There is a delightfully tender moment in Kahaani. The very pregnant protagonist played by the ever reliable Vidya Balan brings her face tantalisingly close to the young policeman’s. He is sitting on his chair in front of his desktop when she leans from behind to fix a bug in the system. In the ensuing silence, a range of expressions flit across his face. From confusion to the overwhelming attraction he feels for her. Scenes like these are so rare in Indian cinema. After Satyajit Ray, no Indian director has been able to capture these nuances. This particular scene reminded me of the master's seminal work Teen Kanya that was full of heart warming moments that linger on in memory years after the first viewing. I can’t wait for the DVD of Kahaani to be out. So that I can buy it only to watch this scene again and again.
The rest of the film is competently directed by Sujoy Ghosh but nothing about it is great, including the performance by Balan. Just like the rest of the film, she is adequate too. One gets the feeling she didn’t get enough time to prepare for the role and ultimately relied on her craft to sail through. The problem with watching any of Balan’s performances of late is that she has set such high standards for herself after Ishqiya and No One Killed Jessica that all her subsequent outings seem to fade in comparison.
Tenderness appears to have been a casualty in Vivek Madan’s effervescent and adept handling of ‘A Twist of Life,’ three short plays by Anita Nair. The production had a lot of energy but seemed to miss out on the subtext that Nair’s stories pack when they are written in other forms. I love ‘Mercury Woman,’ the short story which was adapted into ‘Sushil and the Maybe Virgin.’ But I thought it lost much of its depth in its stage avatar, mainly because the protagonist didn’t project the complexities of her character.
Nair like Balan sets unusually high expectations with her novels and short stories, so there is always a bit of dismay when something written by her doesn’t quite match up to her earlier works. Nonetheless, it was an evening of edgy entertainment and maybe I wouldn’t have nitpicked like this if the woman sitting next to me didn’t laugh and applaud at all the wrong places. She was actually shouting things like ‘Boo to you’ when the male characters on stage were discussing women. Her continuous commentary to her companion was really distracting. I have always believed theatre calls for commitment not just from the actors but also the audience. But I suppose you can audition for the right actors but how do you screen whoever lands up to watch a play in a public performance?
The actors were all very professional and on top of their craft. I was seeing them on Bangalore stage for the first time. Instead of the usual suspects you encounter when you go to watch a play in English in Bangalore. It felt as if a new generation is taking over and that’s both positive and refreshing. I think the present run is over but if you love theatre do catch the show whenever Jagriti decides to revive the production.
And since I started with the theme of tenderness, let me conclude by mentioning the book I have been reading. A pale view of hills, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, is both enchanting and enigmatic. The prose is so mellifluous that I feel I am listening to an old cherished song while I am reading the book and the confusing plot somehow enhances the allure of the work. I am rationing the reading. Making sure every night I read only a few pages and go to sleep holding it close to my chest.
It’s that kind of a book.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Dirty Picture, Five Grains of Sugar and The Butterfly Generation
I gave “Dirty Picture” a miss in the cinemas. When it released, wife was busy with an out of town conference and I didn’t want to venture alone into a theatre showing the film and get strange looks from youngsters seated next to me. This is a bit silly but as I am growing older I baulk at being perceived in a particular light. Even by strangers. I had to wait for the DVD to come out before I could watch the film that has fetched Vidya Balan all the popular awards and turned her into some kind of a cult phenomenon.
I found it to be curiously lack lustre. I hate Chennai as a city. Whenever I have to go there on work I feel sapped of all energy. The weather is either hot or very hot. I found the film to be really low energy just like the city it is set in. It has a very shoe string budget feel about it and not in a nice way. Like the filmmakers cut corners at every given opportunity.
As for Vidya Balan, she did a much better job in ‘No one killed Jessica.’ For all the skin and paunch show, Balan has an intrinsic dignity about her that she lends to the character of Silk. While you appreciate her for cloaking her performance with this strange integrity, you know instinctively the director's vision of the character may not have been the same. He must have agreed to this particular shade only on Balan’s insistence. As an actor, she deserves the applause and the accolades but not for this film. The abandon this one required is missing. And all the male leads opposite her that includes Naseeruddin Shah, Tusshar Kapoor and Emraan Hashmi are disappointing. You feel bad for them for having been cast in this sad assed film.
I am not a big fan of translated works, especially on stage. So I didn’t have much of an expectation when I went to watch ‘Five Grains of Sugar,’ in Rangashankara. The play was originally written in Hindi by Manav Kaul and is a monologue by a young man who lives in a town that feels as if it is populated by only those who got left behind. Munish Sharma, playing the protagonist, sparkled on stage. He plumbed the depths to laminate his character with humour and pathos in equal measure. The direction by Nimi Ravindran was impressive. She allowed the actor enough space to negotiate the complexities of his character with ease. The lighting and the music aided her endeavour.
