I always thought Indians would connect to Finding Fanny. The men, at least.
Since the time we turn 18, much of our energies, talents and thoughts are expended on chasing pussy.
Now that I have made the customary first joke so that you open the link, here’s the review.
I have been mostly ambivalent towards Homi Adajania’s films. Being Cyrus was mildly interesting, but it didn’t blow my mind or anything. Just about tickled it with a feather, probably. Cocktail was problematic on different levels.
Finding Fanny, right from the first scene, makes it clear that it isn’t going to pander to you. You have to sit through the man sitting three rows behind you slurp on his Coke and say ‘Slow hai, behenchod’.
The film takes its time picking itself up, which could either pique your interest, or leave you bored. At the risk of doing a Rajeev Masand, who has a spectacular knack for revealing important plot points, let me try to summarise the plot.
Or wait, fuck it. Why should I?
*
One look at the trailer, and you know there are interesting things in store for you. A cast of Naseeruddin Shah and Pankaj Kapur is a coup on any given day. The others – Dimple Kapadia, Deepika Padukone, and Arjun Kapoor – are merely playing catch up with the senior pro bros.
Watching Finding Fanny is a reflection of the difference between great and moderate actors. You see Dimple Kapadia act out a scene, just managing to walk the tightrope, in a laborious, onerous manner. And then Pankaj Kapur turns to her, smiles, and waltzes through his scene.
Deepika Padukone is skating on thin ice throughout the film. There are scenes where she spins around in a beautiful routine. And then there are others where her shoe is stuck in a soft patch of ice. But that could also be because I watched the Hindi version and when there is no link between lips moving and sound coming, I feel ill at ease.
What Padukone manages spot on, however, is to look smashingly pretty throughout. Which also makes you wonder, when someone is so naturally pretty, why do other directors paint her face till she looks like an Anime vamp ?
Arjun Kapoor, the actor who last gave us the heartwarming 2 States – The Story of My Two Expressions,puts in an honest effort. But there isn’t much you can do when your face doesn’t emote too much. He looks stoned all through, which might not be such a bad thing since he is [random Goan generalisation about Goa, hash, hippie, peace yo, cool brother, Boom Shiva].
*
Most of the reviews I hear from people said that the film didn’t move them enough. Which makes me wonder – are we constantly looking for films to move us? For films to shake the foundations of our emotional core in three hours? Look at our biggest hits, and most of them are epic, grandiose, larger than wife.
Finding Fanny might have its problems, but just the fact that the casting team did their work right, should give you enough reason to watch the film.
Don’t go in looking for the film to transform your life. One, it’s stupid. Two, if a three hour film can transform your life, you shouldn’t be walking into theatres. What with Arbaaz Khan directing Salman Khan in an Sohail Khan production, you might be a threat to society around you.
Finding Fanny is bold, and it is cheeky, and it expects a friend of you, not a devotee.
In a way, the film is like ordering food in a Goan shack. The cook steps out every half an hour, smokes a cigarette, and then walks back to the kitchen. When you ask him how long, he smiles.
The food finally arrives, slowly, swinging from this side to that.
How much you enjoy it depends on how hungry you are.
I have a new favourite state, and I do not mean ‘intoxicated’.
Himachal Pradesh.
Having spent the last two weeks in five states – Goa, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Orissa, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh (see what KCR did there?), I have arrived at the conclusion that Himachal Pradesh is undoubtedly the most beautiful state there is in the country.
Granted, a few of you will say ‘Kashmir’, but Kashmir has other issues, and I would rather spend my time speaking to Shiva than meeting him in person. And so it is with the confidence and the deep knowledge of someone who has spent exactly one single day in the state, that I declare Himachal Pradesh as my favourite state.
Which takes me back to the seedy Social Science text books that we learnt from in school. When I think of Himachal Pradesh, the images that came to mind were – Apples, boys and girls wearing cute traditional gowns, and … ahem, nothing else.
Another point in HP’s benefit was that we had spent the previous two days at Punjab. Which, by the way, was a KLPD of Sabu-ean proportions.
Now, think of everything that I knew about Punjab – lots of fields, lots of Rajs and Simrans, pretty girls, dhabas with friendly Punjabi men serving delicious tandoori chicken, etc.
However, Chandigarh was a gigantic disappointment. Primarily because of everybody’s insistence to go check out ‘Sector 17’. Sector 17 apparently has the hottest women of Chandigarh frolicking about like Biblical princesses, and everybody we met spoke about it.
Now, I am no greek god and cannot claim to have wooed women merely by my looks, but I have always wondered what is the point of the exercise. What does one do at these places where there are pretty women around?
We don’t live in a culture where we can walk up to women and ask for their number. Even if you did, there’s a good possibility the woman might shriek, and Ramu Kaka from across the road might smash your head to pulp, while asking if there are any female members in your house.
In such a scenario, what does one really do at Sector 17? It’s not like one can have intercourse merely by staring at someone. I am yet to meet a single man who stared at a woman till she came, and then flushed, and slipped him a note saying ‘It was great. We should stare at each other again. Here’s my number.’
Not surprisingly, Sector 17 contained other chutiyas like us, who had gone to ogle at the pretty women.
The next thing on my list was to eat at a dhaba. The kind of dhaba they show us in Bollywood movies – a cot on the outside, trucks whizzing past, a cold beer by the side. Turns out, ‘dhaba’ is a generic word for restaurants.
The ‘dhabas’ are just restaurants with tables, chairs, and annoying posters of babies laughing for no reason. Determined to get the true Punjabi dhaba experience, we went to a dhaba on the outskirts, by the way, which had cots laid out in the front. Gurdaas Maan invited us into ‘Sethi ka dhaba’.
Once inside, we realized what a massive fan of Gurdaas Maan the owner of the dhaba was. All along the walls, were pictures of Gurdaas Maan singing, Gurdaas Maan dancing, Gurdaas Maan playing cricket, Gurdaas Maan being Gurdaas Maan.
The food of course, wasn’t much of a disappointment. And in my extremely short stay at Punjab, the food was the only saving grace. Which also makes you realize, that the food being passed off as ‘Punjabi’ food in Hyderabad is not really Punjabi in any way. It is an extremely poor attempt at replication – like Aurangzeb trying to pass off as Pope Francis.
Tired of all the disappointments that Chandigarh handed us, we decided we must visit Himachal Pradesh.
*
Himachal Pradesh, my friends, is pretty.
Everything in Himachal Pradesh is beautiful. The mountains, the houses on the mountains, the people who live in the houses on the mountains. The hash smells like someone stole it from Shiva’s chillum. The stray dogs look like they came off a shoot in TLC, women look pretty without looking like Sonakshi Sinha. Babas look like they are on a BBC documentary, roads look like they belong to a different era.
Even a gutter in Himachal Pradesh is beautiful.
Because, Himachal Pradesh.
It is commonly believed that to enjoy HP in all its beauty, one must carry Shiva along. However, what they don’t tell you is that just by himself, Shiva is not much use. One also needs Lakshmi, and Durga.
And armed with Lakshmi, Shiva, Durga, the three of us stood near the mountains and turned around to see the mountains change colours every few minutes. We watched as clouds formed beautiful shapes, we listened as birds and trees and streams came together in a beautiful symphony.
As we zooming down the zig-zag roads, and our Punjabi driver was educating us on the amazing therapeutic effects of opium, I said goodbye to Himachal Pradesh.
Probably my opinion is coloured in pink because my stay there was extremely short-lived. May be there are people in HP too who scratch their balls when they see women, and shit by the side of the roads.
But I wasn’t there for long enough to see them.
And that is why Himachal Pradesh is my new favourite state in the country.
At the onset, I understand what I am against here.
Writing a review for a Salman Khan film is a futile exercise. Like being Bappi Lahiri’s dietician. Nothing you do is going to affect anything in real. And yet, one has to go about one’s life with these pressures.
Kick is a remake of a Telugu film of the same name, starring Ravi Teja.
For those who aren’t acquainted with the Telugu film industry, a short background. Of all the film industries in the country, the Telugu film industry is the most nepotistic, caste-ridden one there is. All actors in the industry today are either sons or grandsons of actors. It is a dog-eat-dog world that is difficult to get into, and if you manage to get in, impossible to retain your place.
Among the Gandhi family that the industry is, Ravi Teja is one actor who made it on his own. There is a colony in Hyderabad – Krishnanagar – where all the strugglers of the film industry reside. Everybody from hawkers to auto drivers to cooks to waiters – everybody who resides in the colony has celluloid dreams in their mind, with just one actor to look up to – Ravi Teja.
In many ways, Ravi Teja’s films symbolise his struggle. He is always the crass, loud, goofish guy who manages to woo the smooth, svelte heroine. His lines take double entendres to a different level, his songs have triple meanings, he gets away with squeezing the girls’ lips, pinching their navels, and pressing their boobs.
Somehow, in his own weird way, Ravi Teja manages to pull off all that he does.
And Kick was his biggest hit.
*
Now, the problem with someone like Salman Khan doing a Kick, is that it will always be a sanitized version of the film. And then there’s the fact that Salman Khan does no real acting in his films.
He is simply waltzing around, mouthing lines, making faces, raising his eyebrows, and taking off his shirts. He is probably the only actor in the country (and perhaps in the world) who has no need for a script, acting, and direction.
“Director ne bola ‘Kick karte hain’, maine kick kar diya.”
If you made a three hour film of Salman Khan eating biriyani, it would still make 200 crores in three weeks. But anyway, since one has to review the film, let us get into the act.
*
Kick is the story of a guy who always wants a kick in life. Someone who goes out of his way to do things in different ways so that he gets an adrenaline rush from it. We all meet such guys in life; we just choose to call them assholes.
Along his weird antics, the hero (Devi – again, Salman Khan waving a middle finger to humanity’s need for naming people according to their gender) meets and falls in love with a girl. In typical Indian film style, he impresses her by doing a string of illegal things. He first bashes people and breaks property in a café. When he is arrested by the police, he goes to the police station, breaks furniture, and even strips the inspector to his underwear.
But since this is India, he goes viral on YouTube and the girl falls for him.
*
This goes on for a bit, till the girl is fed up with him for quitting jobs. For not ‘settling down’ in life. Salman being Salman, says ‘Fuck it’ and goes on to become a thief.
Not just a regular thief. But the suave, cool, kick-ass thief of the Dhoom 3 kind. The kind of thief who looks at 3D projections of plans and maps on his table, and zooms in and pushes them across screens.
Then, Randeep Hooda, who is probably going through some bad times and has signed up for the film, is engaged to the heroine and needs to catch a dreaded thief called Devil (10 points for scripting!!).
The next one hour contains some bizarre shit, thanks to extremely lazy writing. At this point, let us stop and appreciate the genius of the scriptwriting. And who has done it? Chetan Fucking Bhagat.
For all his bravado about writing, and his cribbing about not getting his due in the west, he fails to fill some basic plotholes. Take for example the scene where Devil is stuck in a river, with police surrounding him from all sides. In the next scene, he is in India planning his next heist? What happened in the middle?
Guess we’ll have to wait for a book titled ‘9 Ways I Had A Love Story and Change the Country’ to find out!
I slept off in the last 20 minutes, so I have no clue what really happened. But there are a few things that I noticed. Not that either of them are new to this film alone.
Loud Background Score: In spite of nearly seven decades of churning out musicals, Bollywood is yet to understand a background score. In most films, the background score is a loud rendition of the songs of film, in slow motion. In Kick, the background score is like a hungry 2 year old on cocaine, blaring into your ears, making you want to turn around and stab him in the heart. Thrice.
Hero-Villain Phone Call: Every Hindi action film has a scene where the hero calls up the villain/cop and has a long, dramatic conversation with him. The two of them are mouthing absolutely absurd lines, and each line is followed by a metal tune. Here is a sample:
Villain: I’m going to catch you. Be ready to listen to the music of death HAHAHAHA!
Hero: The wind cannot be caught, the sun cannot be burnt.
Villain: I like your confidence. I like how you talk, I will like how you die. Kim Kardashian has a nice ass.
Hero: Dog! Scoundrel!! You don’t know who you are talking to! Red is the colour of Chacha Chaudhry’s turban. I am rural, you’re urban.
Villain: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, How I Wonder What You Are.
Hero: Jai Mata Di, Let’s Rock. Jai Hind.
(so on and so forth)
*
Kick, true to its name, is a kick to your senses.
It is a kick to critics, to writers, and to cinema in general.
And yet, it will go on to earn 200 crores in 27 minutes. It stars our biggest star, and has been written by our greatest writer. And the director is a long time producer – another kick to all aspiring directors out there.
I have a friend who says that the one reason India never really played any other sport, is Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. The guy was so good, that he hijacked the imagination of an entire generation of children.
He said this after we grew up, of course. Because if he had said it back then, someone would have slit his throat. Or worse, burnt his collection of Trump cards.
I don’t fully agree with what he said, but there is some truth in the fact that we were obsessed as a nation. And never again, in my opinion, will that level of obsession be replicated. For two reasons:
There was hardly any other sport. Sania Mirza had not debuted yet, and Vishwanath Anand would feature in Sportstar frequently, but we would skip the pages till we reached the interview with Venkatpathy Raju.
Cable television had just been born, and unlike our earlier generation who depended on the papers and radio, we could actually watch our heroes in action. Which catapulted even bored children into fanatic worshippers.
