Mera Bharath Mahan

I have received a feedback about my blog for which I would like to answer. A dear colleague of mine, while appreciating the content, was quite upset about my reference to 'Indian culture'.

Thank you Kavita for giving me an idea for today's blog. Here I go.

I don't have anything against our Indian culture. But I see a lot of people using the term 'culture' superficially or loosely.

Why should we not abolish censorship? Why should we not have onscreen smooch? Because Indian culture is different. Why should woman be wearing saree and not trousers or jeans? Because of our culture. Why should we not celebrate Valentine's day? Why should we not wage war against Pakistan?

The answer to the above and many other questions are easily culture. What is culture? Is it our heritage? History? Religion? Life style? Social structure? I wonder.

The trouble arises only when this loose term is used to cover up our follies, inefficiencies and our historic mistakes.

How can we justify somebody not drinking Coke because they think it's against Indian culture? Or someone advocating against divorce?

And not just this. Every other act of enslavement against women is carried out in the name of our culture. Every other initiative for women empowerment is blocked in the name of our culture.

So anything we hate about the west is termed as against Indian culture and avoided. We need their investments, their infrastructure, their software orders but we will continue to ridicule their lifestyle.

I consider the people who rebuke the west and glorify our culture as mere jingoists and not serious thinkers. I have had such experinces in the past and hence that line.

Indian Beauty

I see people around me. They are driven by passion. They are in their early twenties and they are consumed by their belief. They are longing for something. I was astonished to find the variety and depth in Abhilash's blogs. He is 25 and he shares Von Gogh's pains, writes a poem on river, has published a collection of poems(Under a Quicksilver Moon), and loves Bob Dylan and Kevin Spacey. I strongly withhold my temptation to critique his work as I realise that I'm utterly ill-qualified to do so.

I see lot of Abhilashes in my life. It's a very filling moment to think that there are people crave for beyond life's mundane routines. I don't feel as passionately about Ayn Rand as Abhilash does. Well, what the heck. As long as I'm surrounded by the likes of people who want to watch that obscure Latin American film Carandiru, want to attend Perchance to Dream, gets excited about Rand, who lends William Dalrymple to me life will continue to be interesting.

Also, as long as people don't talk to me about real estates, bank savings, cookery, investments and Indian culture...

Sridhar Ko Gussa Kyon Ata Hai

I read Mrs. Meena Kandasamy's onslaught on V S Naipaul. She calls him a casteist, communalist and racist. I'm not going to comment on her views as the readers of this blog know that I like Naipaul and also subscribe to his views. But her outrage on Naipaul's works have got me thinking on different lines. It particularly reminded me of my outpour against Vinod Mehta some two years ago. I sent it to Outlook. It came back. I would never have lived with dignity if it has been published.

My essays used to contain sheer anger. If I do not subscribe to your views, or more so if your views have got me agitated, you must be either dumb or devious.

I must consider myself more sobered down now. I do not especially react to Vinod Mehta's witty remarks which I used to dump as 'pseudo-secular'. On the contrary, I find myself often agreeing to various arguments for which I would have blown the hell a few years ago.

My reflections on Meena Kandasamy's essay should have several implications to my writing and my own arguments. Because of the way I place my views, I get easily branded. Examples include two recent events where I was asked which party I belong to before I join a discussion on politics and another where I was asked to place my conclusions on the table before I speak on Sankaracharya.

Such things remind me that I must be careful in placing my views be it on paper or verbal. And I must learn to be original. On Sankaracharya, I was airing borrowed views and I didn't like myself for that.

Especially considering that I must be the torchbearer for anti-plagiarism in India.

Emotional outburst

I saw Motorcycle Diaries yesterday. While returning home, the movie got me thinking on different lines. How many movies I have seen recently that disturbed me so much so that I didn't want to talk to anybody or listen to any music or watch anything else? How many movies that made me feel that I wanted to be drowned in the emotions generated by that movie?

That made me do the following list. A caveat for those who take this list seriously. It's not the list of the best movies in the world. And it's not the list of my most favorite movies either. It's simply the list of movies which generated some unique sensibilities that affected my emotional spectrum. In simple language, gave me hangover that lasted for days.

Here's the list. It's not in any top 10 order or something.

1. American Beauty - English
2. Forrest Gump - English
3. Monster's Ball - English
4. Pather Panchali - Bengali, India
5. An American in Paris, English
6. Motorcycle Diaries - Spanish, Latin America
7. Mudhal Mariyadhai - Tamil, India
8. Yujimbo - Japan
9. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring - Korea
10. Charulatha - Bengali, English
11. Amistad - English

I can make other lists on several categoris. This reminds me that I must start my DVD collection. Perhaps I can start the collection with the great Bengali master.

