Ego measurement

Shahrukh Khan said that he is the most sellable property in IPL. That is some measurement for a man's ego. However, I came across a more accurate one when I was browsing through cricinfo. What say?

Aloo (f)or Brains (?)

This is the wickedest article I have come across. Noble as it may sound at the first read that it  informs users about a certain infected website (which, by the way, I may have never visited on my own in my lifetime), I cannot help satisfy myself with a reason as to why the person who wrote this chose to provide a link to the infected site. 

I am left to wonder if this is the web version of disaster tourism. Remember Vilasrao Deshmukh, Ram Gopal Varma, The Taj, and the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai? 

Delhi 6

I went for the 21:40 show yesterday and was a bit taken aback to see only the last row of the hall filled-up (on a Sunday night in Delhi). Sometime into the second half, the "Aha" moment occurred. Delhi 6 is not a feature film. It is a pantomime with some dialogues. The director has chosen to weave a story around deep characterisation supported by some mesmerizing music peppered with a few dialogues. One doesn't need a second guess to see the effect of this technique on the Indian audience. After being treated to seminal works like "Singh is Kin(n)g" and "Welcome", which require you to leave your brain at the popcorn counter, the average Indian audience just couldn't bear the "cognitive load" the movie placed on him.

The movie was exceptionally metaphorical. Be it the loose brick in the wall that estranged the brothers which the ladies of the house used for gossip or the clever twinning of Ramlila with the original story, right until climax where the mask of the "kala bandhar" burns with the effigy of the ten-headed Ravana, or the flight of the dove, Masakali to signify the ephemeral nature of human emotions, the director screamed at the audience to "look into" his movie, not just gloss over it. (It's another matter that the audience responded to him with the thundering silence of empty halls). He has displayed exception craft in handling his characters and their nuances. Each character has a part to play. No one hangs in loosely. (Let's give the Hero's performance a miss here, shall we?).

I especially liked the visualisation of the song "Dil mera...". It delicately and neatly captured the incoherence of dreams. It was a near-perfect anatomy of a dream - a motley mix of people, places and things one likes and wants; chaotic; all in one place, at once. I was awed by its quintessential realism. Frankly, I dream like that. I don't dream of Swiss Alps and Caribbean beaches filled with bikini-clad women dancing in lockstep to my two left feet.

On the whole, I liked the movie for the sheer respect the director gave his audience by treating them as thinking beings than hedonistic mortals. You do not have to be a connoisseur to love this piece. Just have your feet on the ground, eyes and ears wide open. Oh! Don't forget your brain at the counter, though. You'll need it.

Rags and Riches

Just why did Slumdog millionaire win 4 golden globes? 

May be I don't have a discerning taste for movies and can't tell the dregs from connoisseurs' delights. However IMHO, a good movie is one wherein you are at ease following the storyline. Movie is a medium where the director makes effective use of sound and light (audio and video) to convey his imagination to the audience. Now, when conveying his imagination, he needs to take care that there are no gaps; no assumptions left untold. The audience should make no "guesses" to fill the "gaps" the storyline. I think Boyle has failed on all these counts.

He made the movie in English, which handicaps it heavily given that in the social matrix he weaves, the knowledge of the language doesn't percolate to the bottom strata of the society. In fact, in India, one of the easiest signals into a man's education, career, and to an extent his social status is his proficiency in English. Exceptions to this rule do exist, especially with the profession that the protagonists in the movie take up (i.e., Tour guiding). However, the director made no attempt to educate us how the boys learnt the tongue. I just couldn't bring myself to believe that 2 fugitives jump out of a train and talk syllable-pure English with no formal education behind them. I later learnt that the book (Q&A on which the movie is based) offers a satisfactory explanation. Why this big gap?

I also thought that the "big brother" character (was his name Ajmal?) was very shallow. He turns a murderer one night, and turns a good man overnight again - as fast as you can turn a dosa over a tawa (Indian pancake over a shallow pan, for the uninitiated). Great movie stuff. But when somebody said that the character depictions were "raw" I was forced to look at the name of the movie he was referring to.

For some reason, I think that western audience like a lot of shit about some alien society. If you depict India as a land of snake-charmers where people go to offices over their private elephants and say that this is the underbelly of the country which you have exposed, you will be nominated for the Oscars before you finish your prints. I agree I wouldn't be lying factually there; just statistically. So what do westerners rate a movie on?