All this led to a nationwide obsession with one sport – cricket. Your knowledge of the sport surpassed any ranks you scored in class, and the lack of knowledge on cricket, or an interest in it, brought about a social leprosy that was cruel. I have had friends who didn’t like cricket too much complain to me about it. When they would tell people they didn’t really follow cricket, people would gasp, as if they had said that they have only one kidney, or no heart at all.
We played cricket at school, and then returned home to play some more cricket, and then played some cricket in our fantasies. It wasn’t surprising that cola companies would come up with lines like ‘Eat, sleep, breathe cricket’ to promote their unhealthy crap down our throats. Now, cricket in school was a civilised affair. The school provided the bat, the ball, the stumps – thereby negating any favouristism or nepotism in the process. There would be a toss, and the game would be played in spirit of the game.
Or in the fear of the PT sir.
The PT sir would be overseeing the action, and so everyone would behave themselves. Which basically meant not reaching for each others’ throats at the slightest provocation. If the ball went out of the wall, we would all request passerby to throw us the ball, the bell would ring, and we would all go back to class, smelling like a bunch of obstinate buffaloes. Very civilised affair.
Not so civilised once school was over, though. Here, it was a Game of Thrones. You had to conquer a pitch, stake your claim over it by digging holes and drawing the crease. You had to build your army of soldiers, those who would be willing to sacrifice their home work to play a game with you. One of your army reached the ground early and put the stumps in place and dutifully waited for the others to arrive.
You played on the pitch, fighting among yourselves like hooligans. But once there was an external threat, you bonded like blood brothers to fight for your pitch. Finding a place to play was the major source of worry, especially with the bindaas lives that dogs and cows lead in our lives.
And cows came with their own set of worries – horny bulls who wanted you to learn Life Processes – 2 much earlier than your scheduled day of enlightenment. You scrounged the nooks and corners of the earth, to find that perfect spot to lay your stake on, and then drew the crease and put the stumps in place.
Of course, once your land was marked, and you had a thriving civilisation of cricket fanatics, your pitch would be the cynosure of evil preying eyes. The elder boys in your area, eyeing your pitch. The college going gang who just wanted a place where they could sit in a group and talk and laugh – the morons. And cows who wanted to sit in the middle of the pitch and ruminate on the larger questions of life. Who would choose exactly the middle of the pitch to drop a massive dump of dung – cow graffiti for ‘I was here’.
Unlike the cricket at school, playing cricket at home was a sordid affair. You fought for it with your life, and held it close to your heart. But the struggles didn’t end there. After you had vanquished the demons outside, you had to deal with the politics of your own army.
Every pack of kids playing cricket will be witness to three broad categories of players:
The Franchise Owners: The franchise owners would be the ones who owned the bat, and thus, the game in entirety. The owner of the bat wielded an enormous amount of clout in the scheme of things, considering that his possession – the bat – made the key difference between a set of boys playing cricket, and a set of boys hanging out with three sticks, one rock, and a rubber ball. The franchise owners generally called the shots in the game. And even when the merely defended the ball, they would call it an exquisite shot.
The Enthusiastic Gamers: These were the guys who would be instrumental in the day to day running of matters like the pitch and the space. These guys wouldn’t be great at the sport or anything, but made up for that with sheer enthusiasm. They would arrive first and leave last, and generally did the rounds, calling you out from your house when your mother was trying to stuff food inside you.
The Icon Players: Every league of galli cricket would have these icon players. These guys didn’t own the bat, but they owned the game. The franchise owners couldn’t do anything to these guys, thanks to the latter’s superior cricketing skills. Also, the Icon Players would be pivotal to things when challenged by other leagues to a cricket match. They had to be humoured, else they would drift away to another league.
Every galli cricket league had these three types of players. Each of them ensuring that the game ran along smoothly. Of course, if you owned the bat, were enthusiastic, and were the icon player – well, there was no stopping you. You were the Lalit Modi of the league, and anyone who objected to your actions would be sent a 10,000 page reply, in four cartons. But the process did not end with securing the rights to the pitch. There were the other nitty-gritties to take care of.
Firstly, the ball. Now, it is a well established fact that India is the only country where people play cricket with a tennis ball (Okay, may be Pakistan and Bangladesh too). But what is not mentioned is the number of tennis balls that were used to play cricket. When you are a younger child, it is always ‘Soft tennis’. Since there is more money in the league when you’re younger (since your parents are still trying to pamper the apple of their eyes), soft tennis balls are popular. They came in shiny, fluorescent yellow and had the name of the company written in bold black letters. A soft tennis ball would often provoke ridicule among the elders; the users of the Hard Tennis ball.
Quite simply, the Hard Tennis ball was a tennis ball that was hard. The ball itself had two colours, yellow-red, or yellow-pink. The market leader was ‘Vicky’, and to lose a Vicky hard tennis ball, was tantamount to banging your friend’s car into a tree. The hard tennis ball could hurt if you got hit on the nose, and care should be taken to avoid injuries. By batting all the time.
Third, and a poorer cousin of the tennis balls, were the rubber balls. They were simple rubber balls, the kinds that Dronacharya used to make Pandavas and Kauravas play with. Through all these years, it went through only one type of evolution. The makers had made the effort to add fake rubber stitches to make it seem like a cricket ball. The rubber ball was used when funds were really tight, since they came cheap.
On the flip side, they lasted for a maximum of three days, and if an Icon Player was knocking the ball around, it could crack in half. It was only much later, when your innocence was robbed off you by the Biology teacher, or the video rental store nearby, that you started playing with what was called as ‘Cork ball’.
Cork ball was made of some sort of synthetic cork material. It never broke, but did cause considerable damage to people’s noses. If parents got a whiff that the cricket was being played with a cork ball, there would be hell to pay. But the larger repercussions of using a cork ball were that the bats would crack.
You needed adult cricket bats for this. Not the ones that had a picture of Sachin Tendulkar, with the words – ‘For Tennis Ball Only’ written in small letters below. Setting up a new league entailed going through the grind each and every time.
And just when everything was set – you had a pitch, a bat, and a Vaanar Sena of your own. You found an ideal location for the stumps and drew the crease. The crease was measured by putting the bat on the floor and measuring it till the handle, and then adding the length of the handle only, to draw the final line. This line, of course, existed merely in the mind, as it would be erased, tampered with, and redrawn on numerous occasions through the game.
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But for now, you had found an open space, and there were a few cows grazing in the distance, pretending they aren’t interested in your superhuman batting skills. But then, there would be other obstacles on your way. The ball would fall into the gutter, go into a house where a pissed off aunty wouldn’t return it to you, or God forbid, to a group of seniors who were playing at a distance. Now, I don’t know why, but if a ball goes into the pitch of seniors playing, they would either hide the ball, throw it in a drain, or throw it so far off that it would take half an hour to find it. When I was younger, I used to think the seniors near my house knew that we were better than them.
But when we grew up, I realised we did exactly the same thing. Perhaps it was a sign of growing up. Of being tough on the streets. Or something like that. But what did one do when the sun had set? When you couldn’t play cricket anymore because there would be drug pedlars who would give you chocolates and kidnap you and take out one of your kidneys?
You started playing cricket indoors. Corridors, garages, houses, dormitories – if there ever was a league of indoor cricket, India would kick Australia’s ass and become the king of the sport. Not only did we take our obsession with cricket indoors, we also enacted new rules that could be adapted to the change in scenario. Like the Hong Kong Super 6’s, indoor cricket had its own set of rules:
One Tup Out: Since you were playing indoors, you couldn’t dive around as you would normally in the ground. So the rule here was that if you caught the ball after it bounced ONCE, the batsman would still be declared out. The One Tup Out required Bradmanian skills if it was a small enclosure, and general public apathy towards the rule gave birth to the second rule.
One Tup One Hand: This rule said that you could catch the ball after it bounced once, but to be fair to the batsman, you could only catch it with one hand. The One Tup One Hand rule would have larger repercussions on real cricket much later, when rules like one bouncer per over were drafted in to benefit the batsmen.
The Three Miss Out: This rule said that if you missed touching the ball with your bat on three deliveries, you could be ruled out. Critics have pointed out that this rule could be inspired from baseball, to which the makers of the rule nonchalantly pointed out that it was called ‘three miss’ and not ‘three strikes’, and hence it was merely an inspiration. Indoor cricket was great for afternoons, when elders either went to work or took a nap. It could be played without making much noise, and the only risk was breaking a few things in the house.
Indoor cricket, some would say, required a lesser amount of cricketing skills, and sometimes turned out to be more enjoyable than the game outdoors. Here, there was nobody picking on you, no need to put your hand in a drain, and the ball rarely got lost.
But what if you did not have access to a bat or ball at all? Like in school, when you were forced to study? Of course there would be a way out!
“The absence of a bat and ball do not stand as obstacles to the obsessed” – Anonymous.
The chewing gum scene back then was just turning bright. For years, we chewed on Big Fun, simply because they gave cricket cards free with each pack. It was a different matter that the bubble gums themselves felt like scented tails of pigs. But we chewed on, since there was a cricket card to win. Somewhere along the line, came Center Fresh.
Center Fresh produced chewing gums that were actually enjoyable. For once, a chewing gum didn’t seem like the necessary penance to achieve something else. There was a nice jelly in the middle of the gum, but best of all – they provided cricket cards. Bright, colourful cards that had no spelling mistakes, factual errors, and the pictures were bright and clear.
Not like the Big Fun cards, that looked like the receipt of a weight checking machine at the railway station. Of course, there were the cricket cards that were available in the market. You could simply buy a pack and laugh at all those people who were chewing gum like maniacs to collect the entire pack.
Cricket cards of that era seemed to be frozen in time. I remember the numbers changing just twice in all the time I played with them. The statistics were pretty simple – Matches, Runs, Highest Score, Batting Average, Wickets, Bowling Average, Best Bowling. There were a few Trump Cards in the pack, but you could still beat a Wasim Akram card on the basis of batting, and a Mohd. Azharuddin card on the basis of bowling.
There was a sense of fairness and justice in the entire process. There were WWF cards too, but rumours had begun to float that the matches were all fake, and seniors at school would sometimes snigger if they saw you with WWF cards (or snatch them away, depending on their IQ).
But since cricket cards were based on actual facts, and you could actually see the matches on TV, and read about them in print, they were considered holy. Possessing a good collection of cricket cards automatically meant that you social standing would shoot up, people would generally invite you to their discussions, hoping that you’d decide to bring out the cards. However, cards came with their own set of risks.
If you were caught playing cards in class, you were screwed. The cards would sometimes be thrown away, or torn, or simply confiscated. Numerous trips to the Staff Room to find them would prove futile, and it would be the end of your prized collection. Also, some of us had spiritual parents, who thought that playing cricket cards is the gateway to more sinister habits, and we would grow up to be gamblers who would blow up all their hard earned money. Making cricket cards a considerable risk, on occasions.
What did one do if their cricket cards were taken away from them? Give up on cricket? Hell no! There would be other options, obviously. For those who had access to neither bat, nor cricket cards, there was Book Cricket.
I remember feeling grateful to the person who invented the game. It was an ingenious concept. You held a text book in your hand (preferably of the subject of the ongoing class), and opened a page randomly. You then looked at the page on the left. The last digit of the page number denoted your score. For eg, if you opened page no. 54, your score for that delivery would be 4. If you got a page that ended with 0, you were out.
While purists preferred the Test match method where every player was allowed to play ten batsman, those with lesser patience opted for a limited number of book openings, and the total score was accumulated. Agreed, it did not set your pulse racing, nor did it come with ups and downs of playing a sport. But it could be played right in class. You needn’t even speak to each other, and if a teacher arrived, you would look like two kids looking at a text book and making notes.
After the Drona Award and Arjuna Award, if the government decides to award innovation in sports, probably name it the Ekalavya Award, then the inventor of Book Cricket should win it.
But teachers in our school eventually got a whiff of our nefarious activities. They probably saw a long list of numbers and wondered why the guy was practising basic addition in Class 7. But Book Cricket was busted too. And now with Book Cricket out of the question, was there anything else I could do?
How could I contain all the enthusiasm for cricket that was bubbling in my mind, threatening to spill out? I devised my own way. I realised that there was something that no one could take away from me. Something that was deep within me that only belonged to me. My dreams.
We would be asked to sit for hours at a stretch to meditate, and I had a tough time reining in my mind, that was running like a wild horse towards Raveena Tandon. I started daydreaming about cricket.
So when everyone would be asked to close their eyes and meditate, and I was done with my customary meditation for Raveena, I would start daydreaming about cricket. It would begin with me bumping into Debashis Mohanty randomly while playing cricket at the local Shahid Sporting Club. Just a regular ‘Hi-bye’ sort of a meeting, not for me the falling over and taking pictures. I was cool.
He would be talking to a group of (less knowledgable) kids about cricket, when I would barge into the discussion and spell bind him with my vast and expansive knowledge of cricket.
We would strike an instant connection and sow the seeds of a deep friendship. Later that day, when he would bowl to me in the nets, he would be surprised to know that I was quite a talented batsman too, with my flowing drives and booming pulls over mid-wicket. Later he would call me to his house for lunch, as we would sit and discuss, like two brothers, everything from W.G. Grace, to why swing bowling needs to be promoted if we wanted to win more tours overseas.