I did feel a little run down by the translation though. Arshia Sattar seems to have taken the easy route of translating and not transliterating the work. So when Raj Kumar attributes the adjective ‘grave’ to himself you know that the word for it in Hindi must have been ‘gambhir,’ if you have grown up speaking the language. Grave doesn’t quite convey the same meaning. Also, there are two poems woven into the script and they sound pretty mediocre in English. But once again the feeling they left me with is that they must have been marvellous in the original.
I felt really good after watching the play. Like I had gone back to my roots and emerged relatively unscathed by the experience.
Readers have reason to rejoice. Palash Krishna Mehrotra’s ‘The Butterfly Generation’ has hit the stands. I read the manuscript a few months back because I had wanted to interview Mehrotra ever since I read his first work “Eunuch Park,” a collection of short stories. I thought they were brilliant. The good news is that his latest matches up to the elegance of the first. Very few Indian writers in English manage this feat. Most get bogged down by a really disappointing second work. But ‘The Butterfly Generation’ kicks ass. His prose is as magical as ever and the narrative is driven by energy and compassion. The hard cover edition launched by the publisher may seem steeply priced but it is worth buying this one book than investing in six others by other writers.
Don’t let the price tag deter you. Order it from FlipKart.
I found it to be curiously lack lustre. I hate Chennai as a city. Whenever I have to go there on work I feel sapped of all energy. The weather is either hot or very hot. I found the film to be really low energy just like the city it is set in. It has a very shoe string budget feel about it and not in a nice way. Like the filmmakers cut corners at every given opportunity.
As for Vidya Balan, she did a much better job in ‘No one killed Jessica.’ For all the skin and paunch show, Balan has an intrinsic dignity about her that she lends to the character of Silk. While you appreciate her for cloaking her performance with this strange integrity, you know instinctively the director's vision of the character may not have been the same. He must have agreed to this particular shade only on Balan’s insistence. As an actor, she deserves the applause and the accolades but not for this film. The abandon this one required is missing. And all the male leads opposite her that includes Naseeruddin Shah, Tusshar Kapoor and Emraan Hashmi are disappointing. You feel bad for them for having been cast in this sad assed film.
I am not a big fan of translated works, especially on stage. So I didn’t have much of an expectation when I went to watch ‘Five Grains of Sugar,’ in Rangashankara. The play was originally written in Hindi by Manav Kaul and is a monologue by a young man who lives in a town that feels as if it is populated by only those who got left behind. Munish Sharma, playing the protagonist, sparkled on stage. He plumbed the depths to laminate his character with humour and pathos in equal measure. The direction by Nimi Ravindran was impressive. She allowed the actor enough space to negotiate the complexities of his character with ease. The lighting and the music aided her endeavour.
I did feel a little run down by the translation though. Arshia Sattar seems to have taken the easy route of translating and not transliterating the work. So when Raj Kumar attributes the adjective ‘grave’ to himself you know that the word for it in Hindi must have been ‘gambhir,’ if you have grown up speaking the language. Grave doesn’t quite convey the same meaning. Also, there are two poems woven into the script and they sound pretty mediocre in English. But once again the feeling they left me with is that they must have been marvellous in the original.
I felt really good after watching the play. Like I had gone back to my roots and emerged relatively unscathed by the experience.
Readers have reason to rejoice. Palash Krishna Mehrotra’s ‘The Butterfly Generation’ has hit the stands. I read the manuscript a few months back because I had wanted to interview Mehrotra ever since I read his first work “Eunuch Park,” a collection of short stories. I thought they were brilliant. The good news is that his latest matches up to the elegance of the first. Very few Indian writers in English manage this feat. Most get bogged down by a really disappointing second work. But ‘The Butterfly Generation’ kicks ass. His prose is as magical as ever and the narrative is driven by energy and compassion. The hard cover edition launched by the publisher may seem steeply priced but it is worth buying this one book than investing in six others by other writers.
Don’t let the price tag deter you. Order it from FlipKart.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Kurt Wallander
He came into my life much after the others. I was acquainted with most of the popular English detectives fiction had created. I was familiar with the poet Dalgliesh, the politically correct Wexford and the inimitable Morse who listened to Wagner as soon as he got home after duty. Holmes and Miss Marple were like an old uncle and aunt I had visited numerous times as a child. I revisited them occasionally when nostalgia took a sudden somersault and made me reach out for an old dusty paperback lying forgotten on the bookshelf. I was not too fond of the cocky Belgian Hercule Poirot and empathised with his creator for having gotten fed up of him. But since the eccentric sleuth was always found in English company, I thought of him as British too.
Wallander was an unexpected delight. I chanced on him, a couple of years ago, after I had finished reading the millennium trilogy in one hungry week. Till such time I had delightedly devoured the adventures of the tattooed hacker Lisbeth Salander, I didn’t know there were excellent crime fiction writers in Sweden. So when I discovered half a dozen Henning Mankells placed cheek by jowl to half a dozen Peter Jacksons in a bookshop, curiosity made me pick up one of them. That was it. I was hooked.
