21 Grams

Cast: Sean Penn, Benecio Del Toro, Naomi Watts and Charlotte Gainsbourg; Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu; Screenplay: Guillermo Arriaga; Music: Gustavo Santaolalla



People close to me know of my not-so-secret partisan towards Latin American directors. Not just their choice of stories, I even like their camera angles, music or the lack of it, blatant and ugly realism, etc. I mean, they can even show US landscapes as shabby and urbane as noisy. I look at all of it and wonder when I will ever make movie like this. I saw their Motorcycle Diaries and thought that this is how we should have made Bharati.

So when, Alejandro González Iñárritu of Amorres Perros decided to make a Hollywood movie, I flinched. I thought he was contaminating himself.

21 Grams is not a Hollywood movie. It is a Latin American movie made in Hollywood. It has a typical characteristic of narrating a story in an unchronological fashion. The first scene you see is not the first event of the story. You take almost 20 minutes into the movie to understand all the characters and their conflicts. Then suddenly the story zooms up and everything falls in place. But the movie continues to oscillate between past and present.

The zigzag narration helped in Iñárritu's earlier movie, Amorres Perros. Those who have not seen it, Yuva or Ayudha Ezhuthu is based on the same screenplay format. In Amorres Perros, the story 'had' to traverse between time to make the connection and make sense.

In 21 Grams, it actually spoils the effect to a great extent. As one my friends put it, it feels like Iñárritu has edited the whole movie, retained the start and the ending and shuffled everything in between. It gets annoying after a point because, as mentioned earlier, the story does not require such a technique.



But what makes you forgive this disturbance is the rest of everything. The story is disturbingly powerful, which -as is my practice- I shall not reveal here. The performances of Sean Penn, Benecio Del Toro and Naomi Watts are outstanding and especially of Benecio Del Toro. After a gruesome incident, which is the critical point of the movie, Del Toro has shown the transformation of a highly disturbed man with almost unbearable conscience.

The background score of Latin American movies have always been my favourites. They are almost non-existing. They slowly crop up at right moments and dissipate quietly. They are merely fillers for the long, silence moments. To me, cinema is a visual medium and music should not 'explain' the story or 'emote' for the characters. In real life, we are surrounded by sounds and not music. But, some moments, a mood triggers music within us. Like riding your cruiser on an empty beach road at 11.00 in the night. Your heart composes music for that ride. Such a scene, on a sliver screen would be very empty without music. Iñárritu certainly knows those moments and fills them with appropriate notes. Otherwise, he lets the characters create the mood for you.

And it's not just about the mood. 21 Grams makes you ask a lot of questions, and they are very important. Despite that dramatic, almost forced climax, I found myself toying with those questions even after the credits finished rolling. But that grim, heavy feeling took couple more hours to go.

On Rahman



My friend Surendar, being a huge fan of A R Rahman asked me if I could write about him. Hence, this piece is dedicated to him.

If you are from Tamil Nadu, when you talk about Rahman, it is also inevitable to talk about Illayaraja. While I detest this comparison, it has become imperative now that we speak of each other in unison. Here I go.

Those who came in late, here's the flashback. Before ARR stormed into the scene, Illayaraja was the unquestionable king of South Indian film music scenario. There was Raja and then there were none. Even some of the best directors in Tamil had to wait in the queue and if Raja delivers some crappy stuff to them, they had to grudgingly take it and use it in their films. I felt Raja often delivered crap just to feel important. Since 1977, Illayaraja had been composing music for 40 movies on average every year. That's about 1.3 songs per day. That's a lot of hardwork.

In this backdrop, came one young, chubby Allah Rakha Rahman. Many didn't even notice the audio release of Roja. The movie was released and suddenly people heard new sounds around them. Overnight, Chinna Chinna Asai (Choti Si Asha) became a sensation.

Then came Gentleman, then came Thiruda Thiruda and finally Kadhalan (of Muqabala fame) and the final nails on the coffin of Raja's domination were laid. The rest, as the cliche goes, is history.

But what became of the youthful sensation called Rahman and its social implications is another story. Rahman brought true world music to India's door steps. Before him, music was clearly divided between classic and filmi music. Even the ardent promoters of Indypop didn't have much hope on its future. Filmi music in Bollywood were rehashed tunes and the composers were traversing in already beaten and damaged path. In Tamil, it was Raja and no one else.

Rahman took a lot of time to compose each song and didn't want to treat it as a factory output. This was evident in the result. Rahman brought sufi in 'Kehna hai kya' of Bombay, Ghazal into Tamil folk in 'Kizhakku Seemayile' and pure Jazz in Iruvar. Apparently, it seems, he meticulously researched on Gujarati folk music before ventured into composing Lagaan. He dabbled heavily with Hindustani in 'Sarfarosh ki tamanna' where he made Hariharan and Sonu Nigam perform a sort of Jugalbandi. He mingled lounge music into a love theme in 'Kadhal Desam' and Jacksonish hiccups into a folk song (Oorvasi).

