolery of Shreyas Talpade, the Iqbal of Kukunoor's previous film, as a master of disguises is entertaining enough, but mostly his character exists to provide a few predictable laughs and to add half an hour of screen time. Watching the film a second time, I found his part discordant.Strangest of all is Kukunoor's own appearance on screen as the factory-owner Mr.Chopra. It is known that Kukunoor's early films, made as a relative nonentity working on the fringes of Bollywood, were shot on shoestring budgets. As if unwilling to make a total break from those old days of desperate moneysaving gambits, he continues to cast himself in major roles in big-budget works, when if he had auditioned for these roles he would have been the first to be cast out. The spectacular dodginess of his delivery of the line "Ab aagya deejiye" ("Now please excuse me") at the close of his first long scene opposite Karnad has to be seen to be fully appreciated.Some other pieces on film: on Kukunoor's Iqbal, Rakeysh Mehra's Rang De Basanti, and Tahmineh Milani's Two Women. Now I've got some other pressing work to attend to, so ab aagya deejiye.

Some thoughts on artistic time and real time

Some kinds of artistic creation, like painting, are experienced across space - we understand them by organising all their elements visually at the same time. Others, like music or film or written narrative, unfold in a linear fashion and are experienced across time. Further, the pleasure we derive from them has its source not just in their subject matter, their content, but in how they unfold over time - how they speed up and slow down, the particular direction they take and the sequence in which their parts are presented.If we reflect upon our aesthetic experience we realise that time as we experience it in artworks is far more intense, more "rich" with sensory detail and with feeling, than time as we know it in real life. In the best works of art not a moment is wasted: every word, every note, or every shot seems essential. By comparison with artistic time, real time is almost unbearably tedious in its aimlessness, vacancy and sheer sprawl. When we say we opened a book or put on a CD to "pass the time", we are actually saying something quite significant. One of the reasons why we need art is because it allows us not just to forget our own selves (as I argue here, here and here) but also to transcend the quotidian experience and slow time to which we are irrevocably yoked.Of course, human beings possesses the resources to fill time up, to infuse it with urgency and meaning, even without art. Those resources are the memory and the imagination, the two pillars of human life, and they allow us to prepare our own homemade version of artistic time. Each one of us has a private corpus of memories of the most significant events of our lives, memories we are always reexamining and reinterpreting. What has transpired once in our lives is replayed hundreds of times in the private theatre of our minds, with the inessential details sifted out as they would have been in a work of art. And on the other hand there is the imagination, which takes unrelated elements or inchoate yearnings and, by shaping them into a sequence or a whole, creates the same satisfying richness that we derive from art.It might be said that our memories and our fantasies are our private works of art, only occasionally sensed or glimpsed by others but constantly in our own sights. They are our way of overcoming the tyranny of the present moment, of substituting the inessential with the essential. Even more than in behaviour and in speech, they are where we are most fully ourselves. In fact, art forms like the novel are premised upon this idea, that the dredging up of a person's interior life reveals what is most essential about him or her.Even so artistic time, itself a product of the human imagination, has a special glow. Putting down a book, or leaving a movie hall, we cross the border from one kind of time to another, and wonder if somehow our lives could not be freighted with the same richness and intensity. Of course, this is a chimerical wish: reality will never support it. But on the rare instances that we do manage to live for extended periods in a state of elevated feeling, we often find the only parallel for that experience in the intensity of artistic time. "I felt suddenly as if I could hear life's music", we say, or "It was like I was a character in a novel".
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Found on the web

New and improved feature on this blog: “Found on the web.” The inaugural item is the Hubble Space Telescope pictures. Check them out and even download them as wallpaper, but don’t stop wondering how magical the universe is and how fortunate we are to be able to observe it.

Mobile Internet and India

“In India, the Future of the Internet Will Be Built around the Mobile Phone” reads the title of one of today’s articles at Knowledge@Wharton. It is an interview with my colleague, Rajesh Jain, CEO of NetCore. Rajesh believes that the mobile phone will be the primary device for interacting with the web for a vast number of users in India. It is easy to follow his logic.Read more »

Mood I gets Rs 75 lakhs sponsorship: for what?

TOI reports: Mood Indigo - which is due to take place from Dec 26-29 - has garnered a healthy Rs 75 lakh sponsorship so far. This outstrips the nearest rival, IIT Delhi by 50%.I find this news a bit disconcerting. I mean, just last year, Mood I created a record by attracting Rs 50 lakhs in sponsorship money. As recently as 2002, Mood I made do with Rs 34 lakhs sponsorship. Now, with more than double the budget in 4 years, how much 'bigger and better' can we expect it to get?The USP of IIT fests over local college fests is the pro-nites, where students can expect top quality artistes to perform. eg Indian Classical Nite, Indipop Nite, Professional Play performance and LiveWire, the rock competition where pro bands also perform. There are artiste fees as well as light, sound and stage costs. Mood I also gives better cash prizes (Rs 3 lakhs) last year. So yes, a Mood I certainly requires a bigger budget than say, a Malhar or an Umang. But in 2002 - with Rs 34 lakhs - we had a successful Mood I. Take inflation into account, or the desire to do something more, and I can see the budget going up by 10-20%.This 50% jump in a single year? Astounding.Caveat emptor Now IIT Bombay can very well say hey, if sponsors are willing to pay us this money, what's your problem? So here's a bit of free advice to these companies - do take a more careful look at what exactly you are buying.While Mood I may be the college fest with the most extravagant scale, does it really deliver on numbers. The organisers claim it attracts 50,000 students a year. But how true is that claim?Overall, I would estimate at max 20,000 unique visitors. Break up as follows:IIT- B students : 4000 in number and fairly immune to advertising. (and 10-20% 'go home' during the fest period!). Outstation participants: 3000-4000 in number (my guesstimate, and this is on the generous side).Local participants: 3000-4000 per day. More on the day of Livewire.The local participation is where Mood I miserably fails to make an impact. Ask a random college student if he/ she is going to Mood I and chances are you will hear the answer "no".Various reasons given:- IIT is too far- It's the fag end of the year - already attended many fests- We're having vacations - The place is not so happening during the day Of course, die hard fest types do attend, esp those into literary events. And pro nites attract crowd, but again in limited numbers. The 'aam' college student whom sponsors would like to connect with are more likely to have attended the likes of Malhar, Umang or their own college festival. Never mind if it did not attract folks from all over India, or even all over the city. But 5000-6000 eyeballs are there to be addressed and you can be the title sponsor of 15-20 such festivals for Rs 75 lakhs. With the same money you can reach out to over 1 lakh students - 5 times what I estimate you reach through Mood I. And these are students who are more brand conscious, who spend more on everything from cellphones to branded apparel. College name be damned.Yet sponsors would rather plonk their money with a single prestigious festival.So, good for IIT Bombay. And good luck to the BPO company which is one of the major sponsors of Mood I. Coz I doubt if anyone attending Mood I fits their target audience! Lastly, I am under the impression that all the money raised towards IIT fests is used towards the event organisation. That's how it used to be. Maybe times have changed and some of the cash goes in the institute corpus, towards improving infrastructure etc. In which case it's festival as an excuse for fund raising - fair enough. However, that's not the impression one gets from the TOI report. One final observation: I noticed from the Mood I website that outstation participants are being charged for their accomodation. The deposit for the 'mattress and bucket' is Rs 400, of which Rs 100 is refundable if you leave on the specified date and without damaging any property. You also have to pay for your own food, at a nominal rate, but never the less.Pataa nahin bhai, jis zamaane mein hum outstation fests mein jaate the... we paid for nothing more than our train tickets. Guess 'hospitality' is not dependent on how big your budget is!