I had a curious sense of resonance with Inspector Wallander. He could have been a friend I had known in school. He suffered from diabetes, he drank too much and ate too much of junk food. He was overweight and although he wanted to exercise and lose weight, he could never bring himself to do it. He had a troubled relationship with his father, his ex-wife, his daughter and some of his colleagues. The early promise he had displayed as a detective had never been fully realized but he didn’t seem to care much about that. Happy to involve himself fully in whatever crime he was called to investigate.
There was nothing much to like about Wallander. Most of the works featuring him showcased a middle aged man transitioning into the autumn of his life, not very graciously. He wasn’t unduly bitter about that but seemed to be surrounded by a cloud of sadness. Yet there was nothing pitiable about him. His fears of growing old and redundant could very well have been mine. Maybe bringing friends into the picture was the kind of a red herring Wallander had to deal with in every case. Maybe I was afraid of acknowledging his life could very well be mine if I don’t learn to let go. By the time, Mankell wrote the last book in the series, Wallander was pushing 60. The mystery he was asked to solve had to do with a troubled man and the grumpy detective, playing the mirror image was also troubled by his failing memory. It’s only when I came to the end of the book, did I realize that it was the last case of Wallander that I would have the privilege of reading. It made me sad.
But as luck would have it, a friend lent me ‘The Pyramid.’ This one is a collection of short stories of Wallander’s early cases, starting with the first one that helped him turn into the enigmatic detective we met in other works. From the end, I went back to the beginning.
In one of my plays, one of the characters ruminates about life. She says “We live and we die. Everything that happens in between is incidental.” I relived that moment with ‘The Pyramid.’
Thank you Henning Mankell for elevating detective fiction to literary delight!
P.S. Fox Crime is currently airing the television serial on Wallander. If you are not acquainted with him, you can start with viewing them.
Wallander was an unexpected delight. I chanced on him, a couple of years ago, after I had finished reading the millennium trilogy in one hungry week. Till such time I had delightedly devoured the adventures of the tattooed hacker Lisbeth Salander, I didn’t know there were excellent crime fiction writers in Sweden. So when I discovered half a dozen Henning Mankells placed cheek by jowl to half a dozen Peter Jacksons in a bookshop, curiosity made me pick up one of them. That was it. I was hooked.
I had a curious sense of resonance with Inspector Wallander. He could have been a friend I had known in school. He suffered from diabetes, he drank too much and ate too much of junk food. He was overweight and although he wanted to exercise and lose weight, he could never bring himself to do it. He had a troubled relationship with his father, his ex-wife, his daughter and some of his colleagues. The early promise he had displayed as a detective had never been fully realized but he didn’t seem to care much about that. Happy to involve himself fully in whatever crime he was called to investigate.
There was nothing much to like about Wallander. Most of the works featuring him showcased a middle aged man transitioning into the autumn of his life, not very graciously. He wasn’t unduly bitter about that but seemed to be surrounded by a cloud of sadness. Yet there was nothing pitiable about him. His fears of growing old and redundant could very well have been mine. Maybe bringing friends into the picture was the kind of a red herring Wallander had to deal with in every case. Maybe I was afraid of acknowledging his life could very well be mine if I don’t learn to let go. By the time, Mankell wrote the last book in the series, Wallander was pushing 60. The mystery he was asked to solve had to do with a troubled man and the grumpy detective, playing the mirror image was also troubled by his failing memory. It’s only when I came to the end of the book, did I realize that it was the last case of Wallander that I would have the privilege of reading. It made me sad.
But as luck would have it, a friend lent me ‘The Pyramid.’ This one is a collection of short stories of Wallander’s early cases, starting with the first one that helped him turn into the enigmatic detective we met in other works. From the end, I went back to the beginning.
In one of my plays, one of the characters ruminates about life. She says “We live and we die. Everything that happens in between is incidental.” I relived that moment with ‘The Pyramid.’
Thank you Henning Mankell for elevating detective fiction to literary delight!
P.S. Fox Crime is currently airing the television serial on Wallander. If you are not acquainted with him, you can start with viewing them.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Get a life, you Morons
So now it is a woman’s fault if she gets raped or molested. It is all because of how they dress, according to a senior police official in Andhra Pradesh and a senior minister in Karnataka. I have forgotten their names because who bothers to remember the names of semi literate idiots and morons with medieval values.
Some half wit makes these public pronouncements and the press is only eager to lap them up. They always result in these silly debates about whether or not women contribute to their own harassment. When do we change the focus and talk about how sick and perverse men can be? Do we discriminate even when it comes to pettiness? We can throw sweeping generalizations at women but not at men?