Such experiments and mix and match of international sounds with deeply embedded Carnatic or Hindustani created new unheard of sounds to Indian audience used to listening only to filmi numbers. He liberated the film music from the tranditional confines of Pallavi, Anu Pallavi and Saranam and injected vocals in place of interlude and whooshing guitar pieces in place of song endings.

However, people who were familiar with Rock and western pop dubbed Rahman as mere imitator or some called him as a good sound engineer and not a composer. Some criticised him of compiling songs out of a computer and dubbed that he is incapable of writing real music. Rahman was too busy to pay attention to these critics.

And the serious fans of Raja desperately waited for him to fall. Unfortunately, they only saw Raja tumbling down and not seeming to go anywhere. When his achilis heel, the much hyped and famed symphony couldn't see the light of the day, the fans lost even the faintest hope they had. We, in India, don't retire our legends. We simply kick them out of their throne. Raja was no exception.

Back to Rahman. To me, Rahman's highlight has been the surprises he packages in his music. He inserts a bell, a base chord or just an half-beat of tabla when the song reaches a higher octave. These always come up at places where you least expect any change in the tempo. Personally, I like this 'surprise' aspect of Rahman because that shows he focuses on even such miniscule aspects and also because he is intelligent.



Rahman opened the floodgates of the music scenario and brought limelight on legends such as Hariharan, Shankar Mahadevan and Shivamani. He printed his crew on the album covers, which made people like Keith Peters, his bassist and Sridhar, his DTS Engineer famous. Suddenly people began talking about some unknown sax player or a Hindustani vocalist about whom you've never heard of.

Rahman didn't see the difference between Bollywood, Tamil or any other culture. He saw them as single culture and wrote music for India. His Vande Mataram, which, to a purist, would sound like a screaming remix of a very emotional chant, captured the imagination of millions of youth and coupled with the right timing of 50th year of Independence, the Gen Now sang, rather screamed Vande Mataram on their way to patriotic nirvana.

Socialogically, Rahman represents the post-90s, new generation youth. He is successful, proud of his achievements, humble, yet very comfortable with his riches. A post-modernistic youth sees people such as Rahman, Sachin, Arundati Roy, Farhan Akhtar, Karan Johar and Narayana Murthy in the same lines. Though they hail from different backgrounds they are very succesful and more importantly, wear their attitude at right places. Rahman is the Gen Now representative, who is as comfortable hanging around with a B-grade director in Tamil as with Andrew Llyod Webber. However, I only hope that he shrugs off his Tamil roots and moves up the value ladder. I would like to see more of Bombay Dreams or Warriors of Heaven and Earth rather than working
with sleazy Tamil directors. Raja made this mistake. I hope 'Isai Puyal' (Musical Storm), as his fans fondly call him, doesn't repeat that.

Followup - On Medha Patkar



I'm gladdened to learn that Saifuddin Soz, Minister for Water Resources and Meira Kumar, Minister for Social Justice visited Medha Patkar and persuaded her to end her fast. But Patkar refused claiming that the government should make some 'visible' progress. It is understandable considering how the government has treated Narmada issue in the past.

As a followup of this, the government is preparing a report on the Narmada dam project and its impact on the river and the people. Three union ministers will visit the affected areas to provide inputs to the report.

It is quite heartwarming to know that peaceful protests still disturb the powers-that-be. I thank our prime minister for these steps.

Here, I must state that the previous NDA government had a very callous attitude towards the Narmada project. The senior leaders of BJP often spoke in an impetuous manner and generally they remained quite rigid towards environmental issues.

And finally, I hope that the report and the visits result in some progress and Medha Patkar ends her fast.

Do you know this woman?


She is Medha Patkar, founder of Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA). If you came late, here's an ultra-quick background: Our government is building an obscenely humungous dam on Narmada and is destroying rainforests, submerging agricultural lands and above all displacing millions of rural and tribal people without a planned or visible rehabilitation programme. This is at a time when the world has realised that dams are environmentally bad for rivers and many developed nations are busy demolishing them. Sardar Sarovar Dam project in Narmada is badly planned, poorly executed and statistically atrocious project against which Medha Patkar has been waging war for more than a decade.

Hold on. This piece is not about the project in itself. It is about Patkar. Till last week, she was staging dharna in front of Prime Minister's office. Her demand: The central government should look into the lapses in rehabilitating the displaced millions. Result: except some verbal remarks, Dr. Singh did nothing else and after some days, since her coterie was becoming a traffic hazard, she was arrested and released in the evening.