4 stars to 'The Departed'

The name 'Martin Scorcese' was a familiar one but to be honest, I had never actually seen a film made by him. "The Departed" was a first and it certainly won't be the last.It's a film which takes the movie-set-in-a-mafia milieu to a new level. Instead of a cops vs robbers story, it's a tale of two cops - Billy Costigan (Leonardo di Caprio) and Jack Sullivan (Matt Damon).Costigan is the 'good guy' who is convinced that he will serve his country better by getting chucked out of the police force. Thing is, he has the perfect 'family background' - crime inclined cousins and an uncle who once worked for mafia boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). So he makes a convincing entry into life on the other side of the tracks, although actually operating as an undercover.Sullivan, on the other hand, appears to be the classic good guy but is not. He owes a childhood debt to Costello, who was 'like a father' to him. When he joins the state police force, his allegiance is clearly elsewhere.The fun begins when both sides realise there is a mole on the other side but don't know who. There are many classic 'Hindi movie' moments like for example, both guys falling for the same girl. And Sullivan being made in charge of finding the mole in the police department a.k.a. himself! Complication: The only two people who know Costigan's real identity are Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Sergeant Dignam (Mark Wahlberg). One dies, the other resigns. Our man is out in the cold, without an identity. Without giving anything more away, lemme just say you will be hooked to the twists and turns in the film.There is a lot of violence, throughout. The scene where Costello and his men break Costigan's already broken arm to check if he is carrying a wire is truly chilling. Even then, the final 10 minutes come as a surprise although considering the title of the movie- they shouldn't! Concepts like 'good' and 'evil' get turned around on their head and in such a scenario, you can scarcely expect a happy ending.The director's touch is evident - the film remains taut and never get cheesy. Leonardo 'babyface' di Caprio has grown up - and how. I can finally think of him without automatically associating the word 'titanic'. Mark Wahlberg as the foul-mouthed sergeant is extremely good and Jack Nicholson, of course, outstanding. Actually, all of the actors are excellent.The most interesting thing is that 'The Departed' is a remake of the Hong Kong film 'Infernal Affairs'. Yet, those who have seen both say there definitely is 'originality' in this version. Looks like Scorcese is walking a path similar to that of Indian directors remaking old classics like Don, Umrao Jaan etc. 'The Departed' is of course a cross cultural transplantation but the trend is to take an idea and refine it/ give it your own unique touch. For example, setting the story in Boston, with an Irish mafia - as opposed to New York and its done-to-death Italian gangs. Of course, there will be people who prefer this or that version .The point is, we could well have an Indian director also doing the honours.. coz neither the Chinese or English versions will reach the Indian masses. An asideI happened to see 'The Departed' on a Saturday night at Cathay Cine Leisure. The ticket at this upscale theatre on Singapore's Orchard Road cost $ 9 SGD. ie approximately Rs 250. This is the same price at which you'd get a ticket at INOX or PVR on a Saturday nite. But consider the fact that 1 Singapore Dollar = 28 Indian rupees and you realise prices are shockingly high in India. The mall-multiplex culture is in fact fast becoming a 'dollar economy'. Whatever supposed cost advantage is becoming less attractive as we expect to lead 'international quality' lifestyles on rupee salaries in India. Which means compensations are rapidly galloping..The trouble is that while we may feel we are in London or Singapore while on the plush carpeted hallways of an INOX where a popcorn and Coke costs Rs 75 ($3 SGD), the moment we step out of the cocoon we are back to the Indian side of the economy. Potholed roads, population pressure and non-functioning essential services (we have a 3 hour daily power cut in New Bombay!) and of course, people, just too many people everywhere.So yes, when more than one friend in Singapore mentioned India has beome 'expensive', I would agree. A parallel 'cheap' India still exists but those of us with the right education and employabliity are rapidly distancing ourselves from it. When was the last time you went to buy wholesale to save a few bucks. Or shopped at the chaotic Dadar market? The upside is, Singapore will not seem 'expensive' - it did when I visited 5 years ago. Now, I am so inured to spending 200 bucks on taxi in Mumbai or 500 rupees on a meal the mental conversion calculator does not send up red flags that often!Of course, I am sure the same would not apply if I went to Europe... which I plan to next year. Sigh!P.S. Am back in India and will be posting as usual, interspersed with some more 'Snapshots from Singapore'.

Bond brings sexy back!