A few years ago, a young law student, Priyadarshini Mattoo, was stalked to her house to be raped and murdered by the son of a senior police official. Was it because of the way she dressed? Ruchika Girhotra was all of fourteen when she was molested by another sick police officer who had a daughter as young as the victim. In both the cases, the system led by men did its best to shield the culprits. That they failed owed more to a public outcry than any change of heart in either the criminals or their supporters.
As a man I find these kinds of statements stupid. Because I am always hearing from the women in the family about the harassment they face. If my wife is driving on the roads, some bus or autorickshaw driver would try and bully her. If my niece is walking to her work, she would have that odd day when someone tries to molest her with a look or a touch. It’s not because of how they dress. It is because they are women...plain and simple. Apart from feeling helpless and angry there is little I can do when I hear these stories from them. So I can well imagine how furious women get when they hear such statements by the two faced moral brigade.
Besides what kind of logic is being advocated here? Are we saying men are no better than animals? That they can’t restraint themselves the moment they see an exposed body part of a woman? That they turn into canines who think it is raw meat for the taking? In that case, how do they restrain themselves at home with their mothers and sisters? After all, it is impossible for anyone, man or woman to be fully clad at all times. I wonder sometimes whether Rathore’s daughter was as much a victim of the perverted man as Ruchika was. Does that explain why the wife was so eager to defend the heinous crime? Who knows what other disgusting truth would come tumbling out if we dug further.
They are even trying to bring out a statistical correlation between harassment and inappropriate dressing. We are fine with that. Why don’t you compile the statistics of the women who have reported being raped and what they were wearing when they were abducted or attacked? I am sure they will stop talking about statistics after that.
I am not talking radical feminism here. I am as opposed to the concept of a slut walk as I am towards these demented men. I am traditional enough to not want the women in my family dress in skimpy clothes and go out. But I am also smart enough to see through what is being said and understand the real agenda behind it.
The fact is things are changing drastically in this country. Men are learning that they need women in whatever space they find themselves in. Women are competing with them in their work spaces, making their own decisions, earning their own money and spending it in whatever way they may deem fit. That is threatening. And so they thought of this indecently clad argument to put women in their place.
But it is so laughable and idiotic that even men are not buying it.
Some half wit makes these public pronouncements and the press is only eager to lap them up. They always result in these silly debates about whether or not women contribute to their own harassment. When do we change the focus and talk about how sick and perverse men can be? Do we discriminate even when it comes to pettiness? We can throw sweeping generalizations at women but not at men?
A few years ago, a young law student, Priyadarshini Mattoo, was stalked to her house to be raped and murdered by the son of a senior police official. Was it because of the way she dressed? Ruchika Girhotra was all of fourteen when she was molested by another sick police officer who had a daughter as young as the victim. In both the cases, the system led by men did its best to shield the culprits. That they failed owed more to a public outcry than any change of heart in either the criminals or their supporters.
As a man I find these kinds of statements stupid. Because I am always hearing from the women in the family about the harassment they face. If my wife is driving on the roads, some bus or autorickshaw driver would try and bully her. If my niece is walking to her work, she would have that odd day when someone tries to molest her with a look or a touch. It’s not because of how they dress. It is because they are women...plain and simple. Apart from feeling helpless and angry there is little I can do when I hear these stories from them. So I can well imagine how furious women get when they hear such statements by the two faced moral brigade.
Besides what kind of logic is being advocated here? Are we saying men are no better than animals? That they can’t restraint themselves the moment they see an exposed body part of a woman? That they turn into canines who think it is raw meat for the taking? In that case, how do they restrain themselves at home with their mothers and sisters? After all, it is impossible for anyone, man or woman to be fully clad at all times. I wonder sometimes whether Rathore’s daughter was as much a victim of the perverted man as Ruchika was. Does that explain why the wife was so eager to defend the heinous crime? Who knows what other disgusting truth would come tumbling out if we dug further.
They are even trying to bring out a statistical correlation between harassment and inappropriate dressing. We are fine with that. Why don’t you compile the statistics of the women who have reported being raped and what they were wearing when they were abducted or attacked? I am sure they will stop talking about statistics after that.
I am not talking radical feminism here. I am as opposed to the concept of a slut walk as I am towards these demented men. I am traditional enough to not want the women in my family dress in skimpy clothes and go out. But I am also smart enough to see through what is being said and understand the real agenda behind it.
The fact is things are changing drastically in this country. Men are learning that they need women in whatever space they find themselves in. Women are competing with them in their work spaces, making their own decisions, earning their own money and spending it in whatever way they may deem fit. That is threatening. And so they thought of this indecently clad argument to put women in their place.