This would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and when India would play a home series, he would write to my school asking for permission. Permission for me to join him while he was preparing for the series. ‘He has got a deep understanding of cricket and we in the Indian team are of the opinion that we could benefit from his inputs, and together bring unending glory to the nation. Hence, we kindly request you to let him accompany us.’
Who would deny a letter written like that? Our Headmistress would let me go, and I would join the boys in preparing for the tour. I would have chats with them on specific tactics for specific bowlers (‘Sachin, you need to be a little careful while playing Cronje, he’s gotten you out a few times earlier).
I would also advice Srinath run in hard for the first few overs, since he was our best bet to take early wickets, and my friend Deba could come in as first change and look at causing further damage. Venkatpathy Raju, whom I never liked much, I would barely talk to.
I would spend hours in my dream land. When I would walk, I would be either practising a shot or doing my bowling action. At home, when I was asked to sweep the floor, I would practice some drives (was never really good with the sweep shot, only cowards play that shot). It reached a stage where I would be doing the bowling action even while walking for lunch, or coming out of the assembly. And so would a lot of other classmates of mine.
Finally, the class teacher announced that no one was allowed to do the bowling action. If anyone was found doing the bowling action, they would be banned from going to ‘Games’ on that day (she obviously knew little of the other methods we had devised). Once when I got caught doing the bowling action, I was tempted to explain that I was doing Shahid Afridi’s action, and technically it wasn’t really a bowling action, as his action had been called for scrutiny by the ICC. But better sense prevailed. I quietly accepted the slap on my cheek, did not show my other cheek, and left.
*
Cricket, you see, was not a game played on a ground, with a bat, ball and sticks.
Cricket was in the heart, the soul, in the blood running in our veins.
If you study in a hostel, your identity is immediately drawn up on the basis of a few things.
What you look like (basically fat or not), the state you’re from, how you perform at studies, and so on. At that age, there is a strange sense of pride in association. Family names are treated with reverence; to make fun of someone’s family name is absolutely unacceptable.
Amidst the many states (and a few countries) that people came to my school from, I was lost as a person from Orissa. At times, it was like I came from a place that didn’t exist in reality. A Platform 9 ¾ sort of extension that only a few of us could see and feel.
There was no mention of Orissa anywhere – in films, books, magazines, news – none at all. Which meant that the references to the state were the same – teachers called us ‘tribals’ (which is grammatically wrong, by the way). There was one particular teacher who would say things like ‘See how you fellows are, that’s why your state is like that.’
I wasn’t deeply ashamed or anything. I did not swear to take a wow to avenge the insults and uphold the pride of my state. Childhood keeps you busy with other important stuff.
And yet, sometime in the year 1998, Orissa found an identity in the mainstream.
Debashis Mohanty.
*
It wasn’t just a mention in the Geography text book, or a quiz question (What is the dance form of Orissa? ‘Oriya’. Bash head till person is buried into the floor).
For a nation that was used to cricketers from Mumbai, Delhi and Punjab, to have an actual cricketer from Orissa infused a great sense of pride in my heart. And the entire state caught up to it.
Every person I knew back then had a Debashis Mohanty story of his/her own.
‘Oh, he used to stay near my house. Used to play with my elder brother. Really nice chap.’
‘He was always a quiet, humble boy. Who would have thought he would one day play for the country?’
‘My brother is good friends with him. The two of them used to drink beer together. Yes, yes. Now go get two cigarettes from that shop and come. Quick!’
No matter how far removed from the sport, they all had a story of their own. One they loved to narrate to others.
And this wasn’t just an award from a President, or a Limca record being set. It was playing cricket for the country. It was appearing in newspapers, appearing live on television. It was millions of people watching and rooting for you. It was Tony Greig calling out your name on the microphone, it was articles being written in The Hindu.
Debashis Mohanty was the first reason I was proud of my state.
*
It was a magical three-year phase.
Having never really played serious cricket, I took up the ball. In a way, my bowling was like Mohanty’s – never express pace, just some sense to pitch it in the right areas and wait for the conditions to work (in my case, for the batsman to play a Ghatotkach pull to the boundary).
When Mohanty was selected out of the blue for the 1999 World Cup (without being in the list of probables), my happiness knew no bounds.
It was the first World Cup I was actively following. And Mohanty was in the thick of things for most of the matches. For a state starved of national heroes, it gave me an insane amount of joy to watch him, his loose jersey flapping in the English wind, running up to bowl, extracting generous amounts of swing both ways (which, if you remember, wasn’t something most Indian bowlers could boast of back then).
The World Cup was a dream run of sorts. Mohanty picked up wickets in nearly every match he played in, and for the first time, I had hopes of him cementing his place in the team. But those were tumultuous days for Indian pace bowling.
A string of bowlers were picked, tested, and unceremoniously dumped. Harvinder Singh, Abey Kuruvilla, Tinu Yohannan, David Johnson, Reetinder Singh Sodhi, Ajit Agarkar – all jostling for the position of the 3rd pacer.
By 2001, the dream run had ended.
Agarkar was being touted as the next Kapil Dev, he had started picking up wickets like the TTE of Rajdhani Express, and could hit the ball around too. In the meanwhile, Mohanty was struggling to find swing in Indian conditions – hot, sweaty weather and dead, flat tracks.
2001 would be the last year he would play for India. Another cricketer from Orissa, SS Das would make his debut for India, but it wasn’t the same. SS Das was too stoic, too silent, too expressionless to inspire me in any way.
And slowly, Mohanty fizzled out of the national team.
*
Fifteen years later, I began hunting for online footprints of Mohanty.
Thanks to YouTube, nostalgia is no more a closet in your mind that that gets lighter and fades out as time passes. With YouTube, you can take your memory off the cupboard, dust it, gaze at it all over again, and pick a fight with a Pakistani cricket fan while you’re at it.
And so I began searching for his videos on YouTube.
I found a total of three videos. The first one was a video titled ‘Tarap catch by Debashis Mohanty’. It was a clip of Mohanty running in to bowl at Saeed Anwar, who lobs it back to the diving bowler, only to grass it. It was a sad little video that had one comment (‘Just missed the catch’).
The second video I found was one of Afridi smashing Mohanty to all parts of a Pakistan ground. Later on, the Peter Pan of Pakistan goes on to say that he had a score to settle with Mohanty. Apparently, before that series, the two teams had played in Canada. Mohanty, who was bowling well, kept walking down the pitch to Afridi to stare at him.
Even if the video failed to refresh any memories, it gave me some solace. That the person who my friend’s neighbour’s brother’s uncle’s son knew personally, stood up to an opponent batsman.
A little more searching, and I find the third video with Mohanty in it.
It is titled ‘Debasis Mohanty does justice to Boston Gymkhana Wicket Ale !!!’.
The scene is far removed from a cricket field. It is a house with about 20 people in it. Back in the days when only one person in a group had a camera and was entrusted with the task of documenting the act for posterity.
Debashis Mohanty stands in the middle of the group, with all the people in the room cheering him on. The camera spins around to show a huge dinner being prepared for the group, there is a general loud laughter of an Indian occasion. Just as I was trying to figure out what was going on, I notice a pitcher of beer being offered to Mohanty.
He accepts the pitcher, and the crowd begins to cheer for him. And just like that, as I watch the video, Debashis Mohanty gulps down the entire pitcher of beer. The group is happy, and everybody is cheering for Mohanty. End of video.
It is a little sad that there is not a single video of my favourite childhood bowler. It seems unfair that ‘Elaan Full Movie Part 1’ is readily available, but not a single compilation video exists of the bowler whose action I tried to emulate. A Google search lends results up to half a page, to be followed by Orkut profile pictures of others named Debashish.
*
May be that’s the true depiction of Oriya spirit. Eating and drinking and laughing with friends. Left with no other option, I philosophise the situation, drawing analogies between the video and the Oriya way of life.
And yet, deep inside of me, it is heart-breakingly sad.
The men and women seated around the table look at each other nervously. Finally, one of them summons up the courage to speak –
“I understand that, sir. But one of us has to make a nonsensical statement on the subject, sir.”
The man listens on, his eyes fixed on the speaker like a leopard’s. ‘Let the doctor do it.’
‘But, sir…’ the man injects, ‘he is a doctor. He ran the country’s…’
‘I know. But one of us has to make the statement. Let it be him. This meeting is dismissed.’
*
And just like that, another minister goes on to make an idiotic statement about the nation and Indian culture. This time, it was about sex education.
The entire episode has baffled me. That a reputed doctor would say that the nation needs to promote Indian values, and not condoms, to check AIDS. Almost takes one back to the surreal time when Sushma Swaraj ordered Doordarshan newsreaders not to wear translucent blouses while reading out news. Doordarshan news – even though market surveys have revealed that the primary target audience for the channel are lizards and moths.
To get a better picture of the issue, I looked up some Sex Education books that are used by the government, to see if children of today are being encouraged to take part in inter-school orgies and sleep with cattle.
This is what I found. The books talk of sensitization, give brief descriptions of pregnancy, STDs, and the human anatomy. What is so offensive about this, Dr. Harshavardhan?
*
Sex education is crucial in our country. A country where we are not culturally in the habit of speaking about it with our parents. Which means the only other source of knowledge on the subject is pornography, a senior at school, or the sleazy man selling Letters to Penthouse at the railways station. I can vouch for this.
Long long before the evil world of websites came into our perverse lives, there was imagination. And along with imagination, there were films.
Back then, conjugation was enacted by a 5 minute song in Ramoji Film City, followed by a close-up shot of a baby poster in the room. Then, there were the raunchy ones where Raveena Tandon would gyrate in a yellow saree, giving birth to a million sinful thoughts.
Or there would be the pseudo-conjugation scenes were actors would rub noses, breathe into each other’s cheeks, and if you were Balakrishna – do Suryanamaskar on the heroine’s navel.
Which created a disturbingly confusing image in my mind.
What really happens there? I mean, I understand there’s some touching and rubbing involved, but what do I do if there’s no song playing in the background? And what if it doesn’t rain?
This magical phase of endless possibilities was brutally shattered one night in Sixth Standard. It happened one night as we lay awake in bed, listening to a senior tell us of the amazing things he had learnt.
“The man puts his No.1 Place in the woman’s No.1 Place,” he said.
Long after he had gone back to his bed, we discussed and critiqued the outlandish theory that had been suggested to us a few hours ago.
‘Do you think it is possible?’
‘No, I think he’s gassing.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. Children happen because men tie Mangalsutra around the woman’s neck.’
I thought of it for a while. It made perfect sense. But…‘What about Muslims?’
‘They have that thing no? Tabeez? You have not seen Azharuddin, aa?’
‘And what about Christians?’
‘They have Cross, na?’
‘Oh yeah…but how do you know all this?’
‘I asked my mother, she told me.’
That was how I learnt about the birds and the bees for the first time. Later on, when pornography came into my life, I thought it was natural to smack the girl’s ass while having sex. Till I got a good dressing down and realised none of that was true. It was abnormal.
I spent a few years worrying about getting action, and then getting more action, unsatisfied till I was putting up Vivid Entertainment style performances. It was a confused, reckless phase brimming with anxiety, doubts, and fears.
All because nobody spoke to me. Nobody explained the basics to me. For more proof, check out the questions in the sex column in a newspaper in India.
For a community like ours, sex education is important. Especially when put in the context of the increasing crimes against women. In a country where teenage boys strip open a girl’s clothes, rape her, and slam a rod into her vagina. Do we really have any culture to speak of?
Look into the newspaper, and you will find a report a day, of youth molesting, abusing, and raping women. Of recording the act and putting it up on the internet. What are we trying to protect again?
Culture is not a standard protocol followed in ancient texts. How we do things is our culture. We eat with our hands, that’s our culture. We fold our hands when greeting elders, that’s our culture. We rape women, tear their clothes off, dump them from buses, that’s our culture.
With the onset of internet, smartphones, and data connectivity, the youth of the country run a risk of acquiring knowledge for abnormal ways like the internet. Permanently warping ideas of sex and sexuality in their minds.
Sex education, if anything, creates a sensitivity among students. Towards the other gender, towards the act of having sex. It normalizes the act, ridding a thousand minds of thousand worries. How on earth is it against Indian culture?
And this is from a reputed doctor, the Health minister of the country?
May be true Indian culture is politicians making stupid statements. May be that’s really our culture.
*
And as icing to the cake, Dr. Harshvardhan suggests that we use Indian values to counter AIDS. Now there are a few ways this could be done.
When the body notices the HIV virus approaching the body, the White Blood Cells get together to organize a havan. With the havan, the body acquires a high temperature, and HIV goes back to its hive.
When the Ova notice Spermjis swimming towards them eagerly, they can fold their hands, call the sperm ‘bhaiyya’, and request them not to enter. Pregnancies could be averted.
One chants Ram, Ram, Ram continuously. On a loop, it sounds like Mara, Mara, Mara. This magical chant kills all the rakshasha HIV viruses in the body.
This is so absurd, I can’t even think of a fourth point.
The sad part is, everytime there is a need to push a certain agenda, Indian culture is brought up. It is an impenetrable blanket that is supposed to be accepted without protest or objection. You know who else does that, dear BJP? The Taliban. Yes, that organization that you love to hate.
They issue orders, ask people to follow Neanderthal rules, enforcing it in the name of culture and values. This is just a civilized, English speaking version of them, if things go on like this.