Black

Cast: Amitabh Bhacchan, Rani Mukherjee; Direction: Sanjay Leela Bhansali (for those who wonder, he made Devdas, the most garish and loud presentation of the Bengali classic)

I'm yet to come across someone who hasn't liked Black. For the first time in a movie hall, I saw the entire audience giving a standing ovation for director's credits. And Outlook wrote 'Black is mesmerising the Indians'. Dinesh Saravanan said 'First Indian movie of international class'. Does Black deserve all this adulation and has SLB finally shirked off his Devdas taboo?

The answer is a big yes. For, the movie is a milestone in the mainstream Hindi cinema. I'm using the term mainstream quite relatively as I don't believe in this concept of parallel and commercial. Kamal Hasan once said that there is no commercial or art movie, there's only good and bad movie. He couldn't have been more apt. But I'm using the term mainstream with the meaning of the challenges it poses.

Considering that, Black is a huge leap. Black is about limited-abled people. Black is the first song-less Hindi film. Black runs only for two hours four minutes. Black does not have a love angle. Black's male lead is a 65 year old veteran. SLB should be really audacious enough to splurge 20 crores in all this. It's a mind numbing risk even in Varma-Mani Ratnam standards.

And mind you, it's not a dark depressing tale. Contrary to popular perception, it's about success at the end of a struggle and thinking of impossibility and achieving it. Almost about the same thing that SLB did. Thinking of such a theme with 20 crores and making it possible. Forget the critical success. I'm really glad to know that the movie is doing well commercially. The distributors are going to rake in much more than what they have invested in this film.

That's a good news for the advocates of good cinema. The confidence level of those wanting to make sensible cinema should be very high now.

So aren't there any black spots at all? The only complaint about the movie (even I complained about it while walking out of the hall) is it's unncessary visual splendour. The theme doesn't warrant such a huge canvass. And this people considered as SLB's compromise coz' the movie might look quite pale without the visual extravaganza. Here, I couldn't help recall an old movie, Meera, by PC Sreeram. Mind you, I'm not talking about the MS classic. Meera was a wonderfully picturised film without any story. Balu Mahendra (of Sadma fame) dubbed it as 'a bunch of picture postcards'. Think of Black in that background. Black offers what Meera lacked. It combines a beautiful, heard-wrenching story with a spectacular visual treat. If, you think SLB has compromised, well, I'm glad he did.

Bangalore Maze

I was in Bangalore last weekend. Last visit was some five months ago and I did see a lot of changes. I wonder if there's any other Indian city that changes so dynamically. There are new malls, new pubs, new multiplexes, some more flyover constructions and new IT companies. All the old buildings are being demolished or refurbished to make way for fresh FDIs. As a result, I saw buildings boasting of Yahoo!s, Googles, Philips R & D center and some odd names that I can't remember. M G Road and the Brigade Road is getting more packed every day. Last time I heard, the true-blue Bangaloreans stopped visiting these two roads as the tourists have invaded them. Everyone is well dressed and flaunts their sudden wealth by buying and eating junk. It's mildly warm in the day and extremely cold in the nights. At an odd count, every week, 10 new restuarants are being opened and equal number are getting closed.

I didn't find the city as nostalgic in this visit and I'm happy about it. But if there's one thing that is going to remove My Favorite City status from Bangalore, it's the traffic planners. Even Bangaloreans complain about the perennial 'No Entry' and 'One Way' rules being implemented every week. This time, Double Road to Residency Road is a No Entry, M G Road to Ulsoor is a One Way, and you can't turn from Cubbon Road to Infantry cut. As a result, I ended up landing up in some odd roads, got stuck and found myself asking directions. It was a bit silly asking people 'How do I reach CMH road?' when you know you've been there a hundred times. This Bangalore Maze of making people lose their way in their own city is becoming a favorite passtime for the traffic planners. I was thoroughly frustrated in this visit finding my way out one maze after another.

There must be a better way to ease traffic in this city. Mahesh and I discussed about the city getting immensely crowded way back in 1997 itself. It's strange that the city planners never realised it then.

Pitifully, they still haven't. If not the Bangalore Corporation, the builders seems to have realised that more and more people settling in Bangalore and have loads of money to spend. A Real Estate Revolution seems to be happening out there. New apartment complexes boast names such as Louvre, Serene Habitat, Residency, Cambridge and the name in Italian that I forgot. Last heard, a single bedroom apartment of 700 sqft in Indira Nagar is rented out for 10,000 bucks. With 10 months advance.

How's that for a boom!

Fitness & Sanity

I have started walking. I should be a bit ashamed to say 'walking' because for my age, I should be sweating it out in the gym. But considering how packed my life currently is, walking is a good start. Pun intended.

I walked in the beach. I'm going there after some six years. This does not include my visit to Sentosa Island. Beach brings me a lot of memories that were dumped in the loft. That's besides the point.

