Stellar Epiphanies

I never dreamed that one day I would shake hands with Madhavan or rub shoulders with Hansika. Not that any of these were my life's amibitions, but it is sort of strange how it turned out like this. Happily meandering through the meadows of my life, I end up in glamworld, seeing Trisha, Dhanush, Sania Mirza, Jiiva and god knows who else up close. I could stretch my hands and touch them. They have always been the stuff of tv and newspaper ads. Dhanush was nothing more than Kolaveri's mindless lyrics two months ago. Yesterday I saw him in his black suit and tie, and he is alive, kicking. What is it about the media that creates this kind of up-there world that the common man lives out his days thinking it exists but in a way that does not matter to him.

Dhanush presents the award to Sania

Trisha getting the award from Maddy and Jiiva

Yes they are stars, they throw tantrums, they are insecure, they are bored, they are haughty. And in the end with the red-carpet celebrities, the endlessly flashing cameras, the glitz, glamour, the 10-inch heels and blinding lights, they are just human beings. It is that easy. There is no stepping stone between stardom and commonality- it is not another 'world' somehwere else. It is just an artifice of manners, airs and dresses, colours, hairdos, accessories, makeup.


Hansika receiving the award from Khushboo

My first experience in a 5 star hotel, all dolled up and waiting as an escort to a major South Indian celebrity, was something I will never forget. My pretty colleague and the centre of attention, tossed her hair and gave Madhavan a dazzling smile. She was supposed to escort Maddy and Sania both to the venue. My heart was palpitating with the thought of waiting it out for my celebrity whose flight had landed later than all the others. I call reception from my changing room. She has already arrived, room xyz, he tells me. I straighten the wrinkles on my white anarkali, slip on my lace slippers and make my way down. Dimly lit passageways, ornate walls and ceilings, a maze of empty hallways and room after room with numbers in gold-301, 302, 303, 304. Reminds me strangely of hotel california. A cold fear clenches my heart and I head to the lift, a little traumatised about potential faux-pas. I find room xyz, the door is open. The image I see will probably never leave me. Across the narrow passage into the room, she sits at a table, one hand on the lap the other holding a phone to the ear; her attendants moving about her busily like house elves. The first thing I see is the thick layer of make up on her face and her fake eyelashes that make her look a little scary up close. I introduce myself shakily and she acknowledges me briefly. She is skinny and her thick hair is permed and left untied. Beside her on the floor, lie massively elevated black heels with gold studs at the ankles. "There is something in her eye," she is saying, visibly upset as I make for the door and go to the lobby to wait for her.

After 15 min, she struts into the lobby  in black skinnies and a top of the same colour. She looks like a gothic rockstar. She certainly knows how to carry it off. Her mother hovers by her side, a tad overdressed but grand never the same.We wait for the corolla, I slide in front beside the driver while the grand ladies sit at the back. The ride is quiet and ghostly. I make light conversation of flights and trips. I notice that the mother's eyes are nearly closed. She seems to be in pain. I enquire about her health. Faux-pas. The celebrity's voice quivers. I think she even sniffs and sobs at the back. She is going to have a breakdown at the set, she sniffs. Her mother has some sort of eye haemorrhage and needs to get checked. The celebrity is worried and afraid and the mother reassures her that she will be fine. "Insecure, afraid, vulnerable," I note in my mind.
We reach the red carpet venue, she alights and in her gait she is the rockstar again. Flashing cameras, pointy stilettos. No more tears, no fear. She smiles photogenically and disappears into the auditorium to her VIP seat while I instruct the driver to reverse the car into the parking slot.

Kai Po Che

Director: Abhishek Kapoor

Cast: Sushant Singh Rajput, Rajkumar Yadav, Amit Sadh, Amrita Puri.

Kai Po Che is an adaptation of Chetan Bhagat’s book The 3 Mistakes of My Life and revolves around the struggles of three friends Ishaan (Rajput), Govind (Yadav) and Omi (Sadh). The three friends struggle to open their own sports academy during the years spanning the Gujarat earthquake and the post-Godhra riots. The hot-blooded Ishaan is passionate about cricket and takes the young Muslim Ali, under his wing to groom him as an international batsman.  The simple and down-to earth Govind is the practical brain behind the sports venture, but things take a turn when he falls in love with Ishaan’s sister Vidhya, played by newcomer Amrita Puri. The naive Omi metamorphoses from a happy-go-lucky guy to a fanatic Hindu under the influence of his extremist uncle Bittu.

The film perks up because of its talented actors and the meticulous narrative touches like the Gujarati ads scribbled on public walls, side characters talking English with a thick Guajarati accent, archaic buildings and settings. Rajput plays the hot-headed and boyish Ishaan with startling conviction especially after an established role as the docile husband in the TV series Pavitra Rishta.

