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.

An Affair to Remember

Some of you young Indian women out there might often find yourselves in the excruciating position of falling for a younger guy. What's the problem with that you’ll say.  Of course by 'you' I mean the 21^st century, boisterously modern, live-in relationship crusader- the kind of liberal, women’s rights upholder who sips apple martini and puts on vermilion and a colourful tunnel of bangles with equal panache.  Traditions are traditions. No matter how experimental and unconventional you are with your own life, you still want a husband who makes a solid, double digit salary in lakhs per annum. You might respect art and rhapsodize about modernist poetry over a round of paan-rasna flavoured hooka but in the end it’s the guy who pays for it that you want to pocket for your own. Of course, we all want ‘the good life’. Chetan Bhagat has lots to say about that.

But, feminine reader, I digress. The younger guy- he’s the protagonist of this story. He is the one who upturns your world and makes you go through hell. Not only is he younger, he is also lost and aimless. He adventurously defies all that comes to your mind with the word ‘stability’. As a major post-script he also earns less than you do. Social disapproval hounds you in your dreaming, waking and dazed moments. You don’t want to be a good catch. In fact you want to make the good catch. He puts you through the social blasphemy of an ‘ill matched couple.’

But then, the dotted bubble conjures up in your mind’s eye. He has a boyish charm. He smiles his dazzling Johnny Bravo smile and makes the caterpillars go bonkers in your tummy. By the time you reach the butterflies in the tummy stage, he is close enough for you to smell that lingering, masculine perfume that makes your knees weak. He is gentle, and he is harmless- so you think. He lets you be the one in charge. You anyway know more than he does, so you feel, you’ve seen the world more than he has. But even so, his youthfulness draws you. It refreshes the staleness of your own age and point of view.

You’ve discussed all this over a smoke with those intellectual friends of yours. You’ve used big words and complex sentences to sanctify your lust and that works for a while- because to your friends you say that it’s about how he has awakened a new reason to be yourself. Your friends wear the same coloured glasses. They encourage you. Go on, be yourself. Age doesn't matter. But to you it does- behind your brazen modernity, your familial bonds gnaw at you. You imagine social gatherings, what people might say, that pretty cousin of yours who did better than you when everyone thought you would. Those truck-load of expectations. No. This is your life, you say firmly and decide to throw him over. You can't live a miserable life of woeful comparison and the thought of "all that could have been" lurking at every step. Yes, so you decide to throw him over. You waver in dismay. But the feeling of buoyance carries you through those weighty moral qualms.

 Finally you decide you’ve rediscovered how to enjoy life and how to look forward to things. So you think. His childishness amuses your serene superiority, his naivety makes you feel that in some way whether he knows it or not, or accepts it or not, he needs you. Ah, but that damn age difference. Those 3 or 4 slippery years in between. The younger guy is perceptive and persistent. He senses your dilemma. More importantly he senses you have yielded. It’s complicated, you say. With women it always is, he replies with a  wisdom beyond his years that shocks you into admiration. Perhaps you are both even intellectually suited, you check a box in your pros list. He makes you feel special. Ah, but that damn age difference. If only.

And then there are those times, when his puppy dog eyes seem just that. You crave a large, muscular German Shepherd and all he looks like is a furry, little Pomeranian with black beady eyes the size of olives. You don’t want a pet, you want a companion, you explain to a friend with a sense of solemn gravity over a session of deep conditioning hair spa.

Your moral dilemma eats you up inside. Is it love? It can’t be. You send a billion texts to each other with angry, sad, happy, doubtful and neutral smileys. He sends you a kissing smiley and your heart flutters like a paper plane and settles into autopilot. You keep your distance and send a hug instead. He admits finally that he loves you. You hem and haw. What is love, you ask. It’s complicated, you repeat. Like math? He texts. No, you retort. More complicated than math? No, I didn’t mean it like that. Complicated like a girl’s mind- tongue in cheek smiley. You love the way he turns an awkward situation into a joke.

The situation goes on for a while. Your life continues in its tortuous conflicts and you feel you have a lot to think about. A lot to sort. The younger guy is strangely resilient and has found many other fish to fry- and that makes you die just a little. But then, he’s young, you conclude and shove it under the carpet. Then one day you happen to pick up his cell phone and flip through the texts that he has sent to a dozen other girls. Some of them with the same kissing smileys and the same one liners that knocked the breath out of you. But this time they really do knock the breath out you. You don’t want to run to your friends because you have been the fool. Nah, he’s not my type after all, you tell them nonchalantly over the treadmill. You do not want to confide because society has got back to you with a vengeance. Well then, you shrug. Things are the way they should be and you make plans for a movie with your girlfriends.

On Writing

Nadine Gordimer


• “Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.”



Gao Xingjian


• “Writing eases my suffering... writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.”

                                                                         Graham Greene

• “Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those, who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear, which is inherent in a human condition”

                                                                        

Anais Nin
• “If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.”