*
Which is my main problem with the BJP.
Whilst it talks of development and progress, its ideals are stuck in the 19th century.
Development is not restricted to swanky roads, billions in revenue, and high-rise buildings. Even Dubai has those.
Development is also a maturity in handling issues. Development is a society that learns to peacefully adapt to new challenges, shrugging off traditional ideas and dogmas. Development is a free, mature society that is willing to confront its issues, to speak of them without sweeping them under the carpet.
Development is ensuring an entire generation of youth do not grow up believing that masturbation makes palms hairy. And that girls like it when you pull their hair, spread their legs, and spank their ass.
What is the kind of development you are looking for?
At the risk of sounding like Mahesh Bhatt, I must acknowledge that trains and railways have been an integral part of my life.
As Indians, we take some sort of pride in quoting off facts and figures related to the Railways. Largest network in the world, the largest employer among government agencies, has been running since 150 years, all of that.
And yet deep within, we all know the truth.
Indian Railways is the largest network of shitpiles running across the length and breadth of the country. Like most government amenities in the country, those of us who can afford to bypass the realities of our country choose to travel by air, or in AC compartments.
When the government announced the hike in train fares last week, the responses weren’t exactly what you’d call surprising.
The opposition cried foul and lambasted the anti-poor move, the ruling party said it was necessary to upgrade the railways, and Times of India quickly drafted an article called ‘5 Reasons why Katrina Kaif’s dog might be fucking Abhay Deol’s cat’.
But what’s done is done. The fares have been hiked and after a little grumbling, we will all move on to other things. What is surprising however, is that nobody is asking what really is the plan from here on. 14% is not a lowly figure by any means, and since the Railways are not auto-rickshaws where we can bargain and heckle, we have no option but to pay the amount.
But what really is the plan? What does the government plan to do with the additional choda pratishat that it is charging us?
One cannot discuss the Railways without feeling like Aparichit – The Stranger. Without feeling an intense rage to bash a few heads, and then dance with Sada in a blond wig.
I am a reasonably practical person. I am not asking for IRCTC to be running with clockwork precision. Surely I know the difference between being an informed citizen and a writer of fantasy. But have you wondered what could be done with the money?
Here are a few things to begin with.
Cleanliness: Indian trains are grime-boxes on wheels. Go to any compartment (except 1st AC, of course – politicians travel in those), and you can see it for yourself. The windows have layers of brown-black hash all along the borders. The floors have a strange stink that people tend to romanticize as ‘the unmistakable smell of trains’.
People eat groundnuts and throw the shells on the floor, till that handicapped boy can sweep it off while he begs for alms. Hawkers, joyriders, and lovers of women and aesthetics pop in at any given station, sprawl themselves across seats and litter it like they are the descendents of Shah Jahan.
For how long?
If we as a nation are particular about cleanliness, we need to prove it. Modi is supposed to be finicky about cleanliness and hygiene. I wish he took a 2nd class journey from Vishakapatnam to Calcutta. It’d be amusing to see how clean his kurta would be at the end of the journey.
Littering trains is as good as pissing on roads and scribbling ‘I love Champa’ across historical monuments. How about running surprise checks and fining people who litter trains? It won’t even cost the Railways additional money. With the amount of littering we Indians indulge in, the Railways coffers would be overflowing with funds.
Food.
Remember the days when food on the Railways was piping hot and lip-smacking delicious?
Yeah? You must have grown up in Australia, then. Because as far as I can remember, food on the train always sucked like an intergalactic vacuum cleaner. Every new Railways minister talks of measures to assure meals at affordable prices. But if you look at the Rail Aahar food, with their Shit-idlis and Crap-sambar menus, you will run straight back into your compartment and buy Tiger biscuits.
Chicken biriyani smells of egg and tastes of rubber. Vadas have oil on them, that has already been tasted by about 17 trainflies before it reached your berth. Daal was prepared by someone reading Oliver Twist, and rotis are prepared by expert craftsmen in Lacoste.
If all the food prepared on trains is outsourced to catering agencies, why should the 24 million people who take trains everyday pay the price for it?And even in the food department, there is a clear divide between the rich and the poor. The food in AC compartments at least smells like food. In Sleeper class, you have to close your eyes, think of your mother’s homecooked food, gulp down as quickly as you can, and then rush to the toilets.
With my extra 14%, will I be guaranteed better food?
Security
We are no strangers to horrific stories that occur on trains. Women are raped, ticketless travelers are often pushed out of running trains, women are heckled at, and TTEs quietly add to their daughters’ marriage fund.
There are also stories where army men have raped women on trains, where dacoits have entered compartments at night to rob all the people in it. All this in spite of a well entrenched Railway Police Force that is supposed to look into the worries of the people.
And yet, all I have seen the RPF personnel on train do, is to take ‘rounds’ a few times in the night, to haul up ticketless travelers and smokers. If 72 people in a coach are paying 14% extra on their train fares, is it far-fetched to expect one security personnel for every two compartments? Can the government guarantee that much?
Advertising on Trains
This move has been discussed quite a few times, and every single time, a Left politician rises from his grave, dusts off his clothes, coughs ‘anti-poor’, and goes back to the grave.
Our trains run across a mind-boggling network of 115000 kilometres. If the government was indeed serious about greater revenues, how about doing the sane thing of leasing out spaces on the train for companies to advertise?
It has been experimented with in phases, but most trains in our country still have ‘I love Champa want sex call me I love you Pooja penis vagina I like sex do you?’ scribbled all across them. Train fares are a common occurrence in our times, with every 5 year term witnessing one or two hikes in price. Why not tap into a resource instead of hiking prices whenever conscious pricks through your expensive safari suits?
As it is, our politicians do whatever the fuck they want with the Railways – announce trains, coach-building factories in their native constituencies, and name trains after their favourite sons of the soil. Who can forget those horrific Duronto Express trains that were introduced during Mamta Banerjee’s times?
Toilets.
Frankly, I could live with any of the above not being implemented, if only this one issue was sorted out.
After 150 years, our trains still have holes for toilets. So if you summoned up the courage to go to the toilet, and are trained enough in anulom-vilom to control your breath for the entire duration, you get to shit all over the country.
In fact, if you take the Himsagar Express, you could shit all across the length of the country – from the Himalayas, to the Ganga plains, to the ghats. You can crap over waterfalls and plains and plateaus, and hills and rivers. The entire country is your dumping ground.
We want to ban manual scavenging, but don’t mind shitting on the tracks. PC: Tehelka.
Not if you’re rich, though. If you’re rich, you get to travel in 1st AC. In there, if you look down from your iPhone, you’d notice that your toilet has a system where your shit goes into a tank which is flushed out later at a station. Which makes sense, because you’re rich. Your shit shouldn’t fall on the floor like other commoners, to be eaten by pigs and stray dogs.
But like I said, if you aren’t rich, you can shit all over the country. Hate Maharastrians? Take a train, order chicken biriyani from the pantry car, and dump all over the state. Dislike Tamilians? Ask for idli-sambar, and watch down the hole with amazement as your insides melt into gooey yellow water and line up the entire state.
Ah! The little joys that the Railways bring to our life!
Frankly, it is quite astounding that after 150 years in operation, nobody even thought about it. Not one official in the Railways walked up to a minister and said, ‘Sir, do we need to do something about all the shit that falls out of trains?’
Which is all the more shocking because we are a country with severe sanitation and hygiene problems. And it is not like the trains run through our malls, cities, and expressways. Most trains run on outskirts of cities, where we can dump our shit in front of farms and slums, because who gives a fuck anyway?
If we have truly entered the era of responsible governance, surely there must be a plan to modernize the Railways? A quick 10 point agenda that the Railways ministry might want to share on their social networking pages (in Hindi if need be)?
If all the millions of people who are traveling on trains are going to pay 14% extra everyday, can they at least expect clean toilets?
Does anybody, for want of a worse pun, give a shit?
Ashok Chopra who, you ask? Is he related to Akash Chopra, you ask?
Why you buffon, you! You clearly haven’t been following the news.
Remember the time when Bollywood went to attend the funeral of Priyanka Chopra’s father and news organizations decided that it was worthy of our attention?
Yes, it is the same Dr. Ashok Chopra. He was a doctor in the Indian Army and passed away after an illustrious career in defence, which was further sweetened by the surge in Priyanka Chopra’s career.
Now, I know a lot of readers of this blog are cynics.
People who read a bit of news and scoff at it and move on to debonairblog.com.
But hold your horses, dear friends. Do not get so judgmental as yet. One must not commit the grave error of dismissing Dr. Ashok Chopra’s contributions to the nation.
Apart from serving in the army for many many years, Dr. Ashok Chopra has also fathered Priyanka Chopra. Now, that is a credible achievement.
Priyanka Chopra is not your regular pelvic-thrusting, sword-in-navel-poking heroine. She has done her bit to contribute to the legacy of our nation, and this is no mean task. It is a median task.
Firstly, who can forget Ms. Chopra’s role in Hero: Love Story of Spy? That heart-wrenching tale of love and treachery where Chopra works against her own nation so that the love of her life, Mr. Sunny Duel can kill bad guys in Canada by slamming a nuclear missile into their chests? Or that neo-wave piece of cinematic brilliance – Asambhav? Where Chopra is a singer who helps Arjun Rampal bamboozle the terrorists by proving them wrong and having two expressions? Or Kissmat, where Bobby Deol does not kiss her?
Or her work in music, for instance. Chopra, in spite of not having sung a single song in Hindi films (which have 5-6 full songs, lip-synced by the heroines themselves), has cut singles in the west. Reports suggest a new version of the hit single is in the pipeline. With lyrics that go – ‘My dad has a road named after him…in my city’.
*
Again, what am I doing – shiva shiva?
How can I speak ill about a man who has given his entire life to serve the Indian army? How can I question the logic of naming roads and public amenities (that belong to the public) after fathers of film personalities? After all, we are the same country that has a Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital, a Sanjay Gandhi Animal Care Centre, and a Sanjay Gandhi National Park.
But since we are naming public resources after great, towering personalities (whom nobody had heard of), one begs to ask the question – why stop at roads?
Don’t we have other amenities that can be named after people? Why go through the dull routine of naming roads and lanes as Lane 2, Road no.3, and Post Box No. 143? Why not spice up our country by naming everything after somebody or the other?
Imagine the sheer thrill of Gautam Buddha Highway (you have to walk on the divider – Middle Path and all). Or the sheer ingenuity of rechristening a crossroad as Jarasandha Split?
And to take this bold measure forward (since we hardly have any other issues for our political parties and leaders to focus upon), I present my suggestions for other public amenities that could be named after specific personalities.
Sunny Deol Water Supply Project:
Sunny Deol, for those who continue to live in denial, is the reason the earth spins in harmony around the sun. Scientists have found that the earth tilts to a slight 23 degree angle, due to the massive weight of his biceps.
Sunny Deol, as is commonly known, is the only man who had the balls watermelons to take a train to Pakistan, challenge a politician, marry his daughter, have a son, defeat the Pakistani army, and return in the same train. And it wasn’t even an action film: Gadar – Ek PREM Katha.
In one swift 2.5 kilo move, Sunny uprooted a tubewell in Pakistan. Experts suggest the scene could be a hidden message to Pakistan about the way Indian controls the flow of rivers to Pakistan. Others say he did it because he didn’t like the colour of the paint.
Be as it may, Sunny Deol’s contribution to inciting patriotism (by stirring anti-Pakistan feelings – same thing, no?) is immense. To honour his contribution, water supply boards should be rechristened Sunny Deol Water Supply Project.
I am sure this can be done. Firstly, Sunny Deol is involved in films. Secondly, Dharmendra was an MP. Thirdly, Hema Malini has been promoting good, clean water since the time I was a wild thought in my father’s head.
Who else, but Sunny Paaji to give our water supply projects a shot in the 2.5 kilo arm?
Azam Khan’s Veterinary Hospital
I have said this once, and I shall say this again. Buffaloes are awesome.
Before Azam Khan, buffaloes were on the sidelines of the nation’s consciousness. A buffalo has always lived under the shadow of its motherly cousin, the cow. While the scriptures clearly mention that there are 33,000 crores of gods and goddesses in the cow’s body, experts have found just one god in the body of a buffalo – Bob Marley.
And I find it amusing how the entire nation is always encouraging cows all the time (‘Go, Mata. Go, Mata!). Buffaloes, on the other hand, receive no acknowledgement in spite of their awesomeness.
But all that changed with Azam Khan. When three of his buffaloes were stolen in February this year, the policemen of UP (who are otherwise honest, hardworking men) were sent on a hunt to locate them. This was a few weeks after the Muzzafarnagar riots where people slaughtered each other to death. Three policemen were suspended for dereliction of duty, and a hunt for the buffaloes was launched.
Azam Khan brought in a relevance to buffaloes. These humble, friendly creatures who grazed about in the periphery of our world, were dragged by their horns into the mainstream. And as a tribute to that great feat, veterinary hospitals in the country should be named after Azam Khan.
Shashi Kapoor Maternity Care Centres
Even though our scriptures have been telling us to revere our mothers and tag them on Mothers’ Day, a lot of us do not heed such advice. But all that changed with Shashi Kapoor’s golden line in the film Deewar.
In the times when we are not calling Pakistanis ‘Motherchod’, and our enemies ‘Maa ki chut’, we all love our mothers.