On a narrative level, the film tries to grapple with too many things at once. The several themes in the movie include friendship, the sub-plot of the love story, sports and the Indian scene, Ishaan’s naive humanism and the violence of religious fanaticism, and in the end Omi’s reconciliation with his past.  The viewer is bombarded with the battalion of events and incidents before they, like Ishaan, can have the time to grasp or react to what has happened. While the film does have its moments especially with the heart-warming camaraderie of the three friends, the storyline is sketchy with half-hearted characterization and kaleidoscopic narration. In the end, the film seems to be torn between being faithful to the book and scoring at the box office. The casualty in the process is the screenplay. Characters fall in love a little too suddenly, historical incidents appear because they have to, each character’s life could be a film by itself, characters die abruptly, and the climax fizzles out without a build-up even after much sound and fury.

Of Books and Launches

So here I go again. My editor beetles in and reads out to me from her iPhone- One book launch to attend. Meet the author who is a debutante, and get a few quotes, a few pictures, the press release and that's it. I sigh inaudibly,  perk up and say 'sure' as she orders me 'You'll have to attend this one.' I sling my green bag over my shoulder, looking very journalistic and zoom off to Amethyst Cafe.

A few stray cars. A small garden cafe, with cane chairs and a homely exotic decor. Lots of grey heads and middle aged elegant women. Another evening of sulking in the corner without company, I think.

I declare myself a media personnel and resign myself to observing the sly company of people in rustling silks, cropped haircuts, impeccable British accents and a composure of manner that only people with a lot of time on their hands can cultivate. The star of the show is a lady in midnight blue. She looks slim and dainty in her layered shoulder-length haircut, a dupatta sideways over one shoulder, perfectly falling salwar bottoms and wispy bangles, obviously gold. She has big eyes and the practiced calmness of  a doctor. She is not very good with public speaking, but the speakers to endorse her book do a good job to get the crowd hooting at times. This is the dentist's first book; 'as my children grew up, I had a lot of time on my hands,' she says. So writing came naturally.

The book is called 'All about smiles.' Yes and dentistry. The pun chokes itself. But the point of the book is a light read. It is about her experiences with patients who came to her clinic. 'I want people to like my book,' she says simply. I wonder calamitously: there's going to be a point when everyone is going to write books and there will be no one to read them. Anyone, just about anyone, at any point in their lives, from any profession, about any topic can just pick up a pen and write. I find it so hard to find time to read all the people I want to read. And now writing is such a thing that anyone can do it! Suddenly, I want to sit back and never touch a pen again!

A Gulp of Kollywood

Everyday after work when I come home to my paying guest accommodation, I get a glimpse of Kollywood through the eyes of my roommate Kanimozhi (whose name by the way means 'language of the fruits' in ancient Tamil-still can't get my head around that one). Anyway so as I was saying, today I learnt that actor Karthi was actually a software engineer before he went on to become an actor and that Prabhu, whose face I have always found a tad too large, is the son of Shivaji Ganeshan. One thing I certainly realised is that Tamilians as a people are very resilient. They pursue precarious acting professions but only on the bread and butter of a 'real job' like an engineer's or a manager's. Think Hip Hop Tamizhla's Adi who told me once that even if his music doesn't work out he always had his MBA to fall back on.

Actor Prabhu

The other thing which I realised through some of my inevitable celluloid encounters (Kanimozhi can be married to a TV such is her devotion) is that these Kollywood types always have a huge element of the grotesque (the last time I heard that world was in my literature class while we studying gothic literature at the end of the 18th century) either through gory and bloody violence with body parts fall apart or through psychotic characters with a strain of madness. Sometimes I think the people who go to see these movies and the viewership by and large revels in being scared, whether it is the gruesome, spirit of Sonu Sood in Arundhati or Dhanush's crazy character in Kaadhal Kondai or more recently Kamal's violence in Viswaroopam, there is a fanatic zeal in portraying the real as the grotesque as if that would be the only way the audience would swallow the gruesome as the plausible.

 Guns, bombs and pigeons: Viswaroopam

                                               
Girls are raped and killed often with body parts torn apart, the archetype of the lecherous relative or neighbour, the psychologically scarred sibling growing up with supernatural energies, sweet prancing whimsical girls are all archetypes that precipitate towards a pervading sense of the grotesque. Makes me wonder what the whole point is? You go through all that trouble to make a film and leave the audience in the end feeling shaken, scared and insecure to live in this world. Maybe it's true the world is like that, it has all the gore, the ugliness and the perverted minds but what's the point in seeing a strip of celluloid that plays all your worst nightmares in front you-and ironically if you're watching in a theatre and you've paid for those nightmares too! Tsk, tsk. Kollywood- I am keeping you at arm's length for now.

Moulds

This morning I woke up with a strange thought, not that most mornings I don't, but this morning it topped the list of strange thoughts. What if, the little wisp of a thought peeked into my mindspace and whispered,one doomed day the devil appeared before me in all his traditional attire of red horns and arrow shaped tail and told me that I had not lived my life right, that I had wasted all the opportunities given to me and that they would now have to be given away to someone else who could better use them. What would I do? He would however, have taken pity on my mortified little face and said that only one talent would be left to me to use in this life. Which one would I choose? "Mind you," he would raise his 'circonflex' eyebrows and remind me,"you would be doomed to eat, drink and live this talent for every waking moment of your life, so choose carefully." Well then, in my cringing mind, I would scurry and stumble rummaging into all my intellectual belongings for what I could give away and what I could not part with. (Sadly, I didn't have much.) But it made me think; is there something I could do for every waking moment of my life, do I have anything that I can truly call my own, my very own talent which nobody could use as best as I could? He would tap his foot impatiently at my rambling introspections and frown.