Since then Medha Patkar has been on indefinite fast and it has reached fifth day now. Nobody, just nobody is paying any attention to her now. You and I know what will happen now. couple more days, her health will deteriorate. She will be arrested again on the grounds of attempted suicide, admitted to hospital, glucose injected and released again.

But nobody from the government will speak to her.

Because her methods of agitation is non-violent and it doesn't affect anyone's life. We can beg and plead with Hurriat Conference, Hijbul-e-Mujahideen, or ULFA. We can even agree to hold talks with them within or 'without' the framework of our constitution. We request them to participate in our democracy, that is stand in the elections and become our MLAs or MPs. We do all these because, they are called terrorists and they have killed thousands of innocent civilians and kidnapped our jawans, held the daughters of our ministers as hostages and bombed our temples and parliament. We have none of these to expect from Patkar . She is after all a middle aged woman who can't even feed her supporters.

Recently, when the DMK President Karunanidhi claimed that the rampant unemployment is breeding Naxalites, I flinched. I loathed the DMK supremo for encouraging terrorisism. It is not the lack of jobs that's driving these people to taking to arms. It is this callous attitude of our government driving them up the wall. You go
for the procession, conduct public meetings, write articles dripping with statistics, and go fasting. The powers-that-be doesn't even bat their eyelids. You kidnap one senior official or plant one bomb in a busy market area, the whole nation talks about you and your cause.

I'm not encouraging violence or extremism here. I'm deeply upset about what's happening to that good woman who has dedicated her entire life to the cause of millions of faceless people. If Narayana Murthy doesn't get a few acres of choking Bangalore, it becomes a cover story. Chidambaram announces Fringe-Benefit-Tax and the Economic Times goes berserk. Medha Patkar's fast-unto-death for a small hut for Bolarams of this world doesn't even figure between the ad-breaks of 24x7 channels.

It is not a good sign that we leave such people unattended. And do not think that what happens in a remote corner of Narmada will not impact you. Those million faceless people will invade your cities for a measly housemaid, rickshaw-walla, or coolie jobs. And then don't complain that the cities are being polluted by the illiterate.

Worse still, don't drive them out of streets when the American President or Bill Gates visit the cities.

Anguished English


I'm currently reading 'Lost for Words' by John Humphrys. Humphrys' a BBC correspondent who is quite anguished with the way English is being mangled and manipulated. In this book, thankfully, he doesn't come across as a frustrated pedant but a lover of the language expressing his genuine concern.

While reading it, I couldn't help recall our own howlers from India. We, like everyone else, use English quite casually and make a lot of mistakes. Even more so because, here, English has seamlessly merged with our regional languages and hence we use English words while we speak Telugu or Hindi or worse, end up speaking English like Tamil.

Among the famous ones, I particularly enjoy people saying 'I and kumar will finish this job'. The proper usage demands saying 'Kumar and I will finish this job'. Once, during a client call, my ex-colleague said 'I, Narayan and Arun will review the files'. The project manager pointed out that it's wrong. Rajesh demanded to know why. Because you always put the donkey last, said the project manager. 'Well, that's what I have done, haven't I?', was his reply.

It's an interesting exercise to list the number of blatant solecisms we use here. I'm referring to people saying 'I camed' or 'I wented'. That's a rarity. But then, my own friend, who has an excellent vocabulary often says something like 'Akai tv is worser than Aiwa'. Repeated reminders haven't changed him and now he says it even consciously.

People in IT often use the word 'updation' quite casually. Microsoft Word always catches them but they don't change it to 'update'.

Though I myself make a lot of grammatical howlers, my famous ones were merely restricted to missing articles and some tense confusions. So, I also had a share in this debacle. But it never hurts to laugh at other's howlers. If you are interested, there's this another book called 'Anguished English' by Richard Lederer, is a collection of various accidental assualts on English and it will have you in splits. Some samples:

School Essays:
1. a virgin forest is a place where the hand of man has never set foot.
2. The problem with intersexual swimming is that the boys often outstrip the girls.
3. At the end of The Awakening, Edna thinks only of herself. Her suicide is selfish because she leaves all who care about her behind.

Church noticeboards:
1. There will be a baptism meeting in the south and north end of the church. Children will be baptised at both ends.
2. Why let worry kill you? Let the church help.

Classified advertisements
1. Wanted: Antique desk for a lady with thick legs and large drawers.
2. Dog for sale: Eats anything and is very fond of children.
3. Illiterate? Write for free help: address

And finally, my favourite, in a School essay: A passive verb is when the subject is the sufferer, as in "I am loved."