Al Pacino, a master if there ever was any...

The word master is often used very frivolously these days and every TDH is coined as a master of his/her trade. But if there is one gentleman from the world of cinema who fits the term to the T, it’s the unbelievably gifted, Al Pacino. Over the years audiences the world over have been enthralled with performances from great actors, past and present. Performances, which stay with us for the rest of our lives. Some, which immediately come to the mind, are:-

· Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind
· Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca
· Julie Andrews in Sound of Music
· Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia
· Marlon Brando in A street Car named desire, The Godfather and On the waterfront
· Charlton Heston in BenHur and The Ten commandments
· Jack Nicholson in One flew over the Cuckoo’s nest
· Robert de Niro in The Godfather II, Taxi Driver and the brilliant, Raging Bull
· Pacino himself in the Godfather trilogy, Dogday Afternoon
· Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump and the Terminal
· Kamal Hasan in most of his films, especially the mind-blowing, Nayagan

Comparing actors and performances is an exercise in futility and devoid of any logic as you never know how X would have performed in the same role as Y has. But if I have to choose one performance which completely blew me away unlike anything else in the past, its Pacino’s turn as the blind, cantankerous, retired colonel in The Scent of a Woman. It’s a performance as powerful as any you would ever see and one you definitely feel only Pacino, with his typical Italian mannerisms, capable of delivering. His depiction of a sulking American war hero who is hell bent on taking his own life is a master class in the genre of performing arts if there ever was any. Watch how he portrays the rage, the helplessness, the vulnerability and the brazen confidence of the character with a finesse hardly ever seen before.

Take a bow Mr. Pacino and may you continue to amaze and enthrall us for a hundred more years.

journalism:-my foot!

That journalism and media in India has plunged into an abyss of mediocrity over the last decade or so is no secret. This is especially true of the electronic media which is full of ridiculous news channels(so called) and even more ridiculous reporters. Doordarshan, for all its failures surely did a much better job of covering news than any of the scores of channels we have today. Media is supposed to play a very pivotal role in nation building, but in India, it is doing exactly the opposite. Sensationalizing trivial pieces of info into huge controversies has become the norm while they keep on ignoring real issues of importance. In fact the media has played a key role in strengthening the hands of the likes of Raj Thakrey and Varun Gandhi.

Yesterday, I was watching Barkha Dutt’s (highly overrated) program on NDTV. It was a panel discussion on the shoe throwing incident that happened yesterday. What really disappointed me was the fact that the whole of the discussion was focused on a trivial issue (whether any journalist had the right to behave in such a manner in a press conference?) while completely ignoring the much more pertinent issue (why did the journalist do what he did?). I am absolute sure that the journalist should not have behaved in the way he did, but it’s also important to note that we cannot look at this incident in black and white. A journalist, no matter how experienced, is ultimately a human who is bound to be influenced by emotions like everyone else. That the whole debate was focused on analyzing his behavior on account of him being a journalist rather than focusing on the reason for his outburst is hugely disappointing and symbolic of how the media focuses on the sneeze and ignores the cancer.

Also saw some news about Punjabi secessionist groups raising their heads once again. The injustice meted out to the families of the 3000 odd killed in the 1984 pogrom by India’s dysfunctional judicial system, has given a fresh lease of life to these groups and handed them an extremely emotive issue to strengthen their base.

shoebite III

After Bush and Jiabao it’s our very own PC who has been a victim of the shoebite part III. The present home minister, PC had to endure the wrath of an aggrieved Sikh journalist today for the failure of his government and those of others to bring the perpetrators of the 1984 anti Sikh pogrom to justice even after 25 years. It’s been a long and frustrating wait for the victims of this pogrom and the Indian Judicial system and other institutions of state machinery (namely CBI) have once again failed to deliver justice to the aggrieved.

Any well functional society is built on the efficiency and fairness of its institutions and it’s a fact that these institutions in India have been totally eaten away by the moths of corruption. For most of these institutions, dancing to the tunes of their political masters has become their primary duty. This has resulted in a situation where there is hardly anything called justice. The lesser said about the Indian judicial system the better, a UNDP estimate has put the number of pending cases in Indian courts at 20 million and even if a single new case is not added to the lot, it will take about 3-4 hundred years to clear this backlog. Thousands of these cases are more than 20 years old. Where does the whole idea of justice stand then? Is it not true that justice delayed is justice denied? I sometimes feel that we are living under an illusion of having a system of delivering justice. It’s a complete sham.

What’s surprising and disappointing is that even extreme cases of communal carnage do not seem to change the mechanism through which justice is delivered. After 25 years and over 3000 massacres we have only had a handful of convictions in the anti Sikh pogrom and none of the accused with political links has been booked. Anybody and everybody who has any knowledge about that tragedy would tell you that this acquittal of the powerful has happened because the whole system of delivering justice has been subverted to meet the demands of these powerful few. Even other major rioting cases like Bhagalpur in 1989, post Babri demolition riots have had miniscule convictions and that too after more than a decade. And 7 years after Gujarat we see the same shameful story being played out once again.

How long is our nation going to deny justice to its own sons and daughters? It’s a frightening question to face and if not answered properly and promptly; then we will have more than mere chappals and shoes being thrown around.

back to where my pen belongs...

yeah..shedding off the kilos of laziness that i had put on over the past few months, am back to writing...wishing myself luck for a much longer stint this time around...