Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan

The most enlightening moment appears towards the end of the movie when the mother (Neena Gupta) says something like this, ‘Our [gay] son expects us to understand these complexities, and thereby accept him [his sexuality] overnight'. 

The movie Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (hereafter SMZS) cleverly plays with the theme in the title itself, merging both religiosity and warning within the same phrase. The first two words are clearly religious in nature; reminiscence of the adage that marriage might certainly be an archaic stupidity, but then gays too have the right to commit that. The last two are dark, not dark humor, just dark: beware, do not get killed!

And here something interesting happens, not only nobody gets killed, but also, everybody is laughing, at least the Hindi speaking/understanding audience in a remote city called Montpellier where India is mainly seen through the prism of Yoga and spirituality, and Indian movies as pure fiction, the spicier the better, the last success was a vagary called Padmaavat, not to be confused with Padmaavati. 

While discussing with a friend of mine, who was of the opinion that humour dilutes the complexity, and thereby seriousness of the theme, I thought of Life is beautiful by Benigni, and Train de vie by Mihaileanu. Those who find these analogies unpalatable should try to understand homosexuality in the context of India and other third world countries (Russia included); it kills you like a slow poison. In Made in Heaven (Netflix series), Vinay Pathak tells Arjun Mathur (who play a gay character trapped in the proverbial closet, and finally gets caught one day, which leads to his struggle against the draconian section 377 of the Indian Penal code.) that not everyone is courageous like him to live the life s/he wants. The former being in a heterosexual relationship, married with a child, and living in the same proverbial closet.

This is a story of a gay couple whose utmost desire is to be together and live like ordinary couples, which entails being accepted by ones near and dear ones. It appears to be a regular Bollywood romcom with parents opposing the relation on the basis of class or caste except for the fact that here the couple is homosexual; a subversion of another level.

There are some powerful moments: the father vomits at the scene of his son being kissed by his gay partner. Overreaction?! An Indian male born in 40’s, 50’s and even in 60’s might even find a heterosexual kiss repulsive, so the movie definitely went overboard! I seriously wonder if the censor passed this kiss scene for the Indian audiences. 

Another powerful statement is made through the fact that the father in question also happens to be a ‘scientist’ whose experiments usually fail to deliver, which brings us to question the premises of the science that he has learnt. Perhaps the bigger problem with the movie lies over here: in an attempt to create a discourse that lower versions of scientists fail to understand homosexuality, the movie seems to miss the point that in the Indian context some real scientists might also come up with arguments like ‘homosexuality is a disease’. Same goes for the choice of the city where the action mostly takes place, Allahabad-Varanasi. 

In an early movie titled Article 15, starring Ayushmann Khurrana, in which caste is the premises, the implicit discourse goes that the issue of caste is restricted to small cities/towns; in other words, bigger metros might have put this issue on the backburner. SMZS falters on the same grounds: homophobia, just like caste, is not a geographical issue, it is national or even universal. Dealing with homophobia will take years; it will not be resolved overnight as Neena Gupta aptly puts it. A first step would be to bring it to the fore and then accept its omnipresence. The movie is a success on the first aspect; it certainly brings homophobia to the fore and thereby makes a political statement. 

Another scene that blurs the lines between naivety and ignorance is when the Chacha Ji (Uncle) asks Ayushmann when he decided to be homosexual, to which the latter reverts with a question, ‘when did you decide to be heterosexual?’ And the epiphany happens. 

The comedy, gags (my favorite one is ‘when I saw him the first time ‘it’ got enlarged’), and the presence of an Indian family à la Suraj Barjatya makes it a complete family entertainer. And that is the strongest point; the movie must be watched with the whole family, with kids too, so that they understand that homosexuality is natural, and the expression of love that comes with it is natural too.

The actors, Jitendra Kumar, Neena Gupta, and Gajraj Rao are outstanding in their roles. Ayushmann plays to perfection the role of the crowd puller, nothing more, and nothing less.

Which is the dark side!?

    If there ever were a theory of colors in the human History, the dark color would certainly have been considered as something negative given its connotation. Dark, night, black, in terms of binaries, have always been considered as opposed to something more promising, delivering. The movie, Star Wars, has taken the maxim of dark side to the level of cliché. It’s a movie that claims to be sci-fi because human beings are clearly outnumbered by droids and robots in the movie. It has a storyline that can be considered a potboiler. “In a faraway galaxy”, a group of Resistants’ fight against the “dark forces” operated and managed by Darth Vader/ Dark Vader. So it’s an evil vs. good fight. There are fighters on both sides; they sometime resemble each other because at least two of them have parental relations scattered on the other side of the frontier. Darth Vader is a demagogue who wants to have control over the galaxy, and so does republicans fighting against him.

In the latest movie in the series, we come across another ‘hero’ splitting up from its roots in order to join the dark forces. The inspiration behind that change of heart is a promotion that this over talented guy might never have had in an overtly austere Resistant forces. Darth Vader too had similar aspirations. The message is clear from the director; aspirations pull you towards the dark side, if not why would a person be penalized for doing something (killing the opponents) which he would do anyway anywhere?

Does dark side in this over virtual realm have any meaning? Has it got something to do with evil or is it some kind of oversimplification of a real problem: politics of power? To begin with, the Darth Vader side is an analogy of an imperial system. Rightly termed as Empire, it resonates with all that is wrong with an imperial system: greed, dehumanization of subjects (literally sometimes) and brutal repression of voices. It certainly provides an impetus to the idea of goodness to anything that opposes it, Luke Skywalker for instance. And yet, it remains a center of attraction for many ambitious people: Luke’s father, his nephew etc. These people are incapable of appreciating the sacrifices that their folks have made in order to defeat the empire. George Lucas, and later J.J. Abrams, the two directors of the saga, have carefully ignored to cater to this question. They have curiously left the question hanging in the gray zone of ‘they must be power hungry, who knows?’. But then, who isn’t? It’s quite simpler to say that Luke’s folk are out to restore “republican values” than to admit that they live in a chimeric world; want to recreate some lost Utopia. Their idea of Utopia doesn’t match with that of Vader’s, but that doesn’t mean that the latter doesn’t think in terms of creating a Utopia for himself.