Casino Royale * * * * *

Dir: Martin Campbell

Cast: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Eva Green

Plot: Opening with a black- and-white shot, 007 (Daniel Craig) makes one of the most lacklustre entries in the history of Bond movies. But what follows over the next two hours can hardly be described in the same tone. This time around, the action is Euro-centric. However, the premise is completely different. Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) is the baddie who fills the pockets of warlords by manipulating the stock exchange.
A high-stakes poker game is his last resort to pay back $10 million he owes a terrorist in Uganda. Bond’s mission is to defeat Le Chiffre in the game and win all his money. Assisting him in the task is the svelte Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) who represents Her Majesty’s bank. Apart from the dose of expected adventure, the film takes Bond on an emotional roller coaster he never signed up for.
What’s hot: Casino Royale will easily go down as the least promoted Bond film. Nobody knew who sang the theme song (successor to Tina Turner, Sheryl Crow and Madonna) until we sat in the theatre to watch the super opening credits. You expect him to kick ass, bed the ladies, drive expensive cars and pull off unbelievable action scenes.
But Daniel Craig does all this and more. If the burden of playing Bond wasn’t enough, he has to measure up to the likes of Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Pierce Brosnan. He not only emerges victorious but also wows you with his ability to underplay Bond and take the character to new heights. Dame Judi Dench is back as M (with a hot new hairdo). This time around, M has a naughty edge that only Dench could pull off.
As his sidekick, Eva Green ain’t no dumb blonde serenading as a scientist (Denise Richards in The World Is Not Enough), but an intelligent stock analyst who is afraid of her vulnerability. Mikkelsen’s villain scares not because of his bleeding eye, but the unpredictability of his erratic behaviour. The cinematography does justice to the stunning beauty of Venice, Montenegro and other European locales.
What’s not: Campbell has a lot to tell about Bond. He doesn’t want him to come across as a cardboard cutout swinging in his Aston Martin, but as someone who can falter, get hurt and bleed. In the process, he exceeds the length of the film by getting overly dramatic towards the climax.
It’s a risk making Bond romance a woman and question his credentials as the cold-hearted spy who never loved. The poker game is at the heart of the story and one needs to know a thing or two about the game to understand the goings-on.
Bottom line: A super entertainer, Casino Royale must be watched for Craig’s new-age Bond who prefers casual wear to tuxedos and suits and carries off his Blond look with finesse. And get ready to miss that trademark line as you’re only going to hear it right at the end, as Chris Cornell puts it well in the theme song, ‘You know my name’.

Snakes On A Plane

Snakes On A Plane

Plot: Remember the pre release hype surrounding the Blair Witch Project ? Using the internet as a smart tool, the makers started floating conspiracy theories and stories of the existence of such a project. This publicity stunt goes down in history as the first time a movie’s success is attributed to its innovative use of incorporating audience feedback in the actual filmmaking process. Some-thing similar can be said about Snakes On A Plane. Visit any blog, movie forum or the enormously popular youtube.com, and you’ll have a mean snake staring you in the face. The story of an FBI agent (Jackson) transporting a murder witness on a plane loaded with the most colorful, venomous snakes you’ll ever see, has gained almost cult-like status. A multi-dimensional plot of fighting the snakes along with the bad guys on the flight is what the films all about.Acting: Now why would Samuel L Jackson want to be a part of a movie that doesn’t shy away from proudly flashing the B-grade tag? Simply because he’s the meanest man to match the even more mean snakes ever seen on the big screen. I don’t think any other actor could have caused as much euphoria among the fans as Jackson has. Even though the reptiles have more footage than him, he still manages to entertain in a role that gives him God-like status: he’s their saviour, the one who can deliver them from the deadly death that’s awaiting them.What’s hot: Snakes On A Plane was earlier titled Flight 121. Thankfully, the filmmakers quickly realised that what they had on their platter didn’t match what they read on the menu card. So they changed the title so that the audience wasn’t confused about what to expect from the film. There are films that suck because they are bad, then there are those that are campy, trashy, fun (think Mariah Carey’s Glitter) and entertain only because they are over-the-top, obnoxious and loud. This film takes all these adjectives 10,000 feet up in the air and blows them up in your face with its serpentine pace. After the snakes are let loose, and everyone starts freaking out, the real fun begins. Get ready to watch some really violent scenes (and we don’t mean Discovery or Nat Geo violent). Think what would happen if the Farelly Brothers decided to use some snakes in their grossed-out comedies? To top it all is the line you can’t miss: ‘Let’s get these muthaf*****g snakes off the muthaf*****g plane!’What’s not: The film’s biggest flaw is that it doesn’t really live up to its badass reputation. Agreed, the snakes might seem real (though digital), yet they fail to really scare the socks off you. They should’ve had more of Jackson, his presence definitely adds to the fun. Get ready for snakes attacking and biting off body parts.Bottom line: If you have never heard or read about the movie, then you may not really be prepared to take this flight. Expect loads of inane action, blood splattering on the windows, mutilation and the works. Definitely a must watch for fans of this genre.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend

Plot: She kicked some major ass in Kill Bill. Uma Thurman now returns in a female Clark Kent avatar as Jenny aka G-Girl. After dating Matt Saunders (Luke Wilson) for a while, Jenny realises she cannot keep hiding her super powers from him. Matt starts getting uncomfortable with her constant disappearing acts and overpowering demeanour. After dumping her he incurs the wrath of a superwoman who will go to any extent to make his life miserable. Think Superman with a really twisted woman playing the lead.Acting: After watching her play G-Girl , you wonder if Thurman was actually intending to laugh at herself and have fun. Maybe she had too much of Kill Bill in her head, and wanted to throw herself in an inane role of a super girl who doesn’t mind indulging in some mindless action.Even though she looks hot and appealing, there seems to be something missing in her overall look. Luke Wilson hasn’t had the success like his brother Owen, and it somehow shows in his choice or lack of it in picking roles. Reduced to being nagged, and poked fun at, Wilson doesn’t have much to do.What’s hot: The premise is interesting. What if a super woman gets dumped? How does she deal with it? The special-effect scenes of Thurman flying through the air, crashing rooftops and doing other antics look cool.What’s not: Is this is a sexist movie? Would the treatment be different had it been My Super Ex-Boyfriend? Guess, we will never know. The film clings solely on to the thread of the word — super power. Every thing starts revolving around the magical effects that Jenny is supposed to display, and that is not a good thing for a romantic comedy. There is no rational explanation for Jenny’s behaviour. Why does she suddenly start stalking and hating him? It’s never explained.Bottom line: Trying too hard to be a fun film can be a serious problem. With a better plot and an exciting lead, the film may have turned out to be a one-time watch.