But it is so laughable and idiotic that even men are not buying it.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Goodbye 2011
Hindsight is a good thing. It helps you look back and smile at all the golden dust you raised in your journey. And what a whirlwind journey it has been. There is a small bit that I will carry for the rest of my life labelled 2011. I am going to fish that one out every time I am down in the dumps just so that I can feel the sun on my face when everything else appears to be cold and barren.
A lot of good things happened professionally. Books and book deals, theatre, teaching, coaching, Fulbright...it was all there for the taking. But much more than any of these what matters is all those who were present in my life to make 2011 that much more special.
So let me just grab this opportunity to thank all those who helped me mellow into ripe middle age in a year that had more delights and less disappointments.
Thank you students of Valley School, especially the Koels, Bulbuls, Mainas and my favourite Class XII. Vibhu, Malli, Arnav, Shaan, Richa, Poorvi, Ishani,Shruthi,Sree,Shanky, Maitrey, Mallika, Aish, Neel, Sanjana and the rest...thank you for all the support during the trek. Kunal, Kari, Shreem, Nikhil and Ajit- I hope you know the most meaningful thing I have done in all the volunteering last year is spend time with you guys. Thanks to all five of you I knew once again what it was to be 17 and 18.
Thank you Mahesh for mentoring me for all these years and being around whenever I approach you for any help.
Anita, Palash, Kavery, Vijay, Shinie, Abhijit, Jhanavi, Rupa, Minal, Manjul, Reema and Abhishek- Thank you for including me in the identity all of you carry. Because each one of you is a friend, I feel all the more special being a writer.
Nandita and Thomas- Thank you for all your support before and during and after the book launch.
Kausalya and Chapal- Thank you for all the good things you have had to say about my writing. Please keep them coming. Writers are greedy and I am greedier than most.
Rohin, Alka, Nina, Shatadip for your consistent support to the bile I spew on my blog. Your support has been as heartening as it has been baffling.
Thank you Sudha for reminding me creative folks can never get redundant.
Thank you Nirav and Harish for giving me my best interview ever.
Thank you Madhukar, Guru, Abhaya, Nikhil and Rishon for giving me the privilege to coach you...and all the others who have been participants in the creative writing workshop only to teach me a thing or two about writing.
I know. I know. This is so much like one of those ‘acceptance’ speeches with Mother Teresa featuring in them prominently and I didn’t win a thing last year. But rest assured when I do, I will have all of you featuring in that speech too.
Except that one will start with Dhruv and Dipti for sure because the two of you define the reason I exist. Not just for one year. But for all the years to come...
A lot of good things happened professionally. Books and book deals, theatre, teaching, coaching, Fulbright...it was all there for the taking. But much more than any of these what matters is all those who were present in my life to make 2011 that much more special.
So let me just grab this opportunity to thank all those who helped me mellow into ripe middle age in a year that had more delights and less disappointments.
Thank you students of Valley School, especially the Koels, Bulbuls, Mainas and my favourite Class XII. Vibhu, Malli, Arnav, Shaan, Richa, Poorvi, Ishani,Shruthi,Sree,Shanky, Maitrey, Mallika, Aish, Neel, Sanjana and the rest...thank you for all the support during the trek. Kunal, Kari, Shreem, Nikhil and Ajit- I hope you know the most meaningful thing I have done in all the volunteering last year is spend time with you guys. Thanks to all five of you I knew once again what it was to be 17 and 18.
Thank you Mahesh for mentoring me for all these years and being around whenever I approach you for any help.
Anita, Palash, Kavery, Vijay, Shinie, Abhijit, Jhanavi, Rupa, Minal, Manjul, Reema and Abhishek- Thank you for including me in the identity all of you carry. Because each one of you is a friend, I feel all the more special being a writer.
Nandita and Thomas- Thank you for all your support before and during and after the book launch.
Kausalya and Chapal- Thank you for all the good things you have had to say about my writing. Please keep them coming. Writers are greedy and I am greedier than most.
Rohin, Alka, Nina, Shatadip for your consistent support to the bile I spew on my blog. Your support has been as heartening as it has been baffling.
Thank you Sudha for reminding me creative folks can never get redundant.
Thank you Nirav and Harish for giving me my best interview ever.
Thank you Madhukar, Guru, Abhaya, Nikhil and Rishon for giving me the privilege to coach you...and all the others who have been participants in the creative writing workshop only to teach me a thing or two about writing.
I know. I know. This is so much like one of those ‘acceptance’ speeches with Mother Teresa featuring in them prominently and I didn’t win a thing last year. But rest assured when I do, I will have all of you featuring in that speech too.
Except that one will start with Dhruv and Dipti for sure because the two of you define the reason I exist. Not just for one year. But for all the years to come...
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Riveting Rockstar
I watch a lot of movies. From the ones I like, I segregate three or four and air my views on them in the same post. I am making an exception in the case of Imtiaz Ali’s Rockstar because it is an exceptional film and deserves to be analysed at length. There are multiple strands running through this film, each more delicately nuanced than the other. And for any cinema literate viewer to relish the work, it becomes important to hold on to all of them.