At a certain point in the movies, Vader appears to be more like a human resource manager in a mission to recruit talents for his organization. He incarnates lord Valdemort of Harry Potter, the unknown demagogue of the Terminator series. In comparison to these movies, Vader is more visible through his eccentrics and anger in the Star war series; he is almost human. Human he is, is he not?

Why such euphoria around a movie that never proposes anything new, not even the gadgets, USP, for any sci-fi movie? The latest movie in the saga had similar plots to that of its predecessors: attack, counter-attack, defeat, with some moments of laser guns blazing. The actions scenes are dated, at its best, for a sci-fi movie released in 2015, stale, at its worst. They are either meant for people still carrying the nostalgia of the “Belle Époque”, or those taking their kids along to make them watch what the parents used to watch “in a faraway temporal galaxy”.

Comparison is a bad thing; it’s highly subjective, derogative, belittling. Le Monde gave 2 out of 5 to Spectre and 4 out of 5 to Star Wars 7. The movie critics were clearly in the 50’s (I might be underestimating the age). They probably found Bond’s flamboyance a bit too much to digest, his villain too ‘gentle’, his muse too French. The plot was complicated, psychological- how often do you come across fratricide?, thrilling (a helicopter taken to its maximum height at an angle of 90° comes naturally to a standstill before going for a free fall. Those who have read the report of Rio-Paris flight crash know that it’s possible), metaphorical (Big Brother and George Orwell get their overdue mention in this surveillance crazy world) and entertaining.

This natural tendency to compare has given rise to another hypothesis for Star War’s success over Spectre: the gray areas are perhaps more grayer than ever. Bond is a part of Queen’s secret service, the imperial tag can never be removed. His fighting for justice is seen in terms of pure self-service, or of serving the British Empire. It’s difficult for the people to connect with such an imperial agent. However, Star Wars epitomizes the struggle of Damned of the Earth (Sorry, Fanon). It’s easier for everyone to side with the Bright side and criticize the dark side thereby criticizing the wrongdoings of the empire and redefining the idea of liberty and humanity as something called Modernity.

Frederick Cooper tells us that “Modernity” was considered as a European concept by some non-European post-colonial critics. The idea stems from the fact that non-Europeans are considered to be incapable of creating “Modernity”, which thereby would remain the prerogative of Europeans. So, a movie questioning the intentions of an Empire has to come from a Euro-American stable. Kylo Ren and Darth Vader are the antithesis of this Modernity, they make that Empire look evil to those same people who have no qualms living and flourishing within that imperial system. They hit the european conscience not because they are evil but because they try to be like their imperial bosses. They appear to be inspired by lucre and ashamed of the misery that their parents had to face. Airtel, Shell, Total, De Beers, Vodafone, Orange, Apple, Mango etc. are the extension of the same imperial system that Ren and Vader make look evil to the people. At the same time, whom do they incarnate if not the people joining the Dark forces by getting a job in these above mentioned conglomerates, by often choosing to reside in a new geographical location far away from their ancestors? Ren and Vader are us.

Coming back to Bond, the agent wears a Rolex, still a matter of fine taste and lots of moolah. A fine advertisement for the Queen and her imperial system: they are capable of taking good care of their foot-soldiers, and for the same reason Vader and Ren changed sides. Is it not? There is no glory in pauperism. The fascination with the dark side is not new, the only question is why Bond won’t get into it whereas Vader and Ren would unscrupulously join it. Is it something to do with their upbringing? The former was an orphan and the latter had parents outliving their kids. Only simpler questions can have simple answers.

Is dark side evil? Is killing animal for human consumption inhuman? Is murdering a person by hanging him because he murdered another person mockery of the idea of justice?

All these questions have one single answer. The moment you start having doubts, you enter the gray area. 

“The mob song”

I am the mob, I change destinies, I am the gust of wind, I break through every layer of sanity, I am irresponsible, for I am deprived of qualities, I alter the path of the rivers, and its tributaries.

You fit into the mould of nationalism that I made; You caress the scriptures that I made you read; You adorn my different appearances all along the centuries, You remain crushed along with your individuality, under my collectivity.

He who kills, be killed, He who mauls, be mauled, He who treads my path, remains the chosen one, He who falters, curses his existence.

I bay for the blood of criminals, and more often than not, I mix up criminals and crime. I am usually right or at least inclined towards the Right. I crush any opposition, I destroy ideals; I bury ideas… I am progressive in my own way; the only way I know: regressivity.

I fornicated with crusaders, slept with monarchs, made peace with a like-minded herd. Intellect won’t impregnate my sterile womb, meditation won’t contaminate my blood lusty existence; I contemplate within my comfort zone, without it I am perplexed. I am rusty and rustic, impervious to any thoughtfulness.

The only thing that dare oppose me is another mob: I am the mob.

Raanjhanaa- Where only dreamers dare tread...

Today a ‘good movie’ has become a very subjective statement; a movie’s success could be measured through various factors, not necessarily cinematographic: commercial success; critics’ ratings; viewers’ ratings; and if everything fails, the scandals that it has managed to garner pre or/and post release. Simply put, it’s difficult to find a good movie that’s deprived of all those above etiquettes and still fall in the purview of entertainment and art. These two options might not even gel in the contemporary cinema even though late 90’s have seen such good attempts in the form of Satya, Roja and even to a certain extent Rangeela, not in this chronological order though. The late 2000 came with many experimental attempts too as the rise of multiplex culture ensured a window to these experimental non-formula movies, Dev D and Gangs of Wasseypur for instance.

