the rani of chudails

Have never been known to be short of words no matter what situation I get into. But but but, for the first time in my life, today, I am feeling incapable of putting into words, the feeling that I am going through. Ecstasy?? No no, even that comes way short of describing what I am feeling.

It’s only been about a week since I started speaking with her, but it already feels like a life time. She couldn’t have made an appearance on the stage of my life at a more opportune time. Just when the protagonist was in the danger of getting lost in his own directionless world, she entered the stage as the destination that he had been seeking, for all these 26 years.

I call her the jungle billi, the icchadhari nageen, the rani of chudails. She is all these and much more and I can’t really describe what all she means to me. At first look, she seems to be the most stubborn and the most snobbish girl one will ever meet, but as you get to know her, you realize how delicate and how intricate she is, from within. And I bet that there is no other girl in this whole wide world who has such magnetism in her eyes as she has. With simple twirl of her head and as infectious a smile as any, she has made me hear what I have been waiting to hear all these years. Yes, I did hear the dil wali ghanti last night.

I hope and I hope and I hope and I hope that she continues to remain like this and mean as much to me as she does now, for the rest of my life. I will trade anything that I have or anything that I will have in future, for the opportunity of waking up every morning with the rani of chudails in my arms.
Amen..

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...

BRING IT ON!!!

Hoping to take a break from the relentless bleak news of a crumbling world economy and the perceived impact on jobs like mine, I hop on to one of the few Diwali parties organized this year. No, I was not invited but somehow managed to get in. Hoo Hoo what do I find? Isn’t this grand, this surely is one heck of a party. I make myself comfortable with some drinks and start checking out some chicks wandering around. But wait, who are these people? Haven’t I seen them before? Oh yes, that is Raj Thakrey for sure, in a truly jovial mood and there sitting in a corner, I can make out, are Vilas Rao Deshmukh and RR Patil if I am not terribly sloshed. But who are these other people? They neither seem to be in the mood to party nor do they show a great deal of disinterest, I catch a glimpse of a badge each of these folks is wearing. It says “Marathi Manoos”. Hmmm…I don’t know whether it’s the effect of the liquor or not but I seem to get detached from the party and get lost deeply in my own thoughts.


Raj Thakrey seems to be the central figure of the party. Yes Raj, you have every reason to party, after all your political fortunes have turned 180 degrees in the past six months. You were a forgotten caricature before that, like the ones you think you can draw (Raj is supposed to be a cartoonist) and then the grand plan hit you. Yes you got it right; if your uncle could use this plan some four decades ago to come to the political limelight then you could try it out to get some attention too. After all there was no harm in trying, and you wouldn’t have lost out on anything considering that you were already a big zero. I must congratulate you on your meteoric turn around; you surely have talent and lots of it. What if, you end up challenging the very idea of India? What if, you usher in a surge of regionalistic terrorism that can and will, destroy the very country which some great men (including ones from Maharashtra) and millions of unknown Indians have built over the centuries? What if you have to ignite a fire that will lead to a civil war and hence result in the total annihilation of the mother land? This is but a very small price to pay for a few more minutes of media coverage and eventually a few additional seats in the assembly elections, right Mr. Thakrey? But you know what? Your dreams will remain what they are,”dreams” because for every Raj Thakery and his goons there are 100 nameless and faceless Indians like me scattered across the length and breadth of this country who will not allow you to defeat the idea of India.


You act as if you are greatly concerned about employment of the Marathi youth; look yourself in the mirror Mr.Thakrey, the only person for whose employment you are fighting for is yourself. Yes, you were politically unemployed all this while and you want to get an employment at any cost, even at the cost of hatred and violence against the poor and innocents who happen to be your own countrymen. Whose jobs had Pawan Mahto and Dharamdev taken away? They were poor migrants from another part of India and come to the so called “financial capital of India” (that’s right, not the financial capital of Maharashtra) in the hope of ensuring two square meals for their family. Why were these people killed? Who is going to answer for their killings? It has to be you, Mr Thakrey, because you have blood on your hands. And you may get you few extra seats in the assembly elections and a few more hours of television footage, but someday you will have to answer for their killings and will be brought to justice.