Just look at the number of mother references our movies have. ‘Maa ka doodh piya hai toh saamne aa’, ‘Maa Rdala’, and ‘Aye, Maa ka raina’.
Also, as a lot of Engineering students will testify, ‘Mere paas behen hai’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it. The credit for putting the maa back in mamtaa goes to Shashi Kapoor. Also, for being a reasonably good looking man who could act, he got completely overshadowed by Amitabh Bachchan, And if Amitabh Bachchan (who already had gaadi, ghar, bungalow, and paisa) can be awarded six Honorary Doctorates, surely we can name our maternity clinics after the man who brought mothers back into the limelight?
Honey Singh Foreign Liquor Off Shop
In times of recession and depression, Honey Singh was a sliver of hope for the Indian liquor industry. The famous singer, who raps about rapes, has been promoting alcohol like it is his own business.
In spite of the criticism, he has been helpful in making alcoholics feel a part of the society (Chaar bottle vodka, kaam mere roz ka). He has also been promoting independence among the youth (Aunty police bulayegi, aunty police bulayegi, aunty police bulayegi. Phir bhi party yunhi chalegi).
Honey Singh has also been helping kids develop a deep love for poetry (Aaj din hai Sunny sunny sunny sunny sunny sunny sunny sunny. Aur blue hai paani paani paani paani paani paani paani paani – even if it might get a frown from their Physics teacher).
For his contribution to the alcohol industry, Honey Singh needs to be given the honour of naming alcohol shops after him. And just for that added Yo Yo factor, they should be made to rhyme. The boards should read:
We all have skeletons in our closets – big, small, heavy, or inconsequential.
I have a giant Smriti Irani-sized skeleton in mine. Why?
Because I used to watch saas-bahu serials as a kid.
Yeah, go ahead. Snigger.
*
Around the time when the saas-bahu genre was at its zenith (the late 90s, early 2000s), I was among its billions of consumers who stayed up waiting to watch what would happen the next day. I watched Kkusum, Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki, and Kyunki Saas Bahu Thi (in that order, not as if I had a choice in the matter).
With the school’s subtle hints at avoiding TV and films during holidays, my folks ensured I was insulated from all sorts of bad in the world by locking up the TV in an almirah. But they couldn’t do the same with my relatives and so during summers, I stayed at their place and got a glimpse of the evil world that lay in store for me.
It began in a very inconsequential manner – I would be reading the newspaper in the same room, and look up every now and then to see what was going on. Gradually, they expect you to be there when the show starts. On a good day, they even call you into the room when the tunes of the title song begin playing.
On days when I had done something evil (like not going to a temple to attend bhajans), I did not have the license to watch the serials unabashedly. I would lie down on the cot and squint out of the corner of the eye. Or pretend to be asleep, my ears eagerly soaking in every word that the television offered.
And on a good day, I would sit bang in front of the television and gape right at it.
The stories affected me.
When Kkusum faced problems at work, I rooted for her success. If only that smug asshole boss of hers would appreciate the problems she faced back at home. And why were Om’s and Parvati’s children being such nutcases? Why couldn’t they see that their parents had their best wishes in mind? And poor Tulsi. Why wouldn’t Gomzee just see that his mother is only looking out for his best interests? That Ganga might not be as innocent as she plays herself out to be? Why do they not understand? Why? Why??
But cruel as life is, just when I was comfortable with the storylines and the characters – Bam! –summer holidays would end. Come June, and I had to return to the school. There was just one another guy in the class who watched TV serials (or at least admitted to it). I discussed as much as I could with him, informing him of my theories, and listening to his justifications.
In the next ten months, I would think of the shows fondly, wondering what was going on. I thought of the characters and their lives. The songs ran in my head every once in a while, and after carefully ensuring there was nobody around, I would hum the tunes under my breath.
There was simply no information about my favourite shows anywhere, it was like Azkaban in a way. Normally, newspapers have an entire page devoted to TV shows, some of them even venturing into broad summaries of the week’s proceedings. But The Hindu being The Hindu, it chose instead to regale us with the latest figures of buffalo vaccinations in the state, leaving banalities of TV shows to lesser newspapers.
But when you are a teenager, you have other things on your mind, you move on with life, stumbling through your obstacles. And just like that, the ten months of school would be over, and I would be back again, at home.
Now, going back to a TV show was tricky as hell.
Firstly, I couldn’t simply plop myself in front of the television and start watching the shows. I had to prove that I had better things to do, and was watching the shows only because I had no other option.
So I would spend the afternoons doing the stupid homework that the school gave, reading novels on the sly, or cycling like a maniac out on the roads. Afternoons seemed like molten wax flowing down a slide at an agonizing pace. Evenings sped past a little faster, and when it was night, the theme songs would waft into the room, I would pick up the newspaper, and walk into the TV room innocuously.
But that wasn’t the end of the complications. Half the characters from last year would have simply vanished from the show. Some of them were dead, some had come back from the dead, others had gone through a plastic surgery, or leaped 20 years ahead in time.
And it wasn’t as if I could simply turn around and ask, ‘Mother dearest, what happened to Tulsi’s nephew, that Sahil fellow?’
So the first week back at home involved stock-taking. I had to deduce what was happening, grasping at strings of hints that the show offered me, drawing links and analyzing family relations. In the absence of a Wikia or the internet, I had to use my superb deduction skills to understand the characters.
And just when I got comfortable and involved in the lives of others – Bam! – back to school again.
*
And so the cycle went on and on.
But when you reach your late teens, you have other issues at hand. Pimples, shitty jobs, and a girlfriend.
I stopped watching home-grown TV shows, opting instead for F.R.I.E.N.D.S because a girl I had the hots for in college kept raving about it. A friend of mine had a ten DVD set of the series, and I simply had to slide the colourful chapathi into the machine and watch all the episodes one after the other.
The only TV show that I began watching earnestly on cable television was Kyle XY, which I later learnt had gotten horrible reviews and was stopped after two seasons.
Somehow, I did not have the same connection with angrez shows. Yes, they were funny, and moving, and stirred parts of my body that Tulsi and Parvati would not dare consider, but they weren’t my own. They belonged to a different culture, a different universe.
And then, came Game of Thrones.
Having first heard of it across a bonfire with Old Monk in my hand, I had stayed away from the show since I had never felt a connect with the fantasy genre. But the raves got too much to handle last year, and I finally decided to give the show a chance.
So hooked was I, that I began reading the books, and having finished all of them, am one of the legions of fans who prays for the long life of George RR Martin on a daily basis.
Even if I know what’s going to happen in the next episode, I wait for it with bated breath. In spite of torrents, I still whip up imaginary scenes in my head, wondering how this line will be said, and how that character will be slashed at the neck.
In spite of all the TV shows and films that are floating around in the clouds for me to pick off and enjoy, I still long for Monday, for the next episode of the show.
In a way, it is a revisiting of the days of saas-bahu shows. Of afternoons spent thinking of what had happened, of speculating what is going to happen. Of passing time doing inconsequential things, with a TV show running at the back of my mind.
*
I am seated across a friend, telling him of my thoughts.
‘But you do realise that this is true of every show, right?’
‘As in?’
‘As in, everybody who watches a show waits with baited breath for the next episode…?’
‘Yeah, but…’
‘It’s just that you haven’t watched a TV show in decades, and now that you have, you keep romanticising the fuck out of it.’
Every trip to Bhubaneswar is a reminder of how much the place has changed.
Bhubaneswar’s position in the growth curve implies a greater change than developed places. And as part of my walks around the city, the lack of this particularly fond Oriya culture of khotti struck me like a blow on the face.
For decades, khotti was an integral part of being an Oriya. As much a part as sleeping in the afternoon and eating a heavy dinner. A khotti had important social implications, it changed the way people looked at you. It was the place legends were created, reputations were built.
A khotti, at its most basic definition, was a congregation of friends in the evening, to chat and spend time together. Every person with a social life belonged to a particular khotti – some to more than one.
The location of the khotti played an important role in its popularity. The most popular ones were formed next to paan shops and Omfed (Orissa’s milk federation corporation) stalls. Some khottis were held near old temples, the more youthful ones near parks. Some were strategically held in front of ladies’ hostels – the men in a constant fight with instincts, attraction, and genes – to win the affection of comely women who lived across the road.
Large grounds worked favouribly for the establishment of the khotti, often lending its name to the organization (Police Ground Khotti, Football Ground Khotti). If there wasn’t a ground around, a tree was the requisite. No khotti was complete without a tree overhead. If there wasn’t a place to sit, bikes and scooters would be made to stand, and on top of them, the members would take their place, passing around cigarettes, or gutkhas, or whatever else the group chose to kill themselves with.
It is difficult to put a finger on why the khotti culture became popular.
But perhaps the most important reason was that there was nothing else to do. Back in those days, Bhubaneswar had no malls, no coffee houses, no book stalls, no pubs. In addition, internet wasn’t available everywhere, and at such breakneck speeds. Gadgetry was restricted to phones that could play songs, YouTube was a website you wouldn’t open if you were on a miserly internet plan.
And since there was nothing else to do in the evenings, every male member of the society attached himself to one or the other khotti. And once you joined a khotti, you lived with it through thick and thin, through earthquake or cyclone.
Khottis gave middle-aged men the freedom from their wives. They could bitch, smoke, chew paan and gutkha, and merrily paint the world red. Youngsters achieved the coveted feeling of ‘belonging’ to something, even if it was a motley crew of disillusioned college-goers.
A khotti had social presence too. Most khottis would have a Ganesh Puja/Saraswati Puja pandal attached to themselves. Cricket was the game of choice among the members of most of them. And after the game was over, the discussions would begin. Most discussions were bi-dimensional – bikes and girls.
With the advent of mobile phones, khottis became centres of hours of discussions around phones. There was always that one guy who had a posh phone, and in an era before Whatsapp, had nothing to hide in it. His friends played games on the phone, while others tried to fix deals with their acquaintances to buy or sell phones.
And every khotti also came with its own set of particularly peculiar characters. There was always the bhai of the khotti. With names like Jacky Bhai, Kalia Bhai, and Tippul Bhai, these bhais weren’t the sort who would organize serial blasts in the city. Not for them such violence. They concentrated on matters like sorting a guy who ogled at one of the khotti member’s ‘girl’ – even if she wouldn’t know of the gentleman’s existence. Or scaring a bunch of kids who wanted to play cricket on the same pitch that they did. Khotti bhais limited themselves to civilized disputes.
And every khotti also had the one idiot. The guy who spoke slowly and was automatically considered dim-witted. The entire evening would be spent in kicking his ass, asking him to get cigarettes from the shop, or laughing at fictitious stories of how small his penis is.
The bhai of the khotti would begin it, and on and on it would go, till darkness began to creep into the day, and everyone began to leave for their homes. If there was a reason to celebrate (somebody got hitched, got dumped, or identified a girl as his own), the night of revelry would begin from the khotti itself.
There was a sense of duty about the khotti. If you didn’t turn up for two days in a row, people would raise aspersions on your loyalty to friends. Everybody from college freshers to middle-aged married men belonged to one khotti or the other.
The khotti was the place where disputes were settled or created. The epicenter of rumours, the black hole of privacy. The most scandalous gossip, the most dramatic of stories – all originated from the khotti.
Of course, everybody else hated it. If you were lucky enough to have a girlfriend back then, you had to lie to her about it. Fathers considered the khotti with as much love as a stroke of polio in the family. And mother grumbled and complained about it throughout the day.
Mother: ‘Where are you going?’
Son: ‘Police ground khotti.’
Mother: ‘All day what you do at that khotti? All bunch of donkeysgettingtogethertoruinsocietyifonlyyouspentthatmuchtimeonstudiesyouwouldbe…’
And yet, in spite of the entire world talking ill of your khotti, you went to it everyday. You shared the laughs and the jokes, the bacteria from the street food, the shade from the same tree. For nearly every male in Bhubaneswar back then, a khotti meant the world.
And yet, I rarely see a khotti these days. There are malls, and the tall buildings that come with ‘development’. Technology has reached a stage where you could have a Google Khotti on your mobile phone. And yet all of these factors have eaten into khottis. Corners in streets have shops in their places. Buildings have sprung up from the ground. Streets are wider these days, shops have been razed to make place for hideous Vending Zones – where a bunch of shops are thrown together with an overarching colour of dirty dark green splashed across them.
Time has gotten dearer, and a million tiny things jostle for attention through the day. And just like that, in a few years, the custom seems like it belonged to an ancient time. A time when you stepped out of your house in the evening to be with your friends. To indulge in their idiosyncrasies, to laugh at their jokes even if they were narrated for the hundredth time.
Back then, your khotti determined your social life. In today’s time, you have to update a status, tag your friends to it, and watch sadly as five people ‘like’ it, three of them being your cousins.
Some of the best ads of the year are out in this season.
There isn’t much I can say about Preity Zinta, but I can surely talk about the ads. From the iconic Zoozoos, to the hilarious Manoranjan ka Baap campaign, the IPL season is bonanza time for advertisers, copywriters, and marketers.
But watch the ads on a daily basis, and like Bishan Singh Bedi on acid, you begin to see patterns. Large, swirling patterns that pop out of the TV screen and come dancing in front of your eyes, like a prop on a Tim Burton movie.
You realise that there is no real fresh thinking when it comes to representation of people.