            Raanjhanaa by Anand Rai claims the attention from viewers on various grounds: it’s a romantic movie (off late there has not been many good ones), and the plot advances like a story in a novel, well detailed; technically correct and yet chimerical. And to complete the picture, the ‘hero’, unlike Hritik Roshan and Shah Rukh Khan, resembles many of us blog writers. It’s on that point perhaps that resides the strength of a ‘real’ love story as in many reel stories the lovers are straight from the encyclopaedic images of Greek gods. Lest the protagonist, Kundan (played marvellously by Dhanush) forgets this reality, his man-Friday Murari (played by Md. Zeshaan Ayub), reminds him of this reality: “Ab Shah Rukh Khan to tum ho nahi…” As a viewer, your sincerely is smug: “thank God it’s not SRK”, especially with the kind of movies the latter is churning out recently.

 With Kundan, Murai and Zoya (Sonam Kapoor as good as she can get), the plot begins in the by lanes of Varanasi; an imperfect love story in real jargons with the differences of class and religion. In a traditional Bollywood potboiler, it might have ended up differently: everyone opposing to such a union (in the climax scene) getting a pedagogical taste of maintaining “religious harmony” or even love being pure “above all the notion of class and religion”. Raanjhanaa however differs on that point; it breaks the myth of a romanticised love and enters into the realm of unpretentious straightforwardness. The director uses the symbolism “pyar ek bachpana” (the concept of juvenile love) in its literal sense: when our love birds decide to break social barriers, they are both school going adolescents. Later, the lady ‘improves’ to shun it as kindergarten infatuation. However, the black sheep incarnated by Kundan never ceases to get ‘real’ about it, he is a Believer.

There are many turning points in the plot, mainly the discoveries made by Kundan in relation to his lover-to-be in love with someone else and the role played by religious identities intermittently throughout his life. As the lead character, the religious barriers do not seem to bother him, as a matter of fact; they do not exist for him. He only discovers the ephemeral nature of his bliss when he realizes that Zoya is in love with someone born in the same variety of cradle. Yet, it doesn’t destroy him; a fact owing to his infallible affection towards Zoya. It’s only latter that he would discover the transcending power of his own love; the truism that has been passed through generations by intellectuals to poets.    

There are certain impressive moments; in a scene when Murari tells Kundan that “all object of desires has been taken away from these rural guys by engineers and doctors residing in cities”. This realism could be the subject of sociological study of an India marked by its difference between what Urban is and what is not. The character of Murari impressively makes forays into the domain of realism, something that the gullible mind of Kundan fears to tread. The latter’s poetry won’t ‘contaminate’ the former’s crass reality. The only moment he is seen to be overwhelmed with sentiments is towards the end when Kundan is admitted in a hospital. It speaks a lot about a rational mind that has got no refuge from hardship as opposed to a romantic spirit that doesn’t know it.

The protagonist’s entry into JNU (Sic.), an epitome of liberalism, doesn’t change his approach much. He won’t become a Che Guevara overnight, yet he gets himself involved into issues, incomprehensible to him, just for the sake of proximity to Zoya. The physical and psychological distance that he has travelled for his object of affection would guide him in his pursuit. There is a certain element of postmodernism to his character; certain recklessness towards life, an unassuming nonchalance towards his actions. In the 70’s cinema this would have been the characteristic of a Dandy, in the 21^st century it’s an odd-jobber, no cigarettes or cigar in hand, no taste for art and music, he is the representative of 70% of Indian male, today’s ground reality. It was also a necessity for JNU to be the central point of Kundan’s quest as it is one of the very rare locations in India where he would ever get a due: no matter what his fantasies are, there is always an underlining connotation of class attached to his struggle against odds, JNU would help him get rid of that baggage. A geographical location, in its semiotic sense, transcends into warfare for this classless village guy. It’s at this same location that he discovers his Zoya as a free being, beyond any family shackles, in her own element and he realizes that it won’t be, if it is at all, the same juvenile love encore that he had few years back in Varanasi.

Since the realist cinema is more about finding a theme as opposed to its commercial counterpart, there needs to be one in this movie. This time it’s unadulterated and unconditioned love. A notion on which the Indian cinema relied heavily in 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, later, however, it started manifesting itself as more pragmatic and convincing. Raanjhanaa flirts with realism and fiction. It might not be very credible on many issues but it certainly manages to keep certain volatile issues, like religion and ‘faith’, in the backburners rather deservingly. Kundan’s love wages its own battle again refusal (by Zoya), it ignores radically the aspects to which a rational mind would concede defeat. 

The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Other end of the smoking pipe.

A provocative title; the writer calls himself Mohsin Hamid; and September 11 as background. What else would you ask for to complete your Metro ride(s)? . Ever wondered what is being like carrying the burden of a certain name in an aggressively volatile situation? That’s Hamid for us. In his semi-autobiographical novel, experimenting with the narrative: a monologue laced with heavy irony, his narrator-protagonist treads the path of a presumed fundamentalist, expression invented by the Vilayati press to categorize all those people not “fully co-operating” in its war against evil. Well, all this is déjà-vu. The novel is about a Pakistani student, having studied at Princeton and worked in the USA finds himself in a state of schizophrenia after America’s handling of Afghanistan and India’s posturing at the Pakistan borders after a militant attack on its parliament. “…America was maintaining a strict neutrality between the two potential combatants, a position that favored, of course, the larger and – at that moment in history-the more belligerent of them.” These few lines are enough to fill many of our Indian readers’ hearts with a brazen notion of pride and jingoism. Hard to skip the irony though, at the time when peace was mainly required, these two nations chose not be very forthcoming with it.

This novel deals with the concept of Identity crisis; the protagonist doesn’t have any problem per se with his Islamic identity and name, typical “Changez”: he manages with an outstanding performance at Princeton, rated continuously as the top employee at the quarterly review of his company, and is successful with the fairer sex too. As the hero puts it decently “I was a perfect breast, if you will- tan, succulent, seemingly defiant of gravity- and I was confident of getting any job I wanted”.