Don’t meet this deadline

Plot: A kidnapping drama revolving around doctors, the film starts off as a thriller and ends up being a Sunday Sermon you wish you’d never attended. Dr Viren Goenka (Rajat Kapoor) has it all —money, a plush apartment, tons of neatly polished trophies and a wife who makes sure he eats his salad (served with an overflowing bottle of mayonnaise). Oh, there’s also a gudiya rani sort of daughter, Anishka (sounds like a sneeze every time the name is uttered), who gets kidnapped by Krish (owl-eyed Irrfan Khan) twenty minutes into the film.
We can’t reveal why he kidnaps her (it would be a spoiler, no?) but we can reveal that the movie also stars Sandhya Mridul, who seems to have gotten her hair-colour job at Lata’s Beauty Parlour. The second half of the film has more twists and turns than the dance performances on Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa.
Whats hot: We have a wannabe thriller on our hands. We are lead to believe that Krish’s intentions are evil. We are also led to believe that to act like an asthma patient, you need to mime scenes from The Exorcist. But we forgive and forget towards the second half. That’s when the movie starts moving towards the end, at times dishing out some tight suspense. Konkona Sen Sharma shimmers in a weak character. Konkona’s struggle to save her daughter’s life may look feeble, but it also brings out the human qualities in her character.
Whats not: The film serves as a Dummies Guide to make a family drama under the disguise of a thriller. You expect some edge-of-the-seat excitement, but the only reason you sit on that edge is while waiting for the final reel to roll. There’s a fight to nab the Enemy Number 1 title: is it the script, the actors, or the tacky direction? I think we should call a tie and let all three of them share it.
Kidnapping dramas can be thrilling (Khiladi) as well as fun (Hera Pheri), but Deadline makes its own category: boring. Out of the actors, Irrfan hams it up like there’s no tomorrow. He comes across as a poor man’s Nana Patekar without a kalamwali bai. He desperately needs to get out of this ‘I can be serious and funny at the same time’.
What’s that: Sandhya tries to hide her flaws under layers of cheap make up and hair mascara. Here’s hoping we see a more fun side to her in Honeymoon Travels. The climax is not only preachy but also dragged to the point of being ridiculously unbelievable. In spite of an interesting premise, the director gets stuck in a web of clichés and sails on safe waters. Thankfully, there are no songs.
What to do: Don’t give yourself a deadline to watch this movie. Make an instant decision and stay away from this turkey.

Ye shaadi nahin ho sakti!

What’s it about: Sooraj Barjatya is happily back to his roots; he paints a pretty picture of the demure damsel (Amrita Rao) whispering sweet nothings into her would-be husband’s ears (Shahid Kapoor is the latest to join the Prem brigade) on a moonlit night! The setting of this old-world romance is devoid of youngsters strutting around in itsy bitsy nothings, jet setting bikes and monster-like in-laws.
The conflict arises at the fag end of the second half (it has finally dawned upon the director that time is running by) when Poonam (Amrita Rao) suffers serious burns the night before her wedding. Just when you’re dying to hear some baritone voice screaming, “Yeh shaadi nahin ho sakti!’ the drowned-in-traditions hero prepares to apply soothing balm on his burnt bride.
What’s hot: Shahid Kapoor’s restrained performance saves the day. Even Amrita Rao (I’m tempted to call her Madhupur ki kali) makes decent efforts. Otherwise the flick, which suffers from the soap opera hangover of the ‘90s where women would get doused in flames as greedy in-laws haggled over dowry, has nothing new to offer. The fact that the maker manages to inject a social message into the parivarik scheme of things needs a mention.
What’s not: It’s the great Indian wedding theme that the maker continues to exploit. There is no novelty in the storyline except for the fact that Prem has laid his hands on a camera phone and keeps clicking his sweetheart’s pictures. In spite of making efforts to keep marriage prospects at bay, Prem happens to fall for Poonam after one chai session. Incredible, ain’t it?
The music also fails to strike a chord and only helps in stretching the length.
What’s that: With Poonam readying to undergo a critical surgery, Prem indulges in some pulpit preaching before he smears sindoor on her forehead. Apart from familial melodrama, the protagonist’s family members get down decking up the hospital and distributing mithai. The reason being that their beloved son is now a married man. What to do: I suggest you buy your grandparents a ticket for this soapy ride.

Ye kiska sapna hai?