What kind of an image do you want to create of Mumabi? Isn’t it supposed to be India’s most cosmopolitan city, haven’t the non Maharashtrians had a huge role to play in building the city to what it is today? Thank god, you don’t have any cousins in any of the other metros of India like Bangalore or Kolkata or Chennai or Hyderabad, at least they have not surfaced till now. But if you become successful in your sinister designs in Maharashtra then it won’t take long for your dupes to surface in all these metros. And then, India will surely perish.


Have you ever thought of the consequences that your actions might have on the millions of Maharashtrians living in other parts of the country or outside the country for that matter? I bet you have, but that has not deterred you because essentially you are not interested in the interests of any other Marathi apart from your own. How many times have you visited Vidarbha, Mr.Thakrey? a place which has seen hundreds of farmer suicides in the last few years. What have you done to share their burden? Aren’t they Maharashtrians? Shouldn’t you be helping them out? But no, that will be tackling a real challenge and solving those problems will need the real skills of a leader, of which, you have none, but more importantly fighting for farmers in far off Vidarbha will not get you the media eye balls that you need. Instead you create an issue out of nothing and go hammer and tongs at projecting yourself as the greatest Marathi icon since Sivaji.


You are indeed very concerned about the survival of the Marathi language, that’s why your children studied in English medium convent schools and your son has taken up German instead of Marathi in college(if i have my facts correct). And I am sure that you are never going to send them outside the state or outside the country for higher education or employment. You take great pride in the wealth of Mumbai; yes you should be, after all, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs and their likes are true blue Maharashtrian companies. Have you ever thought that if the westernized countries, whose businesses have helped make India the financial power that it is today, start to think on your lines, where will it leave us and you’re Mumbai? Shouldn’t all the foreign companies shut shop in India and return to their own countries? If you have lynched a few of your own countrymen trying to earn a living for themselves in your state, don’t you think that these western countries have all the right to lynch thousands of Indians for taking away their jobs?


Finally Mr Thakrey have you ever thought about the long term repercussions of your reign of terror? You may like to fool yourself trying to think that the rest of India will take this lying down, but your are wrong ,Raj. India will not take this lying down, there have been many like you in the history of this ancient civilization who have dared to challenge the idea of India and all they have managed to gather is public humiliation and ridicule. The same fate awaits you. Even your dreams of being the prince anoint of the great Maratha tribe will be unfulfilled, because for every goon that you hire there are n number of Marathis who are Indians first and Marathis later. And if I am wrong on this count and if most of Marathis are indeed swayed by your deceit, then… good riddance, then Maharashtra doesn’t deserve to be a part of India.


Suddenly my thoughts turn to RR Patil and Vilas Rao Deshmukh. They have done an excellent job of maintaining their reputation, the reputation associated with any congress government in this country. They are true representatives of a congress led government. Yes the same congress party, whose one and only forte is inaction. It’s always been a party which has shied away from carrying out its responsibilities; it’s always shied away from taking a stand on any issue. They are notoriously infamous for invariably letting a small spark build into a raging volcano owing to their utter inaction. Isn’t it the same party which first propped up Sheikh Abdullah in Kashmir and then later didn’t know what hit them? Isn’t it the same party which created the myth of Bhindranwale to counter the Akalis in Punjab? Isn’t it the same party which arranged for the Shilanyas in Ayodhya? Isn’t it the same party which overturned the supreme court judgment in the Shah Bano case? Yes, it is. Great show Mr.Deshmukh and Mr. Patil, you have played true to reputation. You have been utterly inactive and in efficient.