*
Now, before you begin to accuse me of being judgemental, let me tell you that I am not being maniacal about it. Having worked for a few years as a Copywriter, this is certainly not the first time I am talking about ads (subtly plug in video of a Stand-Up act here).
I understand that there is a line between representation and stereotyping. That as an advertiser, you have a very limited time to sell your wares, and you have to use an image that carries across your point in the most effective way, in the quickest time possible.
Meaning, clichés.
Used images. Now, if I showed a sardar singing Thyagaraja keertanas, it might merely confuse the watcher. And so we resort to images that most draw a likeliness to what they’re likely to see.
I understand all of that.
Only, after a point, it gets too stifling.
*
And among all the representations in Indian advertising, if there’s one that truly makes me want to pull my hair out in frustration, it is how women are shown.
According to the 2011 census, 48.28% of the country are women. Which comes to 614.4 million people. And yet, the Indian advertising sector, intuitive, dynamic, and whacky as they project themselves to be, choose three major ways of depicting women in advertising.
The three major categories are:
The Unattainable Indian Woman
The Slutty Indian Woman
The Caring Indian Woman
[Readers might note that I am not including the women who want to get fair. I think by now we all agree that ALL women in our country want to get fair, and that is the only way to get successful in life. (Subtly add link to earlier blog here)]
The Unattainable Indian Woman
The Unattainable Indian Woman is placed on an altar. An altar that is higher than the rest of us (meaning, male). We need to aspire for her. Everything we consume – from toothpastes, to motorcycles, to hair gels, to cement – are all different means to attain the Unattainable Indian woman.
And as a result, every single ad you watch, will somehow be related to impressing a woman.
Want a new toothpaste? Here, use Close Up. Who knows when you might get a chance to blow some air into a girl’s mouth? Want a motorcycle, here take Bajaj Pulsar. It is definitely male, and as soon as you buy it, a woman will drop down from the sky, remove her saree, put on a short skirt, get behind you, and pout at the camera.
And on and on it goes, till it reaches an absurd level.
Take this advertisement by JK Super Cement, for example.
It shows a woman come out of the water in a bikini. And that’s it.
But before you scoff at the brainlessness of the ad, are you sure you understand it’s hidden meaning?
The Slutty Indian Woman
The second category of women shown on Indian advertisements are the loose-charactered sort. The sort that would make Baba Ramdev shut his right eye because the very sight of such ashleelata could curse a man, resulting in him being born as an armadillo in the next birth.
The Slutty Indian Woman has only one maqsad in life – to be slutty.
And so, whether she’s married, has a boyfriend, or even a child – don’t matter. If you use the right product, she will fling away the moh-maayas of the world that are holding her back, and run towards you.
Also, it must be noted that the Slutty Indian Woman will not just smile at you. She’s slutty, remember? She will bite her lower lip, run her hands through her hair, close her eyes, and breathe deeply. And then she’ll slowly slide her hand into your shirt.
All because you bought that hair gel for 12 rupees.
The Caring Indian Woman
This is the most common, and quite naturally, the most frustrating sort of Indian woman that one gets to see in our badvertisements.
This Caring Indian Woman wants nothing in her life. She is happy washing the children’s clothes (boy’s obviously! The girl is braiding Barbie’s hair, while the boy gets dirty in the mud outside). But don’t you worry, kiddo.
Magic Mommy will bring out the greatest detergent invented since Michael Jackson’s dermatologist and bleach it clean, till it reflects light off the sun, so much that the neighbours experience a solar eclipse.
And the Caring Indian Woman cares for everybody. Husband returns from work, must be tired. Let me stir something up for him!
A nice fruit juice that has all the minerals and nutrients required to pass a green light through his body and have him spring back to his feet, perhaps? Or may be a chai that has been made from the best tea leaves (picked by Caring Indian Women in Assam), so that he can go from Kamaal Rashid Khan to Salman Dabbang Khan in a matter of seconds.
And what about meals!
Oh God! What is a Caring Indian Woman if she doesn’t cook meals? So when the husband decides to invite his (male) friends over for lunch, Wifey will use the best oils, the catchiest masala, in the best possible utensils, and serve it out for all to see. Even Aishwarya Rai who has done many more films and enjoys a far superior career than her snail of a husband, will coyly point out to you that she uses Pigeon appliances to keep their love-nest happy.
So that the husband can gloat over his wonderful wife, while the guy next to him curses his wife for not being up to the mark.
Doesn’t it make you want to puke?
*
Which is why, the recent string of ads by Havells had me impressed.
Women in rural India probably work harder than their male counterparts – helping out in the fields AND cooking at home. Women in urban India (especially the kind of families you are targeting) work too. And even if they don’t, there are other things on their mind than cooking wholesome meals for the entire fucking mohalla!
Women go to offices too, you tequila-shooting, goatee-wearing morons. When will you ever learn?
And that is why, the new series of ads by Havells kicks ass! Enjoy!
Disclaimer: The post contains ‘spoilers’. However, if you watch the movie later on TV, you’ll realise they’re actually ‘money-savers’.
From the stable of Chetan Bhagat, comes yet another film that is targeted at the youth of the country. And yet, when you sit through the movie, you’re looking around frantically for a knife. And wondering how someone could devote a few years of their lives to such a steaming pile of crap.
Welcome to the land of Chetan Bhagat.
A land where professors pick students on the first day of class and humiliate them. A world where Tamilians call Punjabis ‘uncultured’ two minutes after meeting them. Where Punjabis tell a respectable Tamil family that they’re all dark-skinned, while having dinner with them. Where all students of IIMs wear specs – except the heroine of course. That’d make her unhot!
Two States is the Mahakumbh of stereotypes.
Where stereotypes of every colour, creed, and literary value meet to take part in a gigantic orgy.
The film is set in IIM Ahmedabad, where Krish, a Punjabi boy (who was also from IIT) is a student. He falls in love with Ananya, a Tam-Brahm who doesn’t look, sound, or act like a Tamilian at all. She pronounces ‘bahut’ as ‘bhot’, and ‘Punjabi’ as ‘Pnjaabi’. Because that’s how Tamilians talk.
Like all Chetan Bhagat heroines, she wears jeans as well as salwars, and is ready to have sex at the drop of a hat. But deep within, she’s a sanskari kudi who doesn’t want to go against the wishes of her parents.
The two of them complete their course and it’s time for placements. The boy applies for Yes Bank (because he’s a boy), and the girl applies to Sunsilk (because). And what mind-blowing replies they give, to get through their jobs.
When asked why he wants to join Yes Bank, the guy says ‘Because your bank is the best.’ And when the girl is asked ‘Why Sunsilk?’, she mumbles something about ‘Sunsilk Woman – Confident Woman’.
And then, the interviewers, who are actually ant-eaters in disguise, offer them the jobs. After which, the couple moves on to other first world problems. Like how to get married. Without pissing off parents.
When the parents are introduced, one feels a tinge of regret. That such actors are made to go through such tripe. Revathi manages to bring in some respect into her otherwise frivolous role, whereas Amrita Singh dives into hers uninhibitedly. And then, there’s Ronit Roy – a guy who usually manages to pull off intense roles with aplomb. But since it is Stereotype Carnival, he plays an abusive, alcoholic father. Completely different from his role in Udaan, where is a father of a boy who wants to be a writer. (In Udaan, the boy was a teenager. Here, he’s in his early 20’s. See? Subtle!)
And then there are the leads – the next-gen of Bollywood.
Alia Bhat brings in absolute zilch into the role, and in spite of her screen presence, carries just one expression throughout. Take for example the scene where Krish narrates the most painful incident of his life. When the flashback is done, she is smiling.
And it is the same smile she has when Krish proposes to her (in the middle of her Placements Interview), when she moves in with him, and when she cries during her wedding. Resulting in her looking like a Kareena Kapoor clone – everything from her voice modulation, her expressions, to the way she carries herself, has a distinct Kareena Kapoor hangover.
If Alia has one expression, Arjun Kapoor has half.
Whether he’s talking, walking, grimacing, grinning, or smiling – you feel absolutely nothing for his character. Making him seem like a pass-out from the Sanjay Dutt School of Acting – where actors are trained not to give a single fuck about the film they’re starring in.
*
But what hurts the film the most, is the lazy writing.
Dialogues have been lifted verbatim from the book. As if to prove that even if books and films are different media, Chetan Bhagat transgresses such banalities. And then, there are the morals that are thrown into the film. Otherwise log kahenge ki yeh sirf entertainment hai. Is se desh nahi badal sakti hai.
So Alia Bhat wins over her in-laws by solving a dowry problem. By humiliating the groom at his wedding, and asking him to be happy with the dowry he’s received, and stop whining for more. Or the scene at the end, where a voice-over tell us that our parents are actually just worried that we’ll forget them, and hence all this drama.
Thus blowing a gigantic kiss to patriarchy, regressive social norms, and 14th century values being practiced in 2014.
*
In the end, the film succeeds in becoming Chetan Bhagat.
It plays out to the galleries. In one moment, the narrator is a shy, introvert sort of person. In the next, he begins singing and dancing at college, and in weddings. The makers go on to make this abominable shit-fest, with the confidence that backing them, is the voice of the nation.
Chetan fucking Bhagat.
And in the end, that is what the film is. A shit-fest that will earn lots of money.
Isn’t it amazing how every year, when summer comes on, people will point it out to you? They’ll hold their collar and shake it vigorously and say, ‘Yaar, it’s so hot, na?’
Like they’re just back from a 12 year vacation to Pluto and realised how hot it is in India in summers. It is summer, guys. It will be hot. Get over it.
I got over it long ago. Years ago, in my childhood, Bhubaneswar was notorious for ‘Sunstrokes’. It was the first time I had come across the word – sunstroke. I imagined that the sun would smile down warmly on a person, there would be a blinding flash of light, and the man would drop dead right there. Later, I learnt it is a heartbreakingly painful process. The person would first dehydrate, and then die as every drop of water in his body dried up, minute by painful minute.
But all of this wouldn’t affect me one bit. For I had just learnt how to ride a bicycle.
There are very few joys in the world compared to learning to ride a bicycle for the first time.
There is a sense of freedom, of joy, your bicycle being your horse, and of the world being your playground. There are no limits to your enthusiasm, your imagination, and the heat of the summer is but another obstacle – to be trampled upon and left behind.
And since I had just learnt the fine art of riding a cycle, I didn’t want to step inside the house. And so I was given a simple solution – Tie a wet cloth around your head if you want to step out.
The intention was to keep my head cool, wet and dehydrated. But what really happened was a combination of many things:
a) Children and elders alike sniggered when I crossed them, a wet towel wrapped around my head.
b) The cloth began to smell damp and funny after a point.
c) The dampness around my head would result in me feeling dizzy after half an hour, and I would return to the house.
Again, this was a time when there was no internet, no cable television (since I was being honed to become a good citizen of the country), no cricket happening.
And all through the summer, I felt a strange thirst.For liquids. An insatiable need for liquid to run down my parched throat.
My hunt led me on to the roads in the afternoons. And the options in front of me were not very vast. And yet, I didn’t shy away from trying them all out.
Firstly, there was Sugarcane Juice.
Back then, it was just two rupees, and it wasn’t very difficult to flick two rupees lying around the house and run out to the shop. It was cool, sweet, and affordable.
But then, it had its problems too. You can’t have more than two glasses of it. If you did, you’d have a sticky, sweet feeling. Like your lips have been chapped together by a weak adhesive gum.
And then there were the health issues involved with sugarcane juice. Friends telling you that they’d seen a man keeping his sugarcane in a ditch to make it fresh and juicy. And another friend telling you that his cousin had died of food poisoning from sugarcane juice. Also, after two glasses, your body craved some water, or some salt, or chillies.
And so, I struck sugarcane juice out of my list.
Then came the Tender Coconut.
It is cool, and healthy. No one had any horrific tales to narrate about tender coconuts. They were just tender nuts that had a sweet juice inside of them. Problem is, I wasn’t the only one who had realised this truth. And this resulted in the price of tender coconuts rising not so tenderly.
It was five rupees when I was a child. And then in a few years, it was ten rupees. And then, it was fifteen rupees, and then twenty, twenty-five, and thirty. And me with my money nicked off from home, would never be able to catch up in that race.
Golas, I have never been fond of.
Firstly, I had only seen it in films and TVs. Of people sucking on golas and chuskis and having fun. In Orissa, we never really had golas for a long time. And when they finally arrived, what a massive colourful disappointment they turned out to be!
It was the same chapped feeling between my lips that I felt after having one. Also, it took about 20 minutes to finish one. Any quicker, and your jaws felt like a yeti had smooched you and run its tongue inside your mouth.
Golas didn’t do it for me.
Cool drinks, I was never fond of. Of course, I got enamored by ads and wanted to have a wonderful, bubbly, soft drink in the middle of summer – just like they showed me in those ads.
But every soft drink in the world is the same for me. I enjoy the first two sips and the rest of it seems like a punishment.
Ice creams never worked for me in any which way. Whether it was the Chocobar, or the cups, or the Cassatas, or the expensive ones. None of them did anything for me. All I felt at the end of the ice cream was sticky hands, a sticky mouth, and a sweet aftertaste in my mouth that wouldn’t go even if I ate a live chicken.
Which left me with the only other option. Buttermilk.
