Why Dhobi Ghaat?

The movie captures four characters chasing their so near yet so elusive dream. Just as the dream appears right there, ready to be hugged, it evades them - in many ways – just like life. The story dribbles through umpteen curves, twists and turns, rises and falls from pinnacles of ecstasy to nadir of depression, from the hollow of dysfunction to the near-fulfillment of by-the-way desires.

Yasmin, the girl in videographed monologues is the voice of director’s soul in the movie. Remove everything else but Yasmin and the story still makes you gasp at the suppressed anger of the wronged woman. Yasmin is ‘the’ character of the movie. She pours her heart to the recording and in the process gives it the life it oozes. She makes you wonder at her simplicity, desire her conservative feminity, admire her festering mutiny and chuckle at the wisdom behind the façade of nonentity.

Amir Khan effectively straddles the various moods of a creative genius. He effortlessly segues through unflinching concentration during creative highs to glaring insecurity at Shai’s attempts to know him.

Shai and Munna share an uncomfortable camaraderie borne out of the overlap of their dreams and divisive compulsions of their backgrounds. They both desire something, settle for something else, igniting their corporal longing in the process which is brilliantly portrayed through Munna’s hesitance and shai’s glances.

All the characters in the movie live to realize a dream, and yet, someone, somewhere, disconnected, becomes an integral part of their lives, enough to take them along for a while.

The movie lets the characters go with the flow of their hearts, allows them to just be - without melodrama or value judgments. Pragmatism is relegated as the prerogative of the sidekicks.

The movie does not give any answer; instead, it leaves you with many questions. The artist in Kiran attempts to extricate the artist in the audience. Do you have the artist in you? Go watch the movie if you want answer to that question.

My name is Khan - what clicked with me

1. There are two types of people: The world is born out of duality. We just cannot do without divisions of gender, religions, nationalities and so on. But never in my memory has a movie so simplistically hammered in the message that if you want duality, then keep this in your mind – there are only two types of people: Good and Bad. Every other division is irrelevant.
2. Fear is not bad: Crowd gathers on the road around Khan when camera zooms in from behind, signifying someone approaching the melee. A very recognizable voice asks the crowd to disperse and gives a piece of advice to Khan, “It’s ok to be afraid. Just don’t let the fear within grow big enough to block your progress.”
3. BC - AD - 9/11: Most of us around the world remember what we were doing and where we were when 9/11 happened. The same cannot be said about any other calamity where more people would have died. That is the impact of 9/11, and it has surely changed the world. However, I have not seen any movie put the impact of 9/11 in one simple statement as it does here.
4. Khan’s Monologues: Khan pens his experiences in a diary. He also talks to his beloved through this diary. The power of simplicity is exemplified many times as he makes us chuckle, laugh, cry and get goose bumps through the heartfelt honesty of his words.
5. Satan: The only time Khan seems to get angry is on meeting the instigator. The music score at this point is pure adrenaline stuff. For a non-violent man like Khan, stoning someone requires biggest emotional upheaval – and the crescendo matches the catharsis. Symbolically speaking, Khan accomplishes his Haj on that day; stoning satan is a ritual performed at the Mecca during Haj.
6. Storyline: For a change, Karan Johar focuses more on universal over romantic love. However, the leading romantic pair of Bollywood have not allowed the romanticism a renegade treatment. The movie portrays a fine balance of selfless individual love that collectively lead to universal love.

Ten reasons to watch 'Dus Kahaniyan'

This article was also accepted on youthejournalist here.

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1. If you love the “O’ Henry” brand of short stories where the last moment leaves you gasping for breath or makes your heart skip a beat or totally beats your expectations then this movie is a must watch.
2. If you’ve an open mind towards exploring new and creative ideas in movie-making then this movie you shouldn’t skip. It is a potential trendsetter. You wouldn’t want to miss a pioneer of a movie where one scene is totally unrelated to the other. “Darna Mana Hai” was close to this but there was a main story that was weaving different stories together. This one, however, is totally different.
3. If you can’t hold your concentration for a melodramatic-romantic-tear-jerker for three hours then this is a ‘twelve-minutes each’ of scintillating story telling that’ll keep boredom at bay.
4. If you want to test how quickly you can switch context in a cinema hall, for one compact story after another then this is your perfect test.
5. If you want your heart to ache, blood to race, laugh in between for some down to earth humour and then get a lump in your heart and have the rug pulled from under your feet, then this is the movie to watch.
6. If you want to see what powerful actors can do to a movie in a few minutes, this movie is for you. Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah, Nana Patekar, Amrita Singh all make your heart ache will their brilliant and yet devoid-of-melodrama performance.
7. “Dus Kahaniyan” is to Hindi films what a series of Twenty20 is for one day cricket. If you loved the shorter version of the game, you’d love the value-for money that this version will bring you.
8. Stories are told, and stories are told, and stories are told. But if you want to see some deft and sleek story-telling with brilliant cinematography and yet with just simplistic, totally unexpected endings, then go for it.
9. Ten different stories would mean there would be something in it for you. In a normal movie with one storyline, either you like it or hate it or are indifferent to it. Here, some stories would definitely appeal to you and the twist of fate in that story would hit you hard.
10. Watch it for a few dialogues that will make your heart go numb or make you wonder where it hit you. Whether it’s the response to Jimmy Shergill’s “I love you” or the feeling of deja vu that every married couple would get on listening to Nana Patekar’s smiling rendition of marital problems or the price that Amrita Singh pays for giving-in to the pull of love or the poetic musings of Manoj Bajpai in Zahir.

Free Lunch – The Review

Ever tried reading a business page of a newspaper without a proper grounding in economics? Or reading an annual budget analysis in core jargons of economics? Felt dizzy at the downpour of jargons as comprehensible as Greek or Latin would be to a Metric fail from the outskirts of Delhi