What’s it about: Enter the wild and titillating world of street comedy. If you thought Kya Kool Hain Hum was crude, director Sangeeth Sivan’s new film, Apna Sapna Money Money, beats his own record in terms of vulgarity and double entendres. If insipid and mindless humour is what you relish, don’t go looking for any story in this one.
Sivan extends his line-up of characters this time (probably because of the substantial budget allocated by producer Subhash Ghai) and fills the screen with his staple gibberish. When a busted underworld don Carlos’s (Jackie Shroff) semi-clad moll Sania (Celina Jaitly) is caught by a wary inspector Mane (Sunil Shetty), she hides her booty of diamonds in petty conman Krishna’s (Riteish Deshmukh) bag. Krishna is on his way to meet his mechanic cousin (Shreyas Talpade), who is in love with a crazy pop’s (Anupam Kher) daughter (Riya Sen). But things change for Krishna when he encounters his cousin’s friend (Koena Mitra) and falls for her. Just as things are looking bright, old enemies catch up and Krishna is forced to disguise himself as a woman. Complications galore occur when crazy pop goes crazier over this man-in-drag. Meanwhile, Sania joins hands with the cop and lands up at the house to look for the diamonds. By now, three different sets of people know about Sania’s whereabouts and everyone wants their hands on the precious stones.
What’s hot: What does a filmmaker do when his formula works once? He repeats it. Spurred on by the success of Kya Kool Hai Hum (KKHH), director Sangeeth Sivan has made yet another not-everyone’s-cup-of-tea comic caper.
Script be damned, it’s all about a rollicking screenplay interspersed with some of the most offensive dialogues heard in a long time. Riteish Deshmukh is the best thing about the film and the director exploits his inimitable flair for comedy to the fullest.
Whether he is playing Krishna, the old man or even the coy girl, he proves that he’s capable of shouldering a film on his own. Shreyas Talpade, in a totally masala role, displays his versatility as a performer. Sunil Shetty is totally uninhibited and enjoys every ‘little’ bit of his screen time. The girls have very little to offer, but Riya Sen does justice to her shy, demure girl-next-door character and Koena Mitra flashes some skin and some energy as the wannabe item girl.
Rajpal Yadav, for once, is funny as Chhote Sarkar as he does a spoof on the Big B’s Sarkar. The music by Pritam is a clear winner and goes with the tempo of the film.
What’s not: Kya Kool Hai Hum was crass comedy at its best, and Apna Sapna Money Money follows the same formula. It’s funny in parts but certainly not a wholesome family entertainer. It’s very clearly targetted at the front benchers. Why else would you have Anupam Kher constantly reaching out for Riteish’s ‘breasts’? Add to this the suggestive jokes about “santraas” and Chunky Pandey pointing to his crotch.
What’s that: The scene where Anupam is trying to slip on sandals on Riteish’s feet while Rajpal Yadav and his cronies listen to their conversation gets on your nerves with its crudity. You also have other gems like Celina telling Sunil, “Saamaan khula pada hai, tickle mat karna” when he attempts to do a body search on her.
What to do: If you enjoyed KKHH, this might be the movie for you. But if it’s a family fun film you’re longing for, go watch Golmaal once again.

Gandhi-giri in Full Bloom

Remember Lage Raho Munnabhai? This fall, it seems that many civic-minded Indians are taking the Gandhian techniques shown in the film and applying them to real-life problems and protests, with the demand for accountability from government officials being the most common application. Instead of Bandhs and riots, over the past couple of months protesters have been sending flowers and doing Pujas, hoping that people whose work shows signs of negligence and incompetence will "get better soon." Here are some of the examples of "Gandhi-giri" I came across in a quick search:
Doctors and students shame a delinquent health minister (Ramadoss) to take stronger action on the Dengue Fever epidemic (700 infections and 26 deaths in Delhi alone)
A writer proposes reforms to the educational system, using Gandhi-giri as a concept,
In Gujarat, a carpenter did it to make sure a flaky client paid up for services rendered
Farmers used it to shame government officials in drought-ridden areas to approve loans to farmers
to convince government policy makers to describe their policies in clear Hindustani ("Garibi Hatao") as opposed to archaic Sanskrit ("Gribi Unmoolan"). And those are just a few examples; more are given in this recent Boston Globe article. My cousins in Delhi tell me that elderly people are stripping off clothes (this is directly out of Lage Raho Munnabhai) to shame government officials in charge of pensions to actually disburse their funds. And there are stories about pavement dwellers, in response to trash flagrantly dropped where they live by thoughtless passers-by, cheerfully (but pointedly) cleaning it up -- again right out of the film. It's not all good, of course. Vidhu Vinod Chopra is reportedly using his own invention to lobby the government of Gujarat to give his film tax-free status, which it already has in many other states. That seems a bit much; "Gandhi-giri" may well just be this year's fashion, which will get old as soon as other super-rich people start using it to demands perks and privileges. Gandhi-giri: flash in the pan, or a sign of a real revival in non-violent civic engagement amongst Indians of all classes?

Headline Exploitation? Joyce Carol Oates's "Landfill"

A student pointed me to a recent Joyce Carol Oates story in The New Yorker, called "Landfill," which is available for free online. It's about a young college student named Hector Campos, Jr., who is a pledge at a fraternity at a university in Michigan. One night he disappears mysteriously after drinking heavily at the frat house. Some blood is found at the trash dumpster outside the frat-house; several weeks later his body is found at the local landfill.It's a decent enough story -- Oates paints some strongly visceral, experiential images -- like what it might be like to lie dying in a trash dumpster with a broken neck, for example. There is also some Catholic imagery in the middle of the story, which suggests a sympathetic reading: is Campos an exemplary, Christ-like figure of some kind? Does he die for the sins of American excess, the ugly psycho-social mess concealed in the American college system? (Shades of Duke Lacrosse) Alongside the sympathetic allegorical reading and the scathing portrait of fraternity life, Oates also throws in some references to evolution via a biology lecture ("Evolution is only possible through change, species change not by free will but blindly"), suggesting an equally viable, reading of Campos' death that is distinctly un-Christ-like: the death of a drunk fraternity brother who got stuck in a dumpster as a kind of natural selection, a fitting fate for someone who was, if you will, imperfectly adapted to whatever enables survival in today's college culture.All fine and good. What's unsettling is that Oates' story bears a very close resemblance to a real death, which occurred in southern New Jersey a few months ago. John Fiocco, Jr., a college student at The College of New Jersey, died in the same mysterious way, and was discovered in the same way (at a landfill) a few weeks later. Oates even uses the date of Fiocco's own death/disappearance -- March 25.Some faculty members at TCNJ noticed the parallels in Oates' story, and complained, leading to a small spate of media coverage in South Jersey and the Philadelphia area (see articles in the Inquirer and the Daily Princetonian). In these articles, Oates apologizes (in a way) for potentially hurting the feelings of the family and friends of John Fiocco, Jr., though she stops well short of saying, "I should never have written this story" or "I should have disguised the details of this young man's death more carefully." It's the usual double-speak of "I'm sorry if your feelings were hurt by what I knowingly and willfully did." (Shades of Kobe Bryant)Obviously getting inspiration from today's headlines is a tried-and-true technique, used by many, if not most, contemporary writers. And I don't know that there were many complaints when Oates did a version of this earlier, with her famous novel Black Water, which did to Mary Jo Kopechne, Ted Kennedy, and Chappaquiddick what "Landfill" does to John Fiocco, Jr. The difference there might have been that her purpose in that novel was to unmask the myth of the Kennedys, and the corruption of Senator Ted Kennedy in particular. That is what one might call a political Roman a Clef, making an important feminist point. But none of that fire remains in "Landfill," and it's unclear what the point really is. In general, real life is and must be fair game for fiction, but everything depends on how it's done. Here there's something senseless in the way Oates works closely with the story of this tragic death (she even uses the detail about blood found at the dumpster) and turns it into easy fodder for this short story. To my eye this isn't so much appropriation as it is exploitation -- the fictional equivalent of ambulance chasing.