Lastly, I am so happy that I am not Amitabh Bacchan (or anybody of any importance); that I can call what I think is a spade a spade and NOT retract the statement later on.

Played out

I feel a bit ashamed to say that, in my 29 years of existence, I watched my first play today (better late than never). I watched “Chaos Theory” by Rahul De Cunha.  I realised two things as I watched the play. I liked the play; I love performing arts. The very concept of seeing the actors performing live, so close to you, was something totally different.

I think the surreal world of a stage play is more realistic than that of a movie. Coined in a different way, a play is less surrealistic than a movie. (Depending on your point of view, the above two statements could be profound or pointless). Imagine. For once it was not the retaken, edited, mixed versions of the best, filtered performances of artists that were presented to me in a sequence of scenes called a movie, but things as they were played out (literally and figuratively) right before my eyes. What a dumb modern-day consumer of canned, recorded performances I have been so far! How different, exhilarating, and cathartic is this experience of consuming something as it is being delivered - Fresh! (Yeah. It is such a simple extension of freshly-made food tasting better, silly).

Though I am stating the blatantly obvious, performing arts need much more skill than movies just because of the fact that you do not have the backup of another "take". You face your audience directly. It is like an author penning down a thought-out story in a big book that everybody can read, as he writes it. Isn't it a bit shameful that writers cannot write live as actors act on stage? The actors practice before, yes but they perform in front of the audience. An author too thinks out the theme in solitude, but he cannot perform publicly. Actors should feel proud of their profession.

The New Car

This is my first attempt at blogging in my native language. I know that this would reduce my total readership to a tenth of the original (ok ok...you did your math right. One tenth of my original readership would come to a fraction less than one). Well read it to see how not to write a blog in Tam.

லதா காலிங் பெல்லை அழுத்திவிட்டு நின்றாள். ஒரு நிமிடத்திற்கு பின் கதவு திறக்கப்பட்டது. ரம்யா கதவின் மறுமுனையிலிருந்து புன்னகைத்தாள். "வா லதா. என்ன அங்கேயே நின்னிட்ட. உள்ள வா", என்றவள் சட்டென்று உள்ளே சென்று மின்விசிறியை ஓட விட்டாள். "என்ன ரெண்டு நாளா இந்த பக்கமே காணோம்"?

"இல்ல நேத்து இன்னொரு புதூ கார் வந்துது. அதான்..." என்று இழுத்தாள் லதா. "அடி சக்க. உன் புருஷன் பெரிய ஆளு தான் டீ. ஊருக்கு வந்து ஆறு மாசத்துல மூனாவது புதூ கார். Super போ".

"ஏதோ ஆண்டவன் புண்யம் அக்கா. இந்தாங்க கொஞ்சம் சக்கர பொங்கல் செய்தேன்" என்று அவளிடம் கொண்டு வந்த பாத்திரத்தை நீட்டினாள். "ரொம்ப சந்தோஷம். இனிமே குழைந்தைங்க பள்ளிக்கூடம் போவது கொஞ்சம் எளிதாகும், இல்ல?" கேட்டுக்கொண்டே பொங்கலை தன் வாயில் கொஞ்சம் போட்டு கொண்டால்.

"நிச்சயமா. இன்னும் இருநூறு ரூபாய். நெறையா செய்யலாம். ஒரு கார் அதிகமா தொடைக்க எவ்வளோ நேரம் ஆகா போவுது? ஏதோ அந்த colony-ல இந்த மாதிரி இன்னும் நாலு பேரு கார் வாங்கினா அவங்களுக்கு புண்ணியமா போகும்". அவள் குரலில் ஆவலுடன் ஒரு அவலமும் தெரிந்தது.

Reservations...

Never cease to amaze me. They have done some good to the society. But the latest is sweet: "Seats will be reserved for the socially backward classes in IIMs! Wait a doggone moment. If a guy needs to enter an IIM, he has to be a graduate already. If he is already a graduate, doesn't he cease to be a "socially backward" guy by virtue of his degree? Or is it our government's humble opinion that a person from a backward caste, irrespective of being a graduate, will continue to be deemed to socially backward? Why is it that I am not able to believe that this will remove casteism from the society?