The novel is not about weakness, not even meekness, no surrenders, only priorities shifted, worries inherited, sense of culpability induced. In brief; a South-Asian male context, parphrasing Adiga from his last Man in Tower: an India (rather South-Asian) male doesn’t live for himself; he is condemned to live with many other responsibilities. Moreover, this boy Changez has opted himself for both the versions of his life: the American and Pakistani. As a matter of fact, he is the narrator, narrating from Pakistan, the story of his life to an alleged American interrogator, presumably there to interrogate him on his activities. This part also symbolizes the American intrusion deep inside the Pakistani territory; another obligation to survive. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is not only a title; it’s also a posturing against India and the USA. It’s a confirmation that belligerence is not only the prerogative of the almighty America and some tin-pot terrorists. It’s a universal malady, not confined to rich countries.

The modesty of this article is not at all a reflection of the book; it’s just the inability of yours sincerely in expressing his sentiments regarding a novel that ridicules the whole idea of Westernization in the aftermath of a reactionary reaction by the same West that was supposed to be faith keeper of the free world (sic). This notion was/is also applied to our great India (sic). Although I am not in a habit of quoting passages from books on a blog site, don’t know what could be the infringement of someone’s copyright, yet, there are certain passages, very humanist in nature, difficult to avoid.

I was struck by how traditional your empire (US of A) appeared. Armed sentries manned the check post at which I sought entry; being of a suspect race I was quarantined and subjected to additional inspection; once admitted I hired a charioteer who belonged to a serf class lacking the requisite permissions to abide legally and forced therefore to accept work at lower pay; I myself was a form of indentured servant whose right to remain was dependent upon the continued benevolence of my employer.

Calling America traditional tantamounts to pushing that country notionally into anachronism. In other words, the basis of modernity are not KFC’s and Wo

rld Trade Center, they are the ideas of equality, riddance from slavery and individual liberty. America failed at all these levels in the aftermath of 09/11 tragedy, it ceased to exist politically for those who did not belong to it. Hamid and his ilk were not some illegal immigrants filling up the American pastoral, but educated guys have sensitivities that surpass the day-to-day efforts to earn the bread and butter, in other words, a large chunk of immigrants.

And then, as if not to make things better, Changez gets into nostalgia, contrasting it with the American primitiveness:

In fact, they (comparisons) did more than trouble me: they made me resentful. Four thousand years ago, we, the people of the Indus River basin, had cities that were laid out on grids and boasted underground sewers, while the ancestors of those who would invade and colonize America were illiterate barbarians. Now our cities were largely unplanned, unsanitary affairs, and America had universities with individual endowments greater than our national budget for education. To be reminded of this vast disparity was, for me, to be ashamed.”

Lost South-Asian civilization, or lost a lost civilization to live with for ages to come, something to feel nostalgic about; the age long remedy for many evils that our societies have collectively, undergone, and they keep us feeding with the superiority complex, with which we could have indeed lived had we been that superior. It’s an American dream shattered along with a mixture of culpability on the part of the narrator, the guilt of living in a country far away from his; the terror inflicted upon his country by America in the name of terror inflicted by his community on the ‘free world’. 

Bol- The Unspeakable.

            Sometime a movie could be so thought provoking that it could eventually lead to penning down a few things about it, pulling you out of that proverbial Writer’s Block. As the title suggest- Bol (meaning ‘word’ while it is used as a noun and “speak” in the imperative form), the movie has to deal with an issue. Its picturization underlines both talent and courage. Living in the Subcontinent, leading a sedentary life is one thing, attacking the Powers that be is entirely another thing. And when it comes to interrogating loudly on issues pertaining to religious anarchy, the Subcontinent could prove to be a boiling point. Interrogation it does, there is no drop of a hat solution provided, everything needs to pass through self interrogation: one of the last dialogues of the film by the TV correspondent amply proves this point. The plot is laden with paradoxes, “why did you commit honor killing on a boy, it’s only meant for girls”: the spectator confronts with the uneasy truth as to which one is the bigger crime, “honor killing”, or honor killing a boy.

            Before this writing becomes too confusing, there is a bit of summary. It’s a family of a Hakeem (a Shaman), that finds it hard to make both ends meet, as there is only one person earning and as many as 9 people to feed ( or even more), the father keeps on producing baby girls in the hope for a baby boy. As says one of the novels by Truman Capote, “more tears are shed over answered prayers”, the father gets his wish fulfilled in the form of a Transsexual, Cross-dresser boy. Much to the chagrin of the father and the mother, the boy fails to become a man, and considered to be girlish (Sic.), and it’s interesting to see how this young boy perceives “manliness”: “Showing anger, shouting at ones family and beating them too”, that’s how he defines being a man, and he is not far from the truth either. One nearly feels that the discourse is heading towards traditional feminism, until the sisters convince him that all five fingers are not the same. The father continues to breed and it’s the daughter who initiates actions against his religious bigotry and foolhardiness.  

            The scriptwriter of the film turns the tables by getting the young boy raped and eventually murdered by his father in the name of “honor” killing. The concept is that an orthodox primitive society tends to destroy the very notion of being a girl, as opposed to what many Khaps and Lady Saints try to feed us by attributing the cause of these assaults to the manners, clothes of a girl. It’s the girlhood or the womanhood itself, an Essentialised way of looking at genders; creating the differences, that attracts these assaults, that make them more vulnerable, and often it’s also used as a tool of subjugation. And here lies the paradox of the movie, the only one to justify the title of the film is the eldest daughter, not only out of a solidarité feminine, but also because she distinguishes well between what is right and what is not, moving away from the garb of Marxist Feminism to the one proposed by Julia Kristeva, “politics of situation”. The director remains on the solid ground and does not let the film stray away into abstraction where all the cacophony would turn this socially relevant theme into a red herring. The elder daughter refuses any paternal authority based upon bovine stupidity and the concept of reason of the mighty, even going as far as getting her mother operated for vasectomy against the desires of the father, who considers it as sin against his Almighty.