Diwali in Philly

I took this photo last night, at the Philadelphia Gurdwara, in Milbourne/Upper Darby (Philadelphia Sikh Society). Though the holiday isn't on the scale of the main, Hindu Diwali, Sikhs do tend to light candles.

"The Billionaire's Sleep"

Manish's post on Tokyo Cancelled a few weeks ago reminded me that I needed to finally pull the book down off the shelf, where it has been resting since S. brought it for me from a trip to Bombay a few months ago. I read it and was well-pleased (though perhaps not overwhelmed) by the imagination at work in the stories. After a visit to Rana Dasgupta's interesting homepage, I was intrigued to discover he's signed off the filming rights for one of the stories in Tokyo Cancelled to a young Australian filmmaker named Robert Hutchinson. Hutchinson spent six weeks in India this past spring doing research on it for the screenplay he's writing, and kept an interesting blog about it here. Aside from the fact that he misspells "Hindutva" at one point, Hutchinson has some interesting observations to make, both on India and on the script in progress. Here is how Hutchinson summarizes the plot for the film version of "The Billionaire's Sleep," which follows Dasgupta's story quite closely:
Rajiv Malhotra is a billionaire who inherited an Indian steel empire and turned it into a trans-national concern with a focus on India’s ability to provide outsourcing services to the rest of the world. For him every moment of every day in every timezone is an opportunity to provide efficient services. His obsession with utilising every second of the day means he has never been able to sleep. This inability to sleep has also meant he is infertile and has not been able to produce an heir to his empire. His decision to have a ‘perfect son’ made for him through the use of genetic technologies is the inciting moment of the story. From that moment powers beyond his control come into play. (link)That's just part one. Note that it's Dasgupta who uses the name "Rajiv Malhotra" (there is also a real person by that name, you may have heard of him; hard to know if any connection is intended).Part two is where it really starts to get interesting:
Sapna is his unexpected daughter, when his wife gives birth to twins, a girl and a boy, Rajiv finds he has a daughter who sleeps beautifully. That sleep is so powerful that as she approaches puberty Sapna’s fertility when she dreams brings organic objects back to life. Her bedhead grows branches and a perfect white flower. The spores in the carpet burst into life over night filling the air with floating tendrils, her clothes basket grows into a thicket of bamboo. This exhuberant fertility frightens Rajiv and he does everything within his power to have this excess of organic material removed from his sight. (link)There's a little more at Robert Hutchinson's blog, but if you really want to find out what happens in "The Billionaire's Sleep," you'll have to go to Barnes & Noble or whatnot and pick up Tokyo Cancelled (it should be there). I'm pretty envious at this point, because "The Billionaire's Sleep" could make a really great film if done right. (We're overdue for a good outsourcing-themed film, I think.)A side note: at one point, Hutchinson makes an offering at a temple in Maharashtra with the wish that Amitabh Bachchan signs on to play a part in the film -- presumably Rajiv Malhotra. Good luck with it, Mr. Hutchinson! (Though I should mention that I think Om Puri would also excel at this kind of role.)Before getting back to diaper-changing and burping, I do have one quibble with the Vij I wanted to register:
Another annoyance in these tales is that they feel derivative, more remixes than totally novel plot points. Much of Dasgupta’s surrealism has been done before by authors working both in magical realism and sci-fi (link)I actually liked the cross between the fairy tale plot structures with the contemporary speculative fiction themes. And yes, the idea of a misshapen lost twin or offspring has been done by Rushdie several times (not to mention innumerable 70s/80s Bollywood films), but it's also just a plain-and-simple fairy tale conceit going back to the Brothers Grimm: the demon who comes back to haunt you, who demands the secret be unveiled, and the payment due. p.s. Which desi actress should play the part of Sapna?

Asra Nomani, Daud Sharifa, and the Women's Mosque

Congratulations are due to Asra Nomani, who won this year's SAJA fellowship for a planned project to go to Tamil Nadu to report on movement to build a women's mosque there. The project has been initiated in the town of Pudukkottai, as a reaction against male-dominated mosques and local, male-only Jamaat boards, that have the power to decide many personal and marriage-related disputes in India's Muslim community.The movement is being spearheaded by a woman named Daud Sharifa, and has already received a fair amount of coverage in the past two years from outfits such as the BBC. (More stories can be found here [Outlook] and here [New American Media]). Despite getting quite a bit of attention, the project is years away from completion owing to fundraising difficulties.However, as one reads more about Daud Sharifa, the symbolic project of actually building a women's mosque (which would be the first one to be built anywhere in the world) begins to seem somewhat secondary to what might be her main goal: building a broad-based, national movement to support the rights of Muslim women. Since the government has done little to help (and sometimes much to hurt) the cause, Sharifa and her NGO, STEPS, have gone ahead and created a women-only Jamaat ("Jamaat" means "Congregation") to arbitrate family disputes using a feminist slant on Islamic law. They have been in operation since February 2004, and get a steady stream of cases to resolve (according to this article, they get about 15 petitions a day). Daud Sharifa's justification for the project seems strong:
"The male jamaats are unlawful kangaroo courts that play with the lives of women. A mosque-jamaat axis is a power centre that controls the community. When women are refused representation here, we have no choice but to have our own jamaat. And since a jamaat is attached to a mosque, we have to build our own mosque." (link)Critics of the idea are for the most part the usual suspects, but at least one prominent Muslim woman, Badar Sayed, has also criticized Sharifa's plans as a kind of defeatist separatism: "We need to fight alongside people. We can't just separate ourselves and put the clock back 100 years." (link)Incidentally, Sharifa weighed in righteously last year, when the Indian Ulema went after tennis star Sania Mirza, for having the gall to play tennis in shorts. In response to Anna's post on the topic, Punjabi Boy posted a comment from the same Daud Sharifa:
"If Islamic law says a woman is not supposed to wear such clothes, then they should know the same law also forbids dowry, alcoholism and incest. Yet the jamaat promotes dowry and even guns for a share in it. Why don’t they stop it first if they’re living by the Islamic law? They’re not bothered about a girl earning pride for the country. They are making an issue out of a stupid matter," said committee coordinator Daud Sharifa Khanam from Pudukottai (link)Yes, exactly. Let's hope Asra Nomani's forthcoming coverage of Daud Sharifa and the "women's Jihad" sheds more light on this inspiring example of grassroots struggle.