Especial kudos to Mr.Patil, you were spot on when you supported the murder of Rahul Raj by the Mumbai police. He was indeed an ominous threat to the country, how dare he shout slogans against Raj Thakrey? He looked every bit a terrorist on the verge of killing innocents and yes, he couldn’t have been captured alive even though he was armed only with a country made pistol and you had a whole bunch of your policemen trying to overpower him. But how does that matter? After all he was only a Bihari and this was Mumbai! Mr. Patil, you were spot on, while trying to justify the killing of Rahul Raj, anybody who took the law into their own hands would have to be taught a lesson as you had just taught to Rahul Raj and to his poor family members in Bihar, wonder why your government and your police never thinks of teaching any lesson to the MNS hooligans though. Is this a case of selective amnesia on your part or are these hooligans too educated to be taught anything or do I smell something fishy here? Won’t it be beneficial to you if the MNS emerges as a real threat to the Shiv Sena, your political nemesis? Yes it will, I get your game Mr. Patil. Mr. Deshmukh can’t be blamed for any inaction; after all he hardly ever gets time to look after things other than his son’s Bollywood career.


Then my thoughts wander to the “Marathi Manoos” and I can sense a feeling of discomfort in their midst. They don’t quite accept Raj as their representative and don’t quite approve of the ways of Raj but are somehow cowed down and timid about speaking their minds. They are fiercely proud of the heritage they inherit, a heritage few other states in India can match. Maharashtra has been a land of patriots like few others, it’s been the land of men like Tukaram and Tilak and Gokhale and Savarkar who helped build this country with their sweat and suddenly the “Marathi Manoos” find among themselves this divisive figure who claims to be an icon on the lines of these greats and yet who is doing exactly the opposite to what those great Maratha’s did. The “Marathi Manoos” is confused about how to deal with this new creature. Well, for the sake of India and for their own sake, they can’t afford to be confused. “Marathi Manoos”, don’t get silenced by Raj and his goons, you can’t let yourself be cowed down by his violence. It’s high time you raised your voice because if you don’t, then, the the rest of India will think that you have ceased to be Indians. Boycott him wherever he goes defeat him in every poll that he contests in. Since Raj has waged his war against India on your soil, it’s you, “Marathi Manoos”, who has to take the lead in defeating him.


After such a heavy dose of thinking, whatever intoxication I had, wore off and slowly I walked out of the party. As I exited the gate I saw a huge banner dangling at the entrance indicating the occasion for the party, it read “The Death of India”. So all these people were celebrating the death of India…Well, good luck to the people who were still inside, but India has not died for sure. It’s been critically wounded by those inside but it will survive and rise once again.
As I catch a taxi to return home I shout out the following lines at the top of my voice…
…No matter what you do break the unity of this country for your own petty political gains, not matter how hard you hit us with your regionalistic brand of terror, nameless and faceless Indians like me will take up the challenge. Even if you have the whole of Maharashtra behind you, we will not be cowed away from a fight. So Mr. Thakrey, throw whatever you can at India, throw all your might, we accept your challenge…BRING IT ON!

Disclaimer:-

• This blog is purely personal and has no affiliation whatsoever to any individual or organizations I am/was/will be associated
• The views expressed herein are purely based on my opinions and needn’t be factual. In short, they are opinions, not facts and must be appreciated/dismissed as such

Bacheha-Ye-Aseman(The Children of Heaven)

Did I come third Sir? Asks little Ali at the end of the movie and with this line, ends “The Children of Heaven”. The line brought a big lump up my throat and some of the lump still remains even after 36 hours since I finished watching it. There are some movies which stay with you long after you finished watching them and you spend hours , weeks and even months reflecting on what you have experienced. Its happened to me on many occasions but rarely do you come across a movie which you wish, just never ended. You just wish that movie continued for eternity and act as a perfect getaway from the imperfect world that you exist in. Majid Majidi’s “The Children of Heaven” is one such rarity, an experience worth living a life for.