 Here we enter into the danger zone: religion. Anything that enters into the society, either bad or very bad, has to pass through religious tenets, and this idea being unquestionable, the father finds himself in a double authoritarian position, that of a male, and as if being a male in place like Subcontinent was not cruel enough, he is also an ad-hoc religious authority, like a middle ages catholic preacher or like a 21^st century Hindu Godman or goddamn. The plot gets bolder specially weighing on the fact that any blasphemy could lead to a social boycott or even to death. But the director carefully handles it by portraying it as a problem of interpretation of these scriptures by different people. Whereas the daughter reads them pragmatically, the father tries to apply them so wastefully that he ends up making a mockery of it: getting involved into polygamy with a prostitute, a destitute in her own way, and also committing all possible crimes like bribing the police to get away with the murder of his son. He considers all these actions pardonable by his almighty and not the bigger crimes like checking the population at home, looking for a job, or even falling in love with a guy of same age (but of different community)- within the community a “boy” as old as the father’s age is acceptable too, only he should not be elder (to the father I mean).         

            The film also swims in the danger zone by not exploiting the traditional method of mockery on bigotry: Humor. As Henri Bergson would have agreed, Humor mitigates the effect of shock: Rushdie, Charlie Hebdo, and more recently, a less serious attempt in the form of a movie Oh My God was a reminder to this fact that anomalies revealed in a lighter vein, taking recourse to humor, become digestible even in complete totalitarian regimes. In this film, the director dared the wrath. A lot of irony emerges in the plot, be it the birth of a different child, a puritan sleeping with a prostitute for money thereby reciprocating the deal, and yet the plot completely lacks humor except for some skirmishes between the father and the rebellious daughter that usually ends up with a slap for the latter. The message is clear, the director has no intentions of mitigating any shock, and he rather wants to play with the effect of shock. The shock effect, the sensationalization, work in today’s media, so does it in the film, it has to, there is no harm in accepting the worst, it worked with the Slumdog Millionaire, albeit the difference of the issue, it works with Bol too.

            This movie also carries a subtle hint of position against the Capital punishment, an irreversible state sponsored crime. The lead character faces the threat of death penalty, there is an element of suspense until the end, the mystery angle being taken care of right in the beginning itself. The Bollywood habituated spectator awaits with the baited breath the last minute miraculous presidential pardon, and since in the real world miracle does not take place, it doesn’t, leaving the girl hanging at the gallows, leaving behind the message that a Capital Punishment eliminates all scopes of a justified debate as the subject is dead by the time the president decides to hold one. It also eliminates the possibility of resuscitating a victim in the case if he is found to be non-guilty 

            Cinema being a postmodernist medium to pass messages to the masses could be used as catalyst to sensitize the masses. Films like this one and Oh My God have a far bigger reach than books like No God in Sight or the Reluctant Fundamentalist. This medium thus has a bright potential to liberate the mind by creating at least the minimum: a simulacra of what is right and worth fighting for.  

"Last man in Tower": The uncomfortable warmth.

The post-colonial period seems to be taking a different turn altogether, Arvind Adiga raises questions pertaining to the relevance of an ‘eternal victim’ that makes its appearance in many third World novels today. I can’t say who started this, whether it was Dorris Lessing with her The Grass is Singing or even earlier Salman Rushdie with the Midnight’s Children. Who cares if things do not change and they keep on providing raw material to any literary work positioning against Edward Said’s Orientalism; he probably saw it better later: Nobody exploits (both figuratively and idiomatically) Orient better than Orient does it itself. Arvind Adiga, as a conscious writer is aware of two debates, one that the Orient is always painted black in Western imagination- just heard it recently in a seminar. And, the Orient is the neo-Imperial (not an adjective, but a complete noun). Mittal Steel was all about European Protectionism, but that’s what “Khadi Andolan” was about. They don’t teach us that in schools, over there they just teach us Adam Smith and Keynes. To which School did Adiga go? Looking at the way he sums up things, I am sure that he must have learnt it all by himself: the truth. With the fictional touch of exaggeration though; but why can’t a cynic and a clairvoyant prophesize doomsday? After all, that’s what how he ended his The White Tiger.

The evil is right here, knocking at the door, touching the epitome of modernity first, contrasting it with the anachronisms like segregation; isolation; attack on individualism. The novel starts as a warning bell: not that it has such an ornamental beginning, but the credentials of the author are such: he is a cynic and so are we… We read him because we know that he is giving expressions to our sentiments, and we are also aware of the fact that we won’t be good at that. A middle class Mumbai society, with all lower and middle class values: La Malaise indienne, as famously put by one of my teachers: family; responsibility; children; parents; rituals; festivals; anachronic ideologies, and opposed to it, a Masterji. A nerd, a misfit in any society, it’s pretty obvious that he would have been a misfit in any society/community. People like him are less a nonchalant object meant as fixtures and are more like ideas that keep on flowing, they tend to define their own positivism and yet remain attached to the cause of Universal good.

This man doesn’t want to vacate the apartment that represents for him the souvenirs of his wife and daughter. He is also the last man standing between the windfall and his neighbors residing the same apartment tower (sic.). A Guajarati builder had offered them “Rs.20000/square foot” for their dilapidated building that might anyways fall anytime. This Masterji won’t let a Punjabi Puri, a Sindhi Ajwani, a Christian Communist Rego, a Muslim Ibby to claim a stake on what they ‘deserve’ for having toiled for such a long time in pre and post Mumbai-Bombay or Bombay-Mumbai. The human greed metamorphosed into fantasy and then need is the lesser part of this novel than the human nature. Emile Zola made this trend ostensible in France, in one of his novels, Germinal, on an experimental basis by putting one of his characters, Etienne, in a situation detrimental to the mine laborers. What did he expect Etienne to do? Compromise or vanish, the character being more sure of himself rebelled. It caused destruction. Adiga’s Etienne rebels too, but doesn’t have a similar fate.