The first and the most obvious among them is that Rockstar is a modern day retelling of the epic love story, ‘Heer Ranjha.’ From the names of its lead protagonists to their family backgrounds, faithful tributes are paid to the original. And that the boy plays the guitar instead of the flute is only fitting in this modern adaptation, given the milieu of the film. There is also a clever subversion by the writer and director here. He knows his female protagonist pining for her lover even after being married to another man may offend the purists, so he evokes the legendary Heer through the name. We are constantly reminded that the woman from the fable who acquired sainthood because of her love for Ranjha was also married and it did nothing to dim her ardour for her lover. If our traditional society can accept her, they jolly well respect her modern day avatar.
The film also vests this love fable with a subtext that the original did not have. Why did the rich and aristocratic Heer lose her heart to a poor and uncouth Ranjha? Ali decides to debunk all that nonsense about spiritual love that is woven into immortal love stories to make them respectable. Instead his female protagonist is driven by an unusual desire, hitherto unexplored in Hindi cinema. She falls for the rustic because he makes her feel dirty. For someone who has grown up in a clean and antiseptic environment, that isn’t an unusual motivation. The need to experience sleaze first hand. The desire to explore the underbelly of existence. And yet his heroine has a strange dignity even when she is giggling and watching ‘Junglee Jawani’ in a stinking theatre or wanting to touch hookers. There is something curiously feminist about her.
As for her Rockstar lover, his ‘rites of passage’ gets beautifully documented in the film. In a particularly poignant scene, he asks his inspiration ‘Meine pehle bhi kiss kiya. Fuck kiya. Lekin ye ehsaas pehle kabhi nahin hua.’ She tells him to stop as it would only spoil things. He sums it up succulently, ‘Ab mushkil hai.’ The tragedy of the lovers in the film doesn’t have to do with societal pressures. They know even as they embark in the perilous journey of love and passion, that they are going to eventually destroy each other and Ali nails that bit brilliantly. Helped in no mean measure by his two lead actors. Both give scintillating performances.
There is something about Ranbir Kapoor, maybe just his genes, that makes him give himself unconditionally to the camera and it repays him back by making him do very little to capture our attention and imagination. In this respect he is like Kajol. The new girl, Nargis Fakhri, has been criticized a lot but she too is a natural. And looks like a million bucks. What more do you want in a Bollywood aspirant who wants to make a career in commercial cinema?
Not content with weaving a compelling love story, Ali decides to chronicle the protest of an artist who starts by reacting to the injustice done to him and soon learns to integrate greater causes into his rage. It’s a pity that the censors have been so eager not to offend China and cut out all the Tibet bits. Otherwise this strand wouldn’t have come across as being puzzling sometimes.
And finally Ali mounts his work against the backdrop of an extended rock concert. The all nighters of the college festivals we all grew up on. The backdrop and the corresponding music evocatively set to tune by A R Rahman, angry and protest driven, only highlights the vision of the film. Besides being a brilliant design, it also explains why the film is getting to be so popular with the youngsters. It has all the makings of a cult classic.
Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee and Imtiaz Ali have redefined the grammar of Hindi cinema. That Ali has done this while remaining faithful to the song and dance cliché is a tribute to his genius.
I loved the film.
The first and the most obvious among them is that Rockstar is a modern day retelling of the epic love story, ‘Heer Ranjha.’ From the names of its lead protagonists to their family backgrounds, faithful tributes are paid to the original. And that the boy plays the guitar instead of the flute is only fitting in this modern adaptation, given the milieu of the film. There is also a clever subversion by the writer and director here. He knows his female protagonist pining for her lover even after being married to another man may offend the purists, so he evokes the legendary Heer through the name. We are constantly reminded that the woman from the fable who acquired sainthood because of her love for Ranjha was also married and it did nothing to dim her ardour for her lover. If our traditional society can accept her, they jolly well respect her modern day avatar.
The film also vests this love fable with a subtext that the original did not have. Why did the rich and aristocratic Heer lose her heart to a poor and uncouth Ranjha? Ali decides to debunk all that nonsense about spiritual love that is woven into immortal love stories to make them respectable. Instead his female protagonist is driven by an unusual desire, hitherto unexplored in Hindi cinema. She falls for the rustic because he makes her feel dirty. For someone who has grown up in a clean and antiseptic environment, that isn’t an unusual motivation. The need to experience sleaze first hand. The desire to explore the underbelly of existence. And yet his heroine has a strange dignity even when she is giggling and watching ‘Junglee Jawani’ in a stinking theatre or wanting to touch hookers. There is something curiously feminist about her.