Buttermilk is one of those things in life you cannot have any complaint against. It could be made thick or thin, spicy or sweet. It is healthy, inexpensive, and easy to prepare.
Needless to say, I was addicted.
But then, I realised that the dynamics of buttermilk-making had a larger role to play. It wasn’t as simple as taking buttermilk, adding spices, chillies, coriander leaves, some ginger, some black salt, and mixing them all together.
I realised that different places have different ways of preparing buttermilk. At home, they’re always overdoing it. They make it thicker than it should be, just to pander to some idea of ‘healthy, wholesome home food’, killing the end result in the process. And like mother’s hamburgers, mothers’ buttermilk is never the real thing.
Others would add too much salt, too less chillies, or not black salt at all. Temples would keep it satwik, adding no ginger at all. There were ‘jalachhatras’ – free water/buttermilk pots that were kept in the open, as a form of social service. These guys made the buttermilk too thin, in an obvious attempt to save money while saving lives.
When I was posted at the KIIT International School in Bhubaneswar, there was a stall that gave out free water and buttermilk. Even if it was light, it was delicious. And I shamelessly hung out there, having 5-6 glasses a day.
And yet, it wasn’t perfect for me. It was a little light, and come summer, I would begin my hunting for the perfect buttermilk.
Everywhere I went, I looked for the perfect buttermilk.
And everytime, I was disappointed. Vijaya, the state-run milk company in Andhra Pradesh wasn’t very good. It was too thick, as if the state was doing its bit to prove the purity of their cows and their milk.
Omfed, the state-run milk federation in Orissa skimmed over the chilly and ginger, making for a drink that seemed hollow in its taste. And I went from this place to that, looking for the perfect buttermilk every summer.
And then, a few weeks ago, I found it.
Jersey milk.
It’s a private company that has its operations in Andhra Pradesh. Like all other milk companies, its logo has a smiling cow as its logo.
It cost 6 rupees, and when I slit the packet open, I realised that my hunt for the perfect buttermilk was over.
Inside, stirred up in the perfect way humanly possible, was buttermilk, salt, chilly, coriander leaves, and black salt. It was so perfect that I didn’t even have to shake well before use.
And that is how I spend my summers these days. Hunting for Jersey Buttermilk in every shop, store, or mall that I come across.
And summer is hot, and sticky and sweaty and all of that.
But what do I care? I am addicted, and my fix costs me 6 rupees.
In the last three overs of the Indian innings in the final, I knew a storm was brewing.
We logged on to Facebook to check out Yuvraj Singh’s Facebook page, and we found people trolling him. Some of the posts were really funny. We scrolled down some more, and then there were few that weren’t very funny, some that were poor attempts, and finally, some that really lacked in taste.
Which is why I wasn’t surprised the next day when I read the news of Yuvraj Singh’s house getting stoned. People wished that he had died of cancer, than to come back and play in the final.
*
Whenever such an incident comes up, there are two common explanations.
The first explanation for it is that we are an emotional people. That we love cricket as a sport, and it is the frustration of a people whose only bright spot in life and popular culture is films and cricket.
Which is an absurd explanation. If we were really passionate about the sport, we would know that a team sport is dependent on the entire team. If they scratched a little more, they’d also know that a team sport is dependent on a variety of external things – luck, strategy, playing conditions. And if they really had an IQ of 80+, they’d know that it is really difficult to hit yorkers outside the off stump.
The second is that it comes with being a sporting icon. When people love you, you enjoy the success, the grandeur, the fame and the wealth. If you go through the Ups, you also have to grin and bear the Downs.
Ahem, no?
Because we are not fucking Taliban??
Because we are a supposed civilised democracy in 2014?
Come to think of it, what really did he do? Did he fix a match? Did he pursue and hack someone to death? He had a bad day at work. In the way that you and I do. Now when your boss asks you to come meet him, do you stone his house and blacken his face?
Na. He has power over you.
‘Kya gaandu log ho yaar, tum log?’
*
That is the second thing about the mob frenzy.
Have you ever seen anybody stone the house of politicians? What about N.Srinivasan – the guy who has been accused of running a betting racket? Or A.Raja? Or Suresh Kalmadi – that other Indian who was really passionate about sport?
Or the police officers who roam the streets like modern day Razakars? Or the builder who built that shitty road outside your house? Na. No, sir.
You know why? Because they are powerful. Because if you try to get near their house, their bodyguards will punch you till your small intestine becomes your large intestine and your liver becomes a dier.
*
And so we always choose the easy preys. Actors, authors, cricketers, social workers, and women in pubs. Those not powerful enough to defend themselves.
If somebody was watching from Uranus, they’d shake their heads and laugh. Ek toh all the 100 crores of us follow only one goddamn sport. A sport that only eight other countries play. Bangladesh toh simply does timepass.
In a few hours, a two month tumultuous relationship between Cricket and Bangladesh will come to an end.
Once again, India will play Sri Lanka. It is probably a testimony to how much the two play each other, that I have more knowledge on Sri Lanka’s bowlers than our own. One assumes the two teams play each other so much that they barely consider each other opponents anymore. Probably warring cousins of the same family.
Also, as a picky, disgruntled, judgemental viewer, I have many a bone to pick with the tournament.
Firstly, why another tournament in Bangladesh? The crowds are sparse, and the ones that are there wave Bangladeshi flags in a New Zealand vs. Netherlands match. And their government goes ahead and bans its citizens from waving flags of the opponent team. Which is a regressive step many would argue. But let me subtly remind the reader that India pressed sedition charges against a few students who supported Pakistan in a match. And after all this, Irony came into the picture when they started playing K’naan’s Waving Flag on the loudspeaker.
Which brings me to the music. What is with Bangladeshi music? Blood is fighting to burst out of my ears when their songs play on the PA System. Not only are they loud and tacky, they completely drown the voice of the commentators. And to add to the terrible songs, there is an announcer in the stadium?
Who is that guy, really?
You’re watching a match, ignoring the people who’ve painted themselves as yellow tigers, and then you ignore the songs, and think fondly of Ravi Shastri and his cliches, when the guy with the mike starts off –
AAAAAASHAKALAKASHAKALAKABOOMDHADAKASHAKALAKAKIKORCHHEEEEEEE- and the entire stadium goes ‘Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy’.
If Tony Greig was alive, he’d walk up to the guy, tap on his shoulder, and deliver a resounding slap on his face.
And if the noise and the songs isn’t too much, there are the unwanted statistics. If you look at the coverage of this tournament, you’ll find that as a viewer, you’re bombarded with statistics.
Let’s assume Virat Kohli has come on to the pitch.
On the screen, you’ll find numbers describing his total career stats – like any other tournament would. But then, the goodies start to flow out.
(Since October 2012)
I understand statistics give a context to the game, but seriously, all these statistics? They rob the match of any meaning whatsoever. And yet, one fears these are things that will stay. Because information is power. And India has all the power in cricket. And with great power comes great electricity bill. When will the goddamn match start, damn it, I’m going nuts!
*
The other thing about this tournament is that Dhoni is back.
During the Asia Cup, the team felt hollow. What Dhoni brings into the team might be contested by his haters today, but you can see the large gaping hole when he isn’t in the team.
The guy is probably among the Top 3 finishers in the game, has a calm head, has improved leaps and bounds in his wicketkeeping, and yet people will find something to crib about all the time:
‘Saale ka daadhi pak gaya, behenchod. Kyun khel raha hai woh?’
And yet, nothing seems to affect the guy. Being the Captain of the Indian Cricket Team is a very stressful position. Just a little less stressful than being RahulG’s speechwriter. But it is very stressful.
And Dhoni has mastered the Art of Not Giving a Fuck.
Indian skipper MS Dhoni shown not giving a fuck in a Press Conference
He has the World Cup and the Champions Trophy with him. In a few hours, he’ll be vying for the T20 World Cup. If he fails, people will bay for his blood. If he wins, they’ll share selfies on Facebook with a cute cat and get 150 likes.
Dear reader, I haven’t been able to post anything since I have been busy with my book. 🙂
Please watch the video (even if majority of it is just Blank Screen) to get the jokes. If you are easily offended, kindly stand up, bend down, and stuff your head into your ass. Very relieving, trust me.
Disclaimer: If you haven’t watched Queen, please go ahead and read the review. There are no spoilers. I’m not Rajeev I’ll Screw Your Film For You Masand.
*
In the very first shot of Queen, we see yellow and orange garlands hanging from walls, women singing and dancing, children running around, and people in such glittery attire that they could light up the Mohali Cricket Stadium.
I groaned.
I had seen this is in every Yashraj film I had watched since I was a sperm.
It’s nice if you begin with no expectations at all and things start looking up from there. Of late, one aspect of Hindi films that has irked me is the whole ‘establishing the premise’ that films indulge in. I mean, we are shown trailers, and we are not anteaters, and we have decided to watch the film – why not get on with it already?
Queen thankfully avoids that, taking little time to establish. Even then, it is thankfully in flashback scenes peppered through the film, providing layer after layer to peel off.
*
All through its length, the film is walking a tightrope.
The film is saddled with situations we have seen over the last few years. The Indian abroad facing a cultural clash has been done in countless films. The lack of English has been done in English Vinglish. And the Coming of Age has been done by Ranbir Kapoor in every film since he was a sperm.
And yet, Queen hops along merrily, reminding you of the kid on a rainy day, jumping over puddles on the road, while the grown-ups next to him hold their clothes and flock to the footpath.
I have never been a fan of Kangana Ranaut. Probably because nearly all the films I have seen her in, has her play a psychotic, disturbed character. In Woh Lamhe, Fashion, Raaz 3, Tanu Weds Manu, Gangster – she was always the shrieking, screaming, disturbed girl. Half way through Queen, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she looked up at the skies, slit her wrists, tore her shirt and ran through the streets of Paris.
Thankfully, nothing of the sort happens here. Her character shapes out beautifully, making you realise that there couldn’t have been a more apt name for her. Certainly no Anjali or Simran would do.
Kangana Ranaut has already received rave reviews for her performance, with Raja Sen proclaiming her to be the future. With a carefully etched out character, Kangana Ranaut (to use a Masand cliché) sinks her teeth into the role, making it her own.
When she cries, she goes all out. When she dances, there is no grace. There are enough unflattering, no-make up shots of her to ensure a few of those awards pop up at her house.
But the performer of the film for me was Rajkummar Rao. In a short span of two years, the guy has built up a sizeable amount of good work – and not a single role has a shred of the other. Something that’s credible in an industry where people debut with films like Moron Of The Year.
Playing a wannabe, aspirational guy who’s too consumed by himself to even appear caricaturish, Rajkummar Yadav is spot on every time he comes on screen. It’s yet another effective performance by the man, who’ll probably only be recognised by the industry when (like Naseeruddin Shah), he is 50 and has done an embarrassing item number called ‘Soye Soye’.
It’s rather sad.
*
Queen’s greatest achievement is that manages to hold its footing on such a dangerously slippery track. That the heroine doesn’t walk into a salon in the middle of a song and come out looking like a runway model.
That you don’t feel a large tin drum on your shoulders when you walk out the film.
India – Pakistan matches, for some reason, do not carry the intensity that they used to in the older days.
In an age where every movement, every expression, every word is captured, there seems to a be a blanket of civility over the proceedings. I doubt we will ever witness an Aamir Sohail vs Venkatest Prasad ever again.
I don’t know if it is a good thing or not. For one, the Pakistani side in general seems a lot weaker on most days (I know I am writing this after a loss, but you get the point). Secondly, the losses don’t hurt much these days.
In earlier days, every aspect of an India – Pakistan match was dissected, deconstructed, replayed, review, relived. Now, you simply walk up to the other room and roll a joint. It’s simply not the same.
And so all through the match today, with one eye over the proceedings of the match, my thought drifted away in another direction.
Openers.
*
If you’ve watched Indian cricket for about a decade, you’ll notice that the beginnings of Indian innings are a lot more tense these days. Now rewind to a few years ago, and you’ll remember that the beginning of an Indian innings was met not with anxiety, but anticipation.
Sehwag’s entry into the team was the last piece of a gigantic puzzle. We had a side stocked with seasoned campaigners – people who had honed their skills for years, winning accolades, gaining in experience, till our Middle Order was pregnant with batting greats. But yet, one felt that something was missing. The army needed a vanguard.
Somebody who could be at the front, someone who could cock a snook at the opposition. A person who could terrorise the opponent right from the start. A Mel Gibson in our Braveheart.
And that man was Virender Sehwag.
For the cricketing world, caught up in its little traditions and customs, Sehwag was an alien thing. More often that not, one sensed the discomfort the commentators felt while he was at the crease. For, if there was one man who could make the wisest of commentators look foolish, it was Sehwag.
He would poke at deliveries on bouncy pitches, slash hard at deliveries that left his body. The commentator would launch into a long extempore about the importance of footwork and technique on foreign pitches.
And right then, he would slap the bowler through the off side. A whiplash that made such a clear ‘TOK’ sound that you knew would end with the ball crashing into the stands. And then he would do it again, reducing the renowned commentator into a bumbling, embarrassed fool.
Yes, we had the genius of Sachin Tendulkar, and the bludgeoning power of Dhoni, and all the class and style of Dravid and Laxman, but ask anybody in India, and they’ll tell you that there wasn’t anybody as entertaining as Sehwag.