"Don" - Paan + Tae Kwon = Long

Actually, the new Shah Rukh Khan movie Don isn't as bad as you might expect, given all the negative reviews (for instance). It's also shaping up to be a box office success. Farhan Akhtar is probably the most hyped director in the new wave of Bollywood film directors. Though he comes from an old B-wood family (his father Javed co-wrote the script of the original Don), Farhan's first film, Dil Chahta Hai was considered a stylistic breakthrough, an anthem for the post-liberalization generation. That sense of clarity or mission is missing here: in his remake of Don, Farhan seems put most of his energy into matching western action flicks, fight-for-fight, and stunt for stunt. On this he succeeds: I liked the first car chase, and I think the skydiving fight scene is probably a first for Bollywood. There is also a certain amount of Kill Bill theatrical viciousness here that's novel in the Bollywood hero-villain iconography. What most of the film's critics have missed, I think, is the basic problem of identity this film symbolizes, a problem which is I think broader than just this film. Farhan Akhtar seems to be torn between two approaches: either he could do a slightly tweaked version of an outdated version of India, from a "disco" gangster movie that wasn't all that great to begin with. (Yes, I said it.) The upside is you get the warm-and-fuzzy nostalgia atmosphere, but the danger is the mindless perpetuation of the myth of the "glory days" of Bollywood and Amitabh Bachchan, as if we need any more of that. Or: you can make a slick, essentially imported style of action movie, with a few "traditional" songs added to appeal to the folks in UP (the "Maurya Re" and "Khaike Paan Banaraswala" numbers). This film flirts with both but doesn't fully commit, which shows it fundamentally doesn't know what it wants to be. It may be a false choice, but the question continues to nag one: will the real, contemporary Indian film aesthetic please stand up? Incidentally, Priyanka Chopra is good here -- it's really the first film where I've liked her. For one thing she gets to actually do some serious martial arts fighting, which is usually off-limits for Bollywood actresses. The remixes of old songs are so-so, and most of the new music is pretty bad (the exception being the Ganapati song, "Maurya Re," and the track by the Midival Punditz). In terms of how the songs are filmed, I have to say I slightly prefer the current style of cheesecake exploitation (Kareena Kapoor) to the old version (Zeenat Aman) -- though both are pretty much ridiculous. But the music for this remake was going to be impossible. How could anyone top the original disco-funk opening to Don 1978? (Maybe if you brought in The Neptunes or Dr. Dre you could top that, but otherwise I don't see how it could be done.) I also thought Boman Irani, as DCP DeSilva, and Arjun Rampal, as a man who's got a grudge against the Boman Irani character, are also strong. More Youtube bits: Khaike Paan Banaras (new) vs. the original Khaike (Amitabh Bachchan wins this song, hands down)Amitabh's entry in the original DonA fight sequence from the original Don

Macacas, Youtube, and the Question of Respect

Though I live in Pennsylvania (and voted for Bob Casey & Joe Sestak), the big Senatorial race for me was really in Virginia. As most readers know, during the summer, George Allen called S.R. Sidarth, a young worker in his opponent's campaign, "macaca." He didn't seem concerned that the same person happened to be carrying a video camera, and probably didn't imagine that the event being filmed would immediately be seen by millions on news shows, talk shows, and of course, on video sharing sites like Youtube (go ahead, watch the video again, you know you want to). It's possible that this will go down as the first "Youtube" election, just as 2004 was the first "blogged" election -- though notably, the blogosphere (dominated by liberal blogs) didn't seem to make a difference in the outcome of 2004, and I'm sure it's an open question as to whether Youtube had any real impact in the tight Senate races in places like Virginia and Montana. "Macaca" was one of those strange insults you don't know what to do with at first. As with many ethnic slurs, it was unclear at first that it even was a slur (remember rat-eater?), since it isn't a word commonly used to describe (or insult) people from the Indian subcontinent. That isn't really new; ethnic slurs thrive on ignorance, and often misdescribe the people they are aimed at. As people looked up various possible definitions of the word macaca, they discovered that none of them are complimentary. Like most South Asians in the U.S. (see Abhi's post at Sepia Mutiny, and the reactions to it), I immediately registered "macaca" as an insult, though I wasn't surprised that many others didn't see it that way. Eventually the mainstream consensus seemed to be that it was in fact an ethnic insult, and the next question for most South Asians was, "will this matter to anyone?" Will anyone else be as offended by this as we are? More is at stake in that question than first appears. Behind it is a deep anxiety about acceptance and integration, about being equally valued and respected in American society. Everyone is on board (usually) if a public figure makes a remark that could be construed as hostile to other, more settled minority groups -- the hostile response to Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic tirade this summer was essentially unequivocal. And Trent Lott's political career was derailed by a comment relating to Jim Crow. But are Virginians, and Americans in general, going to care about "macaca," and share a sense of grievance with a newer, smaller, and less visible minority community? As the macaca story gathered steam, there was almost a sigh of relief as the answer appeared to be "yes." And now, if Jim Webb's slim lead holds following a probable recount in the coming days, it will be hard not to see it as a decisive factor in the election.* * *But did "macaca" really make a difference? One CNN pundit suggested, based on exit polls, that "macaca" may well not have been finally as important to voters as issues such as the war in Iraq -- 56% of voters said they did not think George Allen was a racist. But it's hard to argue with the huge swing in the polls that followed the initial comment -- even if in the end, exit poll results suggest that other issues may have been more prevalent in voters' minds. In a race as close as this, it did make a difference. There was a bit of gallows humor following the "macaca" gaffe that the use of racial slurs might actually help George Allen, but that turned out to be totally false: Virginia is changing. There are now a decent number of South Asians in Virginia -- 77,000 -- and a significant subset of them are voting American citizens. Assuming that the vast majority were voting for Webb, there are certainly enough desis there to have affected the final tally of the election in Webb's favor (if the current 3000 vote margin holds after a recount). Other stats: according to the U.S. census in 2000, 4.3 percent of Virginia's population is Asian. And close to 600,000 Virginia residents (8.5 percent, with a total state population of 7 million) are foreign born, well above the national average. Virginia is looking less like the "southern firewall," and more like a mid-Atlantic state like Pennsylvania or Maryland. Urban counties are very blue, suburban counties will be purple (currently leaning blue), and the sparsely populated rural counties will be very red.