This inter-textuality demands just more than a superficial comparison. A century has elapsed, the contexts are not similar and yet there is this experimentation with the human nature. In the Indian context, it all begins with essentialism. A favorite among many writers, essentialism has provided the backbone for many social novels, the Maximum city by Suketu Mehta was another example in this context. Mumbai as they say a Melting pot is not going to be the one as it was never one; nothing melts there, except Gold perhaps. Coincidentally, it’s the money and not any other common cause that unites these Guajarati; Sindhi; Punjabi; UPwallah; Bihari; Bengali Mumbaikars. The essentialism comes from within these communities and does not flow from the pens of these authors. Representation is what Adiga and Mehta stick to. Moreover, this generation of authors like Adiga, Mehta and Gautam Malkani- the last one of the trio had recently produced a Time Bomb, titled, Londonstani, provide hope to us that everything is not lost and stagnated at Gayatri Spevak and Said. The understanding of each situation needs a heterogeneous approach; their characters are not united by a sense of community, but with the sense of situation (Julia Kristeva invisibly present). Zola’s naturalism was perhaps a step in this direction, but it is bringing a lot of objective understanding to different contexts- all dissimilar. The Orient is a neo-imperial too, if not the only neo-imperial.

Last Man in tower is authentic in approach, if not in the theme and characterization. We were anyways not expecting any surprises from this writer of social novels. The pricing was harsh on Indian readership, one thing that Chetan Bhagat types have taught us is the pricing technique. No one expects Adiga, Malkani and Mehta to be sold at less than “Rs.100”. This honor best remains with Bhagat and his ilk. They deserve it. But how do publishers plan to make these other books more widely read with such a price tag? India might not yet be ready for an exclusive hard-bound release, take a lesson from The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, it did pretty well thanks to its soft-bound copies.

"Delhi Belly": Victory of Omega male.

Part Snatch, part The Big Lebowski , Delhi Belly relies on the good old formula of success: a Firangi plot and Aamir Khan in credits. Dragging an omega male, rather three of them- to the edge of desperation; traditionally known as “Loosers” in femino-feminist jargons, play main protagonist here. A clichéd Software Engineer, ‘Kanaida’ return; a dumbo-jumbo all-rounder lady Rajnikant (singing I love you (because I hate you) - again a stereotype of many potential Stars, Page 3 types; a bride-to-be stunning peanut-brain, all are part of the decorum. Tashi, played by Imran Khan, is the breakaway from a traditional Alpha male meant to subjugate everything around.

The uniqueness of the film resides in the fact that it’s Delhi seen through Mumbai prism. Geographical eponyms hardly make any difference to the screenplay. Mayank Shekhar aptly puts in his Saturday Hindustan Times review that this story could have taken place anywhere. It would be more appropriate to carry that baggage of a Mumbaikar Lens that has conceived many a beauties like Satya, Parinda and more recently Shor in the City. Novelty is damned or is sacrificed et the altar of such a resembling landscapes: Delhi-Mumbai. If yours sincerely is wrong, then let him wonder where does one find such a nice landlords (house owner in Delhi jargon), and three better-off-than-average professionals living in such dingy quarters? Mumbai lens is still suffering with the representation of a struggler’s image in the pop cinema.

The major positive aspect is the evolution of the Indian Cinema, as many would also like to make us believe- and then its acceptance by every Tom, D and H in Delhi: be it one of my moralist-vegetarian friend or a Literati down the South. One of the potent aspects of this evolution is the dumping of pre-marital sex taboo, same as ‘love only happens one’ taboo. Shekhar unjustly calls it a sex comedy. No, don’t give it the credit where it is not due. It’s a satire on a city, unlike many movies touching the human chord, this one reflects the lethargy of a city through many characters chosen randomly: a policeman, a wife-fearing baniya (Jain for surname), a Punjabi Delhi wife-beating brat, a ‘loose character’ photographer (term not borrowed from the film): he is also incidentally the most fascinating character. Yet, the problem with the film is that it fails to hurt anywhere, something unique in its genre.

Not to be ignored the Romantic aspect of the movie: realism in love. Triangles are just enlarged in order to accommodate all sentiments: hatred, jealousy, lust….The film might simply have been dubbed as a male-film à la Michel Mann and Pyar Kya Punchnama (Worth a watch too) had there been no girls like that Times of India journalist portraying more than a liberated woman à la Tarantino and Rodriguez.

Many people, it seems, are in a moral dilemma to watch or not to watch the movie because of its generosity with the amount of abuses. Aamir Khan, and previously Salman Rusdie too, have made similar voices concerning the “sentiments” concern: “there is no need to get offended by a book, just close it” said Rushdie somewhere. Aamir Khan echoes him in today’s Newspaper insinuating that one can always not watch this movie if feeling offended by the volume of abuses. These very abuses are not only meant to enhance the vulgarity quotient but form too a part of décor, as puts Suketu Mehta in his Maximum City: The abuses are “…punctuations , or emphasis, as innocuous a word as ‘shit’ or ‘damn’…”.

Leftism is not spelt CPM.

Monday, May 16, 2011.

We are a nation of preconceived ideas that remain rigid to the end and also refuse to come out of the garb of time. Evolution thus is a painful process that sometimes doesn’t even take place. A recent example could be cited as the defeat of CPM (the Bhadralok Empire) in the hands of Trinmooll Congress, an ally of the Centrist party, Congress. This defeat is termed as a major blow to the Left. The idea being CPM was a Leftist party. India always being a bit more towards Centre, the Nehru-Gandhi (Indira, Rajiv etc…) nexus, we seem to have forgotten the etymology of the word Leftist:

“The terms Left and Right were coined during the French Revolution, referring to the seating arrangement in the Estates General; those who sat on the left generally supported the radical changes of the revolution, including the creation of a republic and secularization.” (Andrew Knapp and Vincent Wright (2006), The Government and Politics of France, Routledge.)

This notions brings us to a more comprehensive and global meaning of Leftism, it does not only pertain to a certain ideology opposing the government of the day, but it also stems from the fact that all those who believe in social equality, freedom of speech, access to human rights fall in the purview of Leftism. In other words, CPM’s defeat is not the defeat of Left. As a matter of fact, as long as there is, on the one hand, oppression, inequality and, on the other hand, people to fight against it, Leftism cannot be defeated. Mamta Banerjee, thanks to her proletarian postures during the Tata Nano fiasco, emerged as more Leftist than the archetypical Left itself.