When Sehwag came into the picture, Sachin was already a God. But Sehwag posed no threat to the legacy of Sachin. Admittedly having modeled himself on Tendulkar, Sehwag was soft-spoken and rarely said anything. (Apart from the now legendary quote – “All played well, except the Sreesanth.”) When he features in ads, he seemed shy and reserved.
And very soon, he took over the show from Sachin. For the first time in years, Sachin had someone who could shift to fifth gear at ease, and he could work his way to another century.
Sehwag, inadvertently, was also responsible for the ‘Sachin is a selfish player’ accusation that Sachin haters make against the man. Having grown up with cricketers who slowed down their innings when they neared the 90’s, it was an acceptable habit. Till Sehwag happened.
Sehwag would slash and cut and punch and butcher his way to the 90’s. And then when at 94, while you were expecting him to slow down and take a few singles, he would step out, whack the bowler over Long On, and then raise his bat to the Dressing Room and smile. We as a nation had never seen something like this.
Of all the shots I have seen him play over the years, two will remain firmly entrenched in my mind. One is the murderous cut on the off side. Sehwag would shuffle and scuffle outside the Off Stump, and the bowler would give width on the Off Side, and WHACK! the ball would race the fielder to the ropes. The second would be his backfoot punches, modeled no doubt after the man at the other end.
Watching a Sehwag innings was like going on a date with an attractive serial murderer. There was an edginess to it, a nervous excitement.
All through his golden years, there were the technical problems. Numerous commentators pointed out the flaws in his batting, remarking that he had to change his game over the years. Every ball he missed made him look obsolete, confused. And yet, at the back of our minds, we never thought it was a serious threat. For he would pull one across the ropes and all would be well with the world again.
Perhaps, like Sehwag, we as a nation took his talent for granted. Took it for an akshaya-patra that would keep spilling over with riches. And then, it happened. His shots were either too late, or too early. His batting, built on the foundation of an impeccable Hand – Eye coordination, had Merv Hughes sized holes in it.
I don’t know if history will remember Sehwag as a good player or a great player. I remember Gavaskar talking about the difference between the two. Both of them have good starts to their careers – records, success, fame. But as the body starts to age, the great ones tweak their game, making small changes that keep them going, in spite of their bodies slowing down.
Perhaps Sehwag gave as much respect to such theories, as he gave to the bowlers at the other end. Till his last tournament, he maintained that he would play his natural game. He didn’t say it with arrogance, he didn’t seem stubborn about it. He seemed like he knew no other way to play.
*
There are a few things I have against statistics and numbers in sport. While revealing a lot, they conceal quite a bit as well. No amount of statistics and averages can truly demonstrate the impact that Sehwag brought to the team.
There are no numbers that measure fear. Fear in the eyes of the bowlers the world over. The utter bafflement they faced as they saw this man lift his bat and strike the ball like it was the climax of a revenge saga.
Numbers will never reveal how he mutilated the opposition. That even a 30 from Sehwag would demoralise the best attacks of the world. There are some things that even Mathematics cannot quantify. Sehwag’s batting was one of those.
By the last few innings, Sehwag was a changed man. In his earlier days, he was never the most aggressive or outspoken. He could be found talking to the keeper and laughing at Slips during his heydays.
But in the last few days, he seemed distraught. His shoulders drooped, his stance shaky. It was like he was asked an Out of Syllabus question in the Board Exam. I remember him coming to Cuttack for a Ranji match. In an interview with a local channel, he seemed bored. He spoke about the game, about Sachin retiring, and then rambled on about a school he had started, where children are encouraged to pursue sports along with their studies. It was hard to see him like that.
And now, when I watch Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan, it is like being in an arranged marriage with a person who has already suffered three heart attacks. There is no excitement, just fear.
I know Sports doesn’t work on emotions. I understand that physical and mental toughness matter more than anything else. I also understand that the same sport that elevates mortals into Gods, brings them crashing back down to earth.
But for reasons very personal to me, I wish Sehwag is somehow able to stage a comeback. And for one last time, I see his bat slice through the opposition. And hear that ‘Tok’ sound.
If you haven’t watched Highway, please go ahead and watch it.
If you have watched Highway, go ahead and read the blog.
If you like Jackie Shroff, you’re cool.
Right from the trailers, there was no doubt what Highway would be about. Stockholm Syndrome, the scenario when a hostage falls in love with his/her kidnapper.
So clearly, it was just a case of how, and not what.
Highway is a difficult film to ease into. The first ten minutes are montage shots of a truck going through different terrains, and a marriage video where women are selecting sarees for the wedding.
And then, the girl gets kidnapped, and taken hostage.
Journeys have been a leit-motif of Imtiaz Ali films. Jab We Met was about a couple who discover their love for each other over two journeys. Love Aaj Kal spoke about the journeys we need to embark on, for love, illustrated through parallel stories from two generations. And Socha Na Tha was…err…the beginning of Abhay Deol’s journey in cinema.
Now, this is where the problems in the film begin. The girl is kidnapped, and suddenly, she realises that she’s actually enjoying it. Enjoying the grandeur of nature, the open spaces, open air and the smiling sun, and other such first world luxuries.
She’s been manhandled, felt up, gagged, made to sleep in a dumpyard, and yet when she wakes up, she starts talking animatedly.
Here, as a viewer you are wondering: ‘What’s wrong with her? Why is she talking so much?’
Just then, Alia Bhat stops and thinks aloud, ‘Hey, what’s wrong with me? Why am I talking so much?’
A few scenes later, the police are searching the truck, and instead of escaping, she chooses to hide inside the truck. At this juncture, you as a viewer are wondering, ‘Is she going mad? Why didn’t she escape?’
As if on cue, she thinks aloud, ‘Hey! Am I going mad? Why didn’t I escape?’
But in true Bollywood style, these are minor hiccups. As we all know, when lauvv has to happen, lauvv will happen.
And so when the trucker tells her that his mother used to sing him songs as a kid, she tells him, ‘Tum mujhe kaafi cute lagne lage ho.’ To put this in perspective, it is like Scarlett Johansson sending me a friend’s request, and then commenting ‘Oooh, so sexy you are. Proud to be your friend, ya!’ on my pictures.
*
As befuddled as the viewer, is the poor trucker. Randeep Hooda, playing an intense and brooding man for the absolutely first time in his entire career, fails to understand what’s wrong with the girl.
[INSERT ERIC CLAPTON VIDEO: ‘COCAINE’]
The basic premise of the film is so contrived, it’s hard to empathise with the protagonist. In today’s India, when how we treat women is such a large issue, when sparrows have gone extinct in Delhi in the presence of burly men, would a girl really be enjoy being kidnapped?
Not only does the heroine fall in love, she goes one up, and experiences what I like to call the ‘Bollywood Heroine Chhota Sa Ghar Complex’.
Whenever a rich girl in a Hindi film gets kidnapped, or stranded, she will want to have a small house, away from the rest of the world, just her and the hero – their small house of happiness. An adult version of the House-House game that kids play.
And so the two find a house, and start living in it. She cooks him Maggi, sweeps the house, and prepares a bed for the two of them. And then, shit hits the AC. So our trucker guy, who has killed three men, kidnaps women from roads, and carries a gun in his bag when he travels in a bus, refuses to go into the house. So transformed is the man, that he doesn’t want to make the sexay time with the girl.
I am sure this happens in the People’s Republic of Karan Johar, but in our world, it is simply too far-fetched to believe.
The point about her having a troubled past seems hollow. She could have spoken to her father. He is shown as a sensible, caring person, the only cruel thing he’s ever done is to give her an anaesthetic against her will.
Imtiaz Ali, slowly but surely, has become the King of Unexplained Angst.
In Love Aaj Kal, the hero is torn because the girl he loves (who also loves him back) is getting married to another man. He refuses to do anything about it, and then lands there a week after the marriage.
In Rockstar, our hero is angsty because he whisked away his lover, who was another man’s wife, to the Himalayas. In the Himalayas, he gets the terminally ill woman pregnant, and then is angry when she succumbs to the complications.
And in Highway, a kidnapping serves as a coming-of-age for the woman, who rebels against her life by choosing to live with her kidnapper, who hasn’t even acknowledged his love once, but has threatened to sell her to a brothel twice.
‘Is this love?’
‘Maine na jaana….chutiya banana….’
*
The other problem area for the film is Alia Bhat’s acting. Saddled with a role that requires an intense portrayal, Alia Bhat flares her nostrils so violently, it would make Hrithik Roshan run and hide behind a curtain.
And AR Rahman is barely used in the film. Most of the film consists of silent, long shots. When you have Rahman, why not use Rahman? It’s like having Tendulkar on your side, and opening the innings with Venkatpathy Raju.
If Socha Na Tha was a breath of fresh air, and Rockstar was a gust of angst, Highway is a farcical fart. A terribly disappointing film that sets an unrealistic premise in front of you, and doesn’t help you unravel it.
Watch Highway only if you can get high on the way. There are some shots of beautiful snow-capped peaks that you wouldn’t normally get to see on YouTube or National Geographic.
The sun wasn’t out yet. 5.30 is still dark in winters.
When I walked into the station, I noticed many people slept outside Platform No.1, shapes of bodies visible on the bed sheets covering the bodies from the cold. The few who were awake were on the platforms. I ran to Platform No. 3 and boarded the Prashanti Express – S-11.
This train has been an important part of my childhood memories – every year, we would take this train to our school and back for the vacations. I have always loved trains, stations – and the multitude of experiences that a single journey opens you up to.
And so as with any train journey when you have settled and the train has begun to chug off from the station, I had a slight, warm feeling in my heart.
I took out my phone and began to scroll through my news feed. I found a Greatbong article on the RaNab interview, and smiled. I clicked on it, and it opened up, in typical 1.5G speed, and I double tapped on it and the letters got bigger, and I began to read –
A dark hand flashes in front of me. My phone is snatched out of my hand. A guy jumps out of the door behind me. The light from my phone shining in his hands.
And just like that my phone was snatched away from me.
*
It has been more than a week since my phone went missing.
Sometimes, I still recall that moment – that split second when the phone vanished from my hands, cruelly snatched away in a manner that Amrish Puri would snatch little children from their mothers in the 90’s.
Of course, like any other phone user, I felt anger and sorrow.
But you see, I wasn’t any other phone user.
I had spent a year without a phone, and then used a Nokia for a few months, and then got into a job and bought a phone. It was a terrible phone – HTC Explorer – but I chose to look beyond its Chacha Chaudhry-esque abilities and at the larger picture of the wonderful benefits of technology. I sold that phone to get another one – LG Optimus. This phone dropped from my hand in the toilet of a bar and simply refused to work. The highly efficient folks at LG Customer Care ensured I couldn’t ever use it again. I then got myself a Galaxy Grand.
Considering I hung out with people who had the ascetic opinions on technology as me, I played the turncloack with a vengeance. I showed them all the wonderful things they could do, and I did push it a little bit.
Like when they asked me about a particular place, I would open up Maps and tell them how far it is, how they could reach it (By bus, by cab, or by walk), and how much time it would take them in each of those methods.
I wasn’t the usual mail checking, Facebook poking, smartphone user. I wrote on my phone. Every blog, every story, almost everything I had written in the last one year was written on my phone. I read on my phone. Not just news and magazines, but entire books. I must have read at least 70 books on Aldiko in the last one year.
I used my phone to go to sleep at night, and to wake up in the mornings. I used it to make posters, to record stories that I narrated out. I used it to do push ups, used the Anti-mosquito for late night escapedes, was learning Spanish from Duolingo, music instruments, calligraphy, saving stuff on Evernote, to manage my daily expenses – and all this on a daily basis.
If Steve Jobs was looking down at me from the heavens, he would smile. Yes, I was on Android, but when you’re in heaven, these trivialities don’t matter much.
*
I have gone back to my older Nokia phone. I love how Nokia makes these phones that you can use when your smartphone gets stolen.
I have introspected about my feelings towards my phone.
I have realised that smart phones aren’t really smart. If it was, it would find a way to come back to me. Smart for me will always be someone who’s quick on their feet, someone who can think off the hook, get by in tough situations.
Our smartphones are more like wizened university professors. They can give you a vast ocean of information, but they can’t find their way back home by the bus.
Smart phones are doing a lot of things right, but one still gets the feeling that a lot more could be done. Hasn’t it struck you sometimes? That nobody has thought of this shit. Like, 5 touch capacitative touch feature (shall refrain from making Draupadi joke here…oh damn!) 5 touch capacitative is fine, but what happens when it rains?
Also, how does one carry a phone that is so big, in one’s pocket. May be jeans companies need to come up with large cool pockets for phones. Also, has anybody thought about how they can keep phones safe?
We are the fastest growing mobile market in the world, and we also have a well established chain snatcher market. Why doesn’t someone invent a device that keeps your phone safe?
*
I have moved on. Sometimes when I’m bored, I look around and stretch my hand out towards my phantom phone. And those dark fingers flash in front of me again and I look at my Nokia phone with a depressed expression on my face.
As for the thief, I don’t know.
I hope one of these nights, when he’s in bed with his wife, and the phone is on charge, he receives a call. He answers the call, and the phone explodes, and the house catches fire.
The thief tries to put out the fire, but it keeps spreading. Very soon, the entire chawl is ablaze in the flames. People are running helter skelter, pouring buckets of water, trying to douse the fire, to no avail. And then, the entire place is burnt to ashes.
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