As for her Rockstar lover, his ‘rites of passage’ gets beautifully documented in the film. In a particularly poignant scene, he asks his inspiration ‘Meine pehle bhi kiss kiya. Fuck kiya. Lekin ye ehsaas pehle kabhi nahin hua.’ She tells him to stop as it would only spoil things. He sums it up succulently, ‘Ab mushkil hai.’ The tragedy of the lovers in the film doesn’t have to do with societal pressures. They know even as they embark in the perilous journey of love and passion, that they are going to eventually destroy each other and Ali nails that bit brilliantly. Helped in no mean measure by his two lead actors. Both give scintillating performances.
There is something about Ranbir Kapoor, maybe just his genes, that makes him give himself unconditionally to the camera and it repays him back by making him do very little to capture our attention and imagination. In this respect he is like Kajol. The new girl, Nargis Fakhri, has been criticized a lot but she too is a natural. And looks like a million bucks. What more do you want in a Bollywood aspirant who wants to make a career in commercial cinema?
Not content with weaving a compelling love story, Ali decides to chronicle the protest of an artist who starts by reacting to the injustice done to him and soon learns to integrate greater causes into his rage. It’s a pity that the censors have been so eager not to offend China and cut out all the Tibet bits. Otherwise this strand wouldn’t have come across as being puzzling sometimes.
And finally Ali mounts his work against the backdrop of an extended rock concert. The all nighters of the college festivals we all grew up on. The backdrop and the corresponding music evocatively set to tune by A R Rahman, angry and protest driven, only highlights the vision of the film. Besides being a brilliant design, it also explains why the film is getting to be so popular with the youngsters. It has all the makings of a cult classic.
Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee and Imtiaz Ali have redefined the grammar of Hindi cinema. That Ali has done this while remaining faithful to the song and dance cliché is a tribute to his genius.
I loved the film.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
I Too Hate Eve Teasers and Murderers
I rarely feel the need to defend anything I have put down in writing. But I think my last post has confused some readers. They have read it as a defence of the Mumbai eve teasers and murderers. How and why I have no idea. Because I don’t condone the crime and the criminals in any way in my post. I merely try to explore social and psychological processes that contribute to crimes like these.
I don’t think sexual harassment is a malaise that breeds only in slums and economically deprived neighbourhoods. It is classless. The only difference I observe is while these poor and uneducated goons will stand in street corners and harass women, the affluent aggressor will go a step further to carjack a victim and rape her in his vehicle or shoot a female bartender in the head for not serving him a drink.
I believe if crimes against women have to stop, women will have to rise and take stances when they see other women being harassed or violated be it within their own family or outside. There is no point in talking about feminist texts and how they point out to the inherently manipulative nature of a patriarchal system that forces women to co-opt in anti women processes. Those of us with basic intelligence know that. What next? Surely you don’t expect the same men who are powerful, who are beneficiaries of this rotten system to turn against the same system that gives them privileges to harass, to rape, to molest. In every war, every riot, women become one more of the wages. They are raped, they are turned into sex slaves. All kinds of things are done to them. Obviously men enjoy doing these things. Otherwise why should they have done it from the time wars were waged to more modern ones? Men are beyond hope. Women need to step in and ensure things change.
But as long as women condone men and more importantly women for acting against women, there is no hope. I refuse to join in the frenzy against the Mumbai eve teasers not because I have any sympathy for them. But they are behind bars now and will be there because they aren’t Manu Sharma or the Yadav brothers to ensure the Chief Minister or ‘senior authorities’ get them out from the back door.
In a strange way I do understand these murderers and why they did what they did. They are from backgrounds where their fathers beat their mothers daily. What respect will they have for women? One of the outraged comments to my post was respect for women is not about affordability. It is about how you are raised. That is precisely my point. How are these goons raised? What in their backgrounds can make them respect women? And sister, don’t tell me they should direct their anger and frustrations against their own lot. What do you think happens to girls and women in slums who have these goons as their neighbours?
Many years ago, when we lived in Kolkata, our domestic help used to come with her ten year old daughter to work in our house. We grew fond of the little girl. Three years later, our help told us she is getting her daughter married. My wife and I were outraged. We started giving long lectures to our help about how she shouldn’t spoil her daughter’s life. Every day we used to try and dissuade her. One day she had enough. She turned to us and told us it is all very well for you to talk like this but where I live boys have started hovering around my house. They get my husband drunk. One boy has already told my daughter, he will marry her and take her to Bombay. Do you want my daughter to be sold to a brothel? That was that little girl’s career choice. Either get married to a potentially abusive, much older man or be confined to a life of sexual slavery. We assuaged our conscience by giving her some money for the wedding. This is what these boys learn in their own context. That they can bully women into the kinds of lives they want them to have. It’s not as if these guys are nice to girls in their own neighbourhood and eve tease women from outside. Can’t you see that? Unless they are in a context where they can respect women, they will carry the same hate and aggression with them to the streets.