West Bengal needed a politico-social metamorphose. The 34 years rule by CPM doesn’t necessarily translate into the failure of the Left; it’s the CPM that failed, eventually leading the State to share its fate with the BIMAROU states. West Bengal has faced a brain drain within the country itself. This irony must have been able to stare at the face of the voter, who had voted out the anachronism. Thanks to the apathy of the ousted government; the State was made to survive the clutches of misery albeit its preponderance in the domain of intellect: two Nobel awards and a few excellent writers.

The 150^th anniversary of a thinker, poet, realist, Rabindrath Tagore coincides with the ouster of a party that might have been the first choice of people 34 years ago, yet it stands routed at its fort today. The symbolic moment also clears the path to a vision of Bengal; the visionary Tagore must have had in the beginning of the 20^th century. On this anniversary one can take a resolution to never allow Leftism to be defeated. In many developed societies, it has also transformed into Socialism. By letting defeat the Left, we might fall in the trap of protecting an autocratic and totalitarian system. As Indrajit Hajra writes in his Sunday 15 May article: “Martin Luther was as serious a Christian as the Pope in Rome. But it was the latter, bloated and ossified and corrupt that he protested against. Mamata Banerjee, in a similar sense, wants to protect the Left and its abandoned flock. Her war was always against the church of the CPI(M)”.

The Age of Crusades

24 February, 2010.

Dear Sachin,

One could feel the anguish that you have in yourself for not having driven your team to a major tournament victory or in other words to a major victory that you have so longed for. It’s awful to find oneself at a stage where one is compared to God. You must have found it hard to visualize a situation in which gods are expected to perform, to show their power; we live in the age of paradoxes: Ever heard Leo Tolstoy getting a Nobel or even Gandhi making up to it? Ever heard Pablo Picasso gathering alms in the form of State awards? Do we now hear the names of greats like Pete Sampras, the one who broke many records in getting prizes? What would possibly make us believe that greatness one is not born with greatness one cometh through the passage of time? It’s inspiring like the flow of a river that makes fertile all the land that comes in its way. I had always rebuked telepathy as something of having a metaphysical nature, something outrageous to human intelligence. And yet, I feel that inspiration is such a telepathy that crosses millions of brains in a fraction of second. How would one otherwise justify a person having no nearness to a certain sport (at least in the present) getting inspired with a thought of living a moment of pure obsession, and him getting all bliss, whatsoever is his share, juggling through the analysis of a certain Match.

In my country, we never mix professionalism with vocation. The former is either considered a sacrilege of certain traditional values or something only to a group of highly privileged individuals. You changed its definition, you made it a part of sports; a domain that badly required it. Today India’s greatness in not counted in terms of its prosperity, and it’s awful, it’s counted in terms of culture that this country brings into the global scene. A sport, mainly cricket, has become a part of the popular imagination. Sachin has played his role. A country that is terminally sick and badly needs a surgery and where every professional success is required to pass through personnel whims, a high level of perfection still exists, it’s impeccable and hence beyond the reach of any personnel bias. Cricket and, up to a certain extent, Bollywood have guided India through what could be considered as a self inflicted poverty. These two domains have had a far superior ideological reach than any popular ideology itself. And yet, they required a certain catalyst to be considered as religions (in the sense that Opium held for Marx). Bollywood, however saw many a demi-gods, Cricket never saw it till the arrival of Tendulkar.

Recently, a cricketer made a comment that Tendulkar was born to play cricket. This notion was to my mind highly reducing, he was born to live like any other mortal sole, and then die. The choice that he made was certainly complicated as he not being a part of generation that had played cricket: in India, dynasty means a lot. So, the choice was not only a difficult one, but it also would have complicated the otherwise smooth ideology of a middle class family; take birth, work and then rest. The expression becomes self explanatory when Tendulkar says that he would make his bat work in a certain way.

Rab ney Bana Di Jodi- and it was well made!

When I was very young, I fell in love with the Yash Raj studio films. Their Lamhe was an experiment that bombed at the box office but, deservingly, managed a national award or two. It was a love story that only Chopras could have knitted so perfectly. Coincidentally, the time when I was in love for the first time, not exactly the first time, but I consider it as a first time because that was the time when I discovered that love indeed happens; one cannot only leave it at chance but also contribute to its happening. That love (for Yash Rajs) remained green for a while until the same studio came out with huge Box offices success but too many banalities in expressions ( read Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge). Yash Raj’s are well known for being bold with ideas and presenting everything in style; avant-garde in their style, they manage to give a Midas touch to any idea (read Silsilay). Later, any upcoming star would have refused the negative role that SRK got for Darr fearing the demise of a promising career of the lead actor. But Chopras never let that happen, they insured that SRK got what he merited.

Few years later, when much water had flown down Thames, I fell in love with SRK himself, although not because of Chopras but a Nikhil Advani’s film that come out of Karan Johar’s studio. Coincidentally, I was in love too, for the second time, again the particular reason for mentioning it is that I had arrived at a point from where I could distinguish categorically the love with the notion of physical attraction that also includes sexuality. SRK ruled every heart with a bang and easily managed a particular slot for himself with the help of a boy/man next door image. And after the success of Chak de India he even started his own variety of activism on the silver screen: Neo Feminism.

Rab ne… Jodi rather was a Jodi (coupling) of Chopras with SRK. Back with bang!! What else do we say? The way these people mix realism with cinema is only typical of them. The theme of the film was that all ordinary love stories are indeed unordinary. The film did justice with the theme and actually made things feasible, accept for the metamorphosis of Surinder Rai Shahni, a Punjab Power Clerk into Raaj the coolest Jat. What I also like about Chopras is the way they always manage to redefine love and even make it look plausible!! Hats off! Love as a notion has always been vague and indefinable unless of course Mills and Boons are our bed partners. “You kept my head high in front of my friends, that’s love for me”, with these words SRK turns the table on that Kal ho Na Ho story, in which love was not complete without a traditional sacrifice or even Kabhi Alvida na Kehna, that put a question mark on the eternal characteristic of love, which was, according to the film, could be equally recreated in the middle of a marital disaccord.