Mid-week (welcome) break

Filed under: Personal, Humour, Entertainment, Living — November 2, 2006 @ 7:11 am
Aqua and I were sitting at a place called Salon Mousse in Indiranagar getting our beauty treatments done.
In front of us was a huge glass window (and we debated whether it was sound proof since we couldn’t hear the traffic), a beautiful tree in front providing much needed green cover. It’s noon on a Wednesday.
As I stared out with a feeling of contentment, I feel I could get used to this way of living :)
These one day holidays in the middle of the week are very different from the long weekends. They are like guilty (and sinful) pleasures. You work for two days and then suddenly, you have a day off. It’s almost like you’ll hear your phone ring any minute with someone shouting and asking you to come back to work immediately. But no such thing happened thankfully.(more…)

Radio Indigo Rocks

These days I’m making excuses to spend time in my car because of Radio Indigo, 91.9 FM. Where was it all along, I am asking?
I drive more slowly. This, in Bangalore, a city now known for its maha traffic jams, is not at all difficult. I try and find more places to go to. This too, is not very difficult!
Radio Indigo in my car. Worldspace at home. I’m all set.
And I am wondering where it has been all along? Ah yes, with Worldspace I read somewhere. But now that it’s freed itself from WS, I’m hoping that it doesn’t turn into yet another radio channel and keeps playing the great music it does!
Radio needs to cater to different sections of the audience. And since one can’t possible cater to all kinds of audiences, it’s best that the folks decide who they want to target and just go for that segment. Here, I’ve noticed, they try and please everyone and that is definitely not going to happen.
Just a year ago, we had no choice. But today there are many more channels to choose from. As people spend more and more time in their cars (especially in jam infested Bangalore) radio makes so much sense.
And while there are quite a few radio channels in the regional language with largely Hindi and Kannada content, it’s quite a pleasure for someone like me to tune into a channel slightly more cosmopolitan and where they play English music. And good music to boot!
It rocks. It’s my favourite channel now. I’m not buying that CD player anymore, thus saving myself a cool 12-14K!
I’m zimbly loving it!

It never seems to end…

Another two blasts in Guwahati yesterday. I called mom and dad immediately. My dad told me he was in the same area the day before. It’s a busy shopping centre so there’s likely to be quite a lot of people around. Mom travels to and fro work everyday and a pretty long distance.
It’s a little scary and unnerving as to how easy it is for someone to plant a bomb. The next thing you know is someone’s family is wiped out. Someone loses a father, someone a mother, someone else a sibling perhaps. And to what end? Right now, it’s more like violence for the sake of violence. They seem to be intent to terrorising the common man and wiping out their own people from the face of the state.

World Trade Center

But World Trade Center is an indisputably well made film otherwise, at its very best in the early scenes where the firefighters, led by McLoughlin, reach the general vicinity of the skyscrapers and slowly start to edge their way towards the rumbling buildings. This is stuff that the finest horror-movie directors would have been proud of – you get a visceral, firsthand impression of what it must have been like for those men to approach the Twin Towers (at that point, no one imagined that the two buildings would come crashing down, but it must have been terrifying even without that knowledge). We don’t actually see the towers too often in this scene (the abiding image is that of thousands of sheets of paper pouring out of the windows, like a nightmare version of those glass paperweights you turn upside down to simulate a snowfall), but we feel their awesome presence at all times – this is one of the few times that I’ve found the Dolby experience to be really effective in a movie hall. It’s like two angry active volcanoes have been transplanted to this urban setting and the firefighters are walking right into the heart of the inferno. This is an incredibly effective scene, and what follows is only marginally less gripping. Compared to some of Oliver Stone's recent work (Alexander, U-Turn, even Any Given Sunday) this is a surprisingly straightforward film – it looks like he's rediscovered the merits of good old-fashioned storytelling.

The film

I had mixed feelings about World Trade Center – not because of the dramatic scenes but because (and I know this is actually a pointer to the film’s effectiveness) it made me feel very tired and claustrophobic. This will happen when the bulk of a film involves two men (characters you’ve come to know and sympathise with) buried several metres below the ground, unable to even move, simply talking to each other in order to stay awake and sane. That’s the real-life story of policemen John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena), two of only 20 people who were pulled out alive from the wreckage of 9/11. McLoughlin and Jimeno entered the buildings as part of a rescue squad, hoping to save at least some of the people trapped on the upper levels, but they never got a chance to do anything seriously heroic, in fact never even made it beyond the ground floor; just a few moments into the operation, they were the ones who needed rescuing. The summer’s other 9/11 film was United 93 (which I reviewed here), and though that was docudrama-like in its treatment, there’s something inherently gripping about the story of an airplane held hostage by terrorists. By comparison, the basic scenario in World Trade Center – two men conclusively trapped underground, with nothing to do but wait for help – is a static one. Oliver Stone tries to compensate for this by incorporating a number of flashbacks, mostly in the form of the hallucinations experienced by the buried men as they drift between consciousness and semi-consciousness. Unfortunately, these bits don’t hold up too well – they jar with the rest of the film. Showing the tribulations of the wives and families works well enough as visual relief.