I walked with Arvind, my ex-colleague from Compulearn. Arvind talks a lot about politics and domestic crime. Some of his stories beat hollywood mills and some are downright laughable. Nevertheless, I lend a keen ear. It was good fun to soak your feet in those puffy sands while listening to who amassed wealth how and what Shankaracharya did to provoke the Chief Minister.

If not anything else, I'm quite thankful about one thing. I'm surrounded people whose sheer variety is mind boggling.

* I know a guy who talks relentlessly about Cricket
('Suresh Raina is going to be the next star'),
* another about theatre and socialism
('I spoke to Manushyaputhran, showed him my poems, and he laughed'),
* and movies ('Ju-on, the Japanese original of The Grudge is much more terrifying'),
* a girl who tattoos 'Crawling in my skin' on her inner forearm
(a song by Linkin' Park),
* a short-film-making-cynical-nose-ringed-nerd
('Feb 15th is the last day for filing your nominations for Cannes'),
* a multi-faceted-high-adrenaline lady
(she paints, sings, writes, carves, fashion-designs, interior-designs,
composes, hmm...what else)
('it's either music albums or joining Sahara TV'),
* a downright practical, yet ambitious
('I'll do my design school and then join politics').

In between all this, I have a good friend, and she is 29 and she still reads Mills & Boons.

My nineth question: How do you expect me to remain sane in the middle of this rogue gallery?

Information Superhighway

How do you manage people who waste your valuable time by telling things that you don't want? Because my life is so valuable now (coz' I have only one month to live you see) if I spend 15 minutes a day listening to this crap, that makes it close to 8 hours, one full day. That's a lot of time wasted for a life time.

How do you avoid people with useless information to share:

1. Tell them point blank that 'Sorry I'm not interested. Can we switch topics please?'
2. Switch off and suddenly shake your head and ask, 'Sorry, you were saying..."
3. Whistle your favorite number while the other person rattles on.
4. Widen your eyes and say 'Life is so important, and how we waste our time on these things, I wonder'.
5. Quietly SMS your friend to call you, and when the call comes, talk animatedly.
6. Suddenly popup one of these questions from nowhere:

* 'Have you seen Elaan? Wasn't Mithunda fantabulous!'.
* 'Do you know Evam is staging their latest play in Sivagami hall?
Have you heard of Evam?'
* 'Have you read Ayn Rand's book Objectivist Epistemology? It's awesome'.
* 'Guess who sang 'En Vanile' in Jhonny? It's not S. Janaki'. Wink.
* Raise your hand, stop the person boring you and announce, 'Did you know?
I've joined RSS'.

Identity

Last evening, I was caught in a rather impetus group discussion on current politics, especially Tamil Nadu politics. I was cornered by six people that constituted a Rajini fan, a DMK partyman, a Hindu-bashing-protestant-supporting Christian, a congressman and two mute spectators. As I began crawling into their war of words, I was asked a very pertinent question. "Which party do you belong to?".

That shocked me into silence. They did not believe that I don't belong to any party. More precisely, they thought it is not possible for someone to not belong to a party and yet talk about politics. And worse, they refuse to argue until I stated my stance. It is as if I had my agenda hidden and conveniently driving them towards it.

My question: How many of the 60 million people in Tamil Nadu are like this? Are there any sane thinking lurking somewhere? That confused me.

I tried walking out of the group. They didn't let me. I perhaps became their don't-belong-anywhere toy which they can play around with. I said I have no ill feelings and left.

I really don't have any ill feelings. I only have concerns.

Sensitivity

If I twist your arm, you cry in pain. If I release it immediately, you relax. If I hold on, you yell, scream, yoour eyes become red, and panic. If I hold on, and twist some more, what will become of you? Some of your nerves will twist, muscles tear, you bleed internally, depending on how strong I am or how weak you are, you may fracture some of your joints or bones.

You will, however, continue to scream and cry for help.

But how long will you continue to scream? When will you lose consciousness? What psychological scar will it leave on you? Once I lose my grip -if I ever do- what will be your memory of that incident?

How many innoncent prisoners, honest government workers and labourers in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and women in India and in many Islamic countries get their arms twisted frequently?

Who cries for them?

How many of us have seen the way the chickens are handled and the goats treated?

When they cry for help, who cares to release their arms?

Eight questions

* Why do I dislike Tamil films?
* Why do I fear emotional attachments?
* Why do I dislike people who like me?
* Why do I hate my waist so much but still not getting up early to gym?
* Why do I dislike Vinod Mehta and still scream at the paperboy if Outlook comes late?
* Why am I not keeping Mark Knopfler in my desktop?
* Why do I feel like throwing away all my tapes/cds?
* Why do I feel like I have only one more month to live?

I'm striking off the sixth question because I know why.