Ironically, the more things became retro, the more they remain modern, well that’s not the lesson, that’s the way things are represented. Touching husband’s feet and doing a Mission Impossible II act on a bike, both were parts of a changing spectrum that includes all the elements of a Masala flick. Like it or not, Chopras are not chauvinistic (as wrote by Khalid Mohammed in his review of the film), they rather try to propose a possibility that exist even against all odds: that of being happy with the Politics of Situation as proved by Julia Kristeva, in other words, all women who ‘surrender’ themselves to household chores are not necessarily unhappy. Neither do they believe in taking things lying down, for ex. that Dhoom II scene. SRK reminds too of a perfectness that is at the moment only apparent in words and not in deeds. Yes, he unconsciously executes a perfect plan, that of making his wife fall in love with him and he does it without any ‘Macho’. His alter ego, Raj, is probably the result of a man’s subconscious mind dominating his actions, and in the process, giving him the freedom and the perspective that he always longed for, but lacked due to the social pressure that came as a “bonus” with a brilliant and dedicated mind.

All these elements are a stark reminder of the fact that in the middle of all other experimental films be it A Wednesday or Rock On; the healthy family dramas can always give a run for money to the former.

Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye

If Cinderella were born in India, she would be Lucky. Yes, dreams are made of this, of TVs, VCRs, plasma screens and Mercedes. The film touches realism so closely that it ends up translating into everybody’s fantasy. A thief, born and brought to be one, realizes very soon that shortcuts actually pay. A hysterical father, a submissive mother and two ordinary siblings, all these elements can constitute any ordinary formula film in which the main protagonist has a promising future ahead, except that he becomes the victim of his society and thus takes an illegal route to success which is rather situational. Here, the hero breeds no such intentions, he neither boasts of philanthropy behind that disguise of a delinquent nor does he goes out to settle the score against that heartless society. He simply steals, that is his raison d’être. Valuable, invaluable, banal, all these are not his concern; perfection, pronounced as realism, contributes to the status of an otherwise ordinary child. Discussing about childhood, the film dares to bare all. It throws light on the pending issue of child’s psychology; something that is going bad will definitely end up badly, unless of course, there is a miracle, which, fortunately, doesn’t happen with the child in the film as it would have put this movie under a named category, in other words, the movie has no genre. Yes, it’s comical, if one dares to laugh on the day to day truisms, yes, it’s a thriller too, if one at last accepts the fact that every ordinary life is a thriller in itself, yes it’s a social movie, if one looks at these characters as indispensable parts of any society.

Talking about realism, the film reminds of the golden era of Hrishikesh Da. All disguises and deceptions (euphemism here) are acknowledged in the ‘civilized’ society up to a certain limit. A thief is not a thief for everyone, for a few, he is a ‘brother’, a lover or even a friend. Chameleons rule the society or at least, that is what they think. They have as much acceptability as any Lucky; they are good or bad, depends upon their ability to avoid foes. Help is not a virtue, it’s a method in which it is kept handy so that it is accessible whenever need arises. The heart doesn’t beat, it thumps, as a result, all necessity becomes urgency and a comfort takes the form of a sinful desire. Even the arrest scene of Happy alias Lucky makes the mockery of the system and makes it clear that although it was not the one that made Lucky a criminal but it didn’t do enough either to avoid him from becoming one. He got the taste of that criminality even before he committed his first theft, which was in the form of his friend’s murder by local goons.

ROCK ON- Keep on

The Title itself is enough to turn away the audiences, considering the past Musical films: Yash, Taal, Zindagi Rocks to name a few. It’s a challenging genre not much experienced. We, in India, are far from Chicago and the Phantom of the Opera but that doesn’t prevent us from making a Musical film of high caliber. Taal was great, but more musical and less film, Zindagi Rocks was pathetic on both grounds. Rock On was a breather, both figuratively and idiomatically. Technical points apart, it was a high level entertainment; the adrenaline pumping department was taken care by the music; pure rock and nothing more! Lyrics, what lyrics? Yes, that’s actually what the Rock music is; the Bollywood rock, till date, has been too soft on ears to be qualified as real Rock. Metallica experimented with the soft rock with Nothing else matters but Metallica has an experience of quite a few years (a euphemism!)

The first half of the film paints a proustien panorama of life even further, it’s a nostalgia lived and relived. These four characters do not only cherish their past, they live in it and except for Aditya and Joe, they are happy to live in it. Proust’s reflections on the “Temps Perdu” mark actions of all the four singers, nostalgic or not, for them, it’s a “Passé qui ne passe pas” (the past that you can’t get rid of).

Another commendable part of the film is that the guitar gets its dignity back. With Dus (Manmohan Desai’s film that never saw the light of the day) and then with Mission Kashmir(Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s film that fell flat at the box office), the director trio of Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy did many beautiful experiments with the guitar that they continued with Dil Chahta hai ( remember Tanhai?). Now, Rock On lifted that torch so as not to let it blow off. ‘Music for the ear’ may be an understatement as it had a plot too although we saw a few reference to the English classical Full Monty, the same sort of camaraderie that holds the guys together and last but not the least, the late entry of the second fiddle on the stage. The music also gave the impression being ‘Anu Malikized’ (you know what I mean!), especially the beginning of Phir Dekhiye that sounded like the beginning of Imaan ka Asar from Kukunoor’s Dor.

Homme Mélancolique

Homme mélancolique, où recherches- tu ton âme ?

Cessée, a-t-elle, d’exister, tu vois !

Oublie tes vicissitudes, cède-toi à la foi !

Ne la retrouvera tu peut-être, mais sauras tu le calme !

Souviens-toi que tu es une esquisse

qui jette son bonheur dans les ténèbres de ses bêtises

qui nie la vie, qui se ment

et ensuite voit s’envoler sa passion avec du vent !

Tes espérances sont les rêves,

irréalisable, comme une existence parfaite,

malheureuses, comme la princesse de Clèves.

Sera tu pire qu’une bête

Sans gloire, sans émotions, sans rien

dans ta vie prochaine, si tu l’obtiens.

Ravi Rana, hiver 2008.