Waking up before 12-12.30 on a Sunday has been an absolute no no for me for as long as I can remember and hence I was a little worried about this habit of mine when I came to know that the movie was to be shown on Star movies at 11 am on Sunday. Somehow before going to sleep on Saturday, I made up my mind that, no matter what, I will take a break from my habit and get up at the right time. I did and am extremely glad that I did, because otherwise I would have missed, probably, the most cathartic cinematic experience of my life.

For me, cinema has always been the most powerful form of art, the most powerful form of telling a story worth telling. More than any technical wizardry or any path breaking narrative style, what I most look forward to in cinema is the ability of a movie to successfully tell the story it is supposed to tell. Unless a piece of cinema is able to strike a chord in your heart and make you experience and relate to the agonies and ecstasies of the characters, it’s not worth making, no matter how much money you have spent on it.

For many years now I have heard about the unadulterated beauty and raw power of Iranian Cinema and often wanted to be introduced to it. I have heard about the skill of directors such as Majid Majidi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Samaira Makhmalbaf and Dariush Mehrjui but thanks to the collections available at movie shops in India, never had a chance to experience their movies. Ironically, a country which has been at loggerheads with most of the westernized world for such long duration of time and has been looked down as a country trapped in a medieval time wrap, has quite a few cinematic lessons to teach to the more advanced(technically) movie industries of these countries. I am extremely fortunate that I got introduced to Iranian cinema this Sunday and I hope it’s just the beginning.

The movie is essentially a story of two 9 year old siblings, Ali and Zahra, belonging to an impoverished family living on the outskirts of Tehran. The story is all about the travails of the siblings who have to manage with one pair of shoes in between them as one pair belonging to Zahra is lost. The kids plan and manage to hide the missing of the shoes from their parents, as they know the trouble that their father would have to go through to be able to buy a new pair. I must mention here that, never have I seen a kid perform so well as the child Ali(Mohammad Amir Naji). He is simply astonishing and for people who liked Darsheel Safary in Taare Zameen Par or Jugal Hansraj in Masoom, you will be left bewitched with this performance. Ali is in an afternoon school and Zahra in a morning school and hence they think that they can manage with only one pair of shoes between them, but no matter how quickly Zahra runs home after her classes, Ali is invariably late for his school because of this stop gap arrangement.

As an audience used to movies addressing the most complex issues prevalent in the world and tired of all the cynicism and sense of gloom on display in almost every other movie, the fact that the lives of the lead pair are dictated by the nothing but a pair of missing shoes strikes you like a lightning bolt. The beauty of this movie lies in the simplicity of its story and the unpretentious nature of its narrative style, not to forget the stunning performance of the leads. The story is so simple and yet it has so much raw power that you get Goosebumps all along the one and half hour duration of the movie. There is this especially moving sequence in which the siblings trace the lost pair of shoes to a girl and follow the girl to her house with a desire to confront her, but as soon as Ali and Zahra find out that the father of the girl is a blind hawker selling his ware on the streets,they forget about their plans of confrontation. It’s a stunning scene and you are left awestruck at the wisdom of the kids, indeed, only if adults like us who shape the future of such kids had even an iota of that wisdom, the world would have been a much better place to live.

The movie ends with Ali participating in an interschool running competition, his interest being aroused because the third prize to be won is a pair of snickers. Ali knows that he can win the race if he tries but he doesn’t want to come first or second(the first and second prizes are something else) and all he is after, is the third place and the pair of shoes. Ali runs his heart out and gets completely drained by the closing stages of the race, somehow he manages to cross the finish line and is embraced by his delighted teachers. That’s when he asks, Did I come third Sir? No, he didn’t come third (he came first) and the expression of disappointment and anger on his face as he realizes this, is a sight to behold and treasured in the history of world cinema.

Thank you Iran and thank you Majid Majidi for giving us an experience which reaffirms the age old adage that “beauty lies in simplicity”. In a cinematic world order dominated by big budget studios and high flying directors pursuing technical wizardry, your story stands out, stands out for the beauty in its simplicity. May your ilk grow by the dozens.