Inkaar

Director: Sudhir Mishra

Cast: Arjun Rampal, Chirtangda Singh, Deepti Naval, Vipin Sharma

Sudhir Mishra’s Inkaar promoted as a film dealing with office politics is more a convoluted love story than about sexual harassment. Although it does talk of the thin line between flirtation and harassment, the underlying theme seems to be how the urban, competitive world with its greed and ambition has corrupted relationships that would otherwise be simple and straightforward. Mishra, the writer behind the cult classic Jaane Bhi Do yaaron and the director of the bittersweet Is Raat Ki Subah Nahi is known for his black humour and his biting irony. Inkaar is surprisingly fairytale-like although it does touch upon elements of Mishra’s trademark surrealism by portraying imaginary scenes from characters’ minds at climatic moments.

Rahul Verma (Arjun Rampal), the awe-inspiring and suave CEO of an ad-agency, is accused of harassment by Maya (Chirangada Singh), a talented copywriter who owes much of her success to his grooming. The story begins in medias res with Mrs Kamdar (Deepti Naval) presiding over the harassment case along with others member of the board. The non-linear plot spans seven years with a constant shuttling of time past and present from the point of views of both Maya, Rahul and sometimes even the board members and is an effective and gripping narrative device. Rampal is like wine. The older he gets the better he is. His performance is enticingly convincing and he would be among the few Bollywood actors to match the hysteria-triggering charisma of a Hugh Jackman or an Eric Bana. Chitrangda Singh is stunningly breath-taking although her looks at times outshine her acting, especially when she tries to portray emotional trauma.

While the lead characters are sketched in gray shades, the script makes a hazy connection between the Rahul in his childhood-taught by his father to fight for what he deserves-and the CEO who is calm, reticent and sometimes openly sidelined by Maya. Maya herself, shown as a power-hungry, alpha-female go-getter also harbours the irrational, emotionally unstable aspect that renders her unfit to wield power. With fast-paced, edgy music by Rajesh Roshan adding to the dramatic quotient of the film, and hilarious delivery by Vipin Sharma who plays Gupta, this film is a potent mix of drama, humour and Mishra’s usual dose of camera-happy experimentation.

In the end, the film veers away from any kind of social commentary on harassment but instead resorts to a more personal, humane way of resolving conflicts as both, the victim and the accused, learn to give in to each other. If you’re going to the film expecting a serious debate on harassment you will be disappointed, all you will get is a maze of point of views and the impossibility of arriving at the truth.

Dabbang 2

Director: Arbaaz Khan

Cast: Salman Khan, Sonakshi Sinha, Prakash Raj

Dabangg 2, unlike most sequels does not let you down. The blockbuster supercop phenomenon has charmed millions of hearts not only because of Salman’s crowd-pulling personality, but also in the way that it celebrates the ordinary and the common. From trouser-pulling to belt-swivelling dance moves, to the motley dance extras that include kids, classical dancers, sabjiwallas and small town shop owners, Dabangg 2 comfortably straddles both the rustic and the urban in its stride. Of course there is the usual Bollywood dose of bone-crushing, body wheeling, slow-motion punches and fight sequences coupled with Sonakshi’s simple and rustic glamour quotient not to forget the cameo item songs by Malaika and Kareena. Prakash Raj as Bachcha Bhaiya adds to the stereotype with his role of the oppressive and the duping politician.

Supercop Chulbul Pandey is transferred to Kanpur and moves there with his wife Rajjo (Sonakshi), his father (Vinod Khanna) and his dim-witted brother Makkhi (Arbaaz Khan). Chulbul’s band of loyal but ordinary policemen consists, among others, of an obese, pizza-eating superior, a senior citizen and an ex-hernia patient. Chulbul and his policemen right many cases which include a kidnapping, a murder and molestation. In all the cases, the details are left hazy while the audience is hurled headlong into the instant handing out of justice to miscreants. Justice in Dabbang2 has nothing to do with righteousness. Chulbul and his cops lie to the media, use violence, break laws, murder with impunity all in the name of welfare. There are only two things that justify them. One is the notion ‘Do unto others what you would have them do to you’; if the oppressors cannot take their own oppression, then they should not oppress. The other is: Salman Khan.

While most of the women in the movie are sidelined as the housewife or the item girl, Chulbul undoes his macho chauvinism by asking his wife to scold him when he orders her around. Chulbul’s charming interjections each time he remembers to ask about other people is an interesting touch. He grabs a fist of groundnuts from the cart-pusher and remembers to ask him about his son, while a gulab jamun in the middle of a fight sequence reminds him of his subordinate who had hernia. With all the right proportions of Bollywood masala and romance, this movie is a power-packed Salman dose.