And yes my anger is far more against a Manu Sharma and Sheila Dixit than these Mumbai eve teasers. Dixit organizes parole for Manu Sharma because she says she was moved by his mother’s plight. Wow! And he comes out, goes to another pub and gets into another scuffle. Thankfully, there were no women around. Otherwise they would be dead too. And the whole issue fizzles out within a day. Dixit should have been made to resign over this issue and women in India should have forced her to do so. But instead we are supposed to understand Dixit’s compulsions. We are expected to buy into Manu Sharma’s mother’s grief. What nonsense is this? Why didn’t we have the same outrage then?
Also, what has happened to the Ruchika Girhotra case? Why is the media so silent on that? Why aren’t they hounding this sick man and his equally depraved wife who was defending her husband for molesting a girl as young as her daughter and driving her to suicide? Why did our feminists let her off so easily? Because of her compulsions? If this hideous couple, especially the wife, deserve our understanding, then surely the mothers of these Mumbai eve teasers and murderers do too.
If you want to get entangled in compulsions, don’t espouse causes. It’s as simple as that.
I don’t think sexual harassment is a malaise that breeds only in slums and economically deprived neighbourhoods. It is classless. The only difference I observe is while these poor and uneducated goons will stand in street corners and harass women, the affluent aggressor will go a step further to carjack a victim and rape her in his vehicle or shoot a female bartender in the head for not serving him a drink.
I believe if crimes against women have to stop, women will have to rise and take stances when they see other women being harassed or violated be it within their own family or outside. There is no point in talking about feminist texts and how they point out to the inherently manipulative nature of a patriarchal system that forces women to co-opt in anti women processes. Those of us with basic intelligence know that. What next? Surely you don’t expect the same men who are powerful, who are beneficiaries of this rotten system to turn against the same system that gives them privileges to harass, to rape, to molest. In every war, every riot, women become one more of the wages. They are raped, they are turned into sex slaves. All kinds of things are done to them. Obviously men enjoy doing these things. Otherwise why should they have done it from the time wars were waged to more modern ones? Men are beyond hope. Women need to step in and ensure things change.
But as long as women condone men and more importantly women for acting against women, there is no hope. I refuse to join in the frenzy against the Mumbai eve teasers not because I have any sympathy for them. But they are behind bars now and will be there because they aren’t Manu Sharma or the Yadav brothers to ensure the Chief Minister or ‘senior authorities’ get them out from the back door.
In a strange way I do understand these murderers and why they did what they did. They are from backgrounds where their fathers beat their mothers daily. What respect will they have for women? One of the outraged comments to my post was respect for women is not about affordability. It is about how you are raised. That is precisely my point. How are these goons raised? What in their backgrounds can make them respect women? And sister, don’t tell me they should direct their anger and frustrations against their own lot. What do you think happens to girls and women in slums who have these goons as their neighbours?
Many years ago, when we lived in Kolkata, our domestic help used to come with her ten year old daughter to work in our house. We grew fond of the little girl. Three years later, our help told us she is getting her daughter married. My wife and I were outraged. We started giving long lectures to our help about how she shouldn’t spoil her daughter’s life. Every day we used to try and dissuade her. One day she had enough. She turned to us and told us it is all very well for you to talk like this but where I live boys have started hovering around my house. They get my husband drunk. One boy has already told my daughter, he will marry her and take her to Bombay. Do you want my daughter to be sold to a brothel? That was that little girl’s career choice. Either get married to a potentially abusive, much older man or be confined to a life of sexual slavery. We assuaged our conscience by giving her some money for the wedding. This is what these boys learn in their own context. That they can bully women into the kinds of lives they want them to have. It’s not as if these guys are nice to girls in their own neighbourhood and eve tease women from outside. Can’t you see that? Unless they are in a context where they can respect women, they will carry the same hate and aggression with them to the streets.
And yes my anger is far more against a Manu Sharma and Sheila Dixit than these Mumbai eve teasers. Dixit organizes parole for Manu Sharma because she says she was moved by his mother’s plight. Wow! And he comes out, goes to another pub and gets into another scuffle. Thankfully, there were no women around. Otherwise they would be dead too. And the whole issue fizzles out within a day. Dixit should have been made to resign over this issue and women in India should have forced her to do so. But instead we are supposed to understand Dixit’s compulsions. We are expected to buy into Manu Sharma’s mother’s grief. What nonsense is this? Why didn’t we have the same outrage then?
Also, what has happened to the Ruchika Girhotra case? Why is the media so silent on that? Why aren’t they hounding this sick man and his equally depraved wife who was defending her husband for molesting a girl as young as her daughter and driving her to suicide? Why did our feminists let her off so easily? Because of her compulsions? If this hideous couple, especially the wife, deserve our understanding, then surely the mothers of these Mumbai eve teasers and murderers do too.
If you want to get entangled in compulsions, don’t espouse causes. It’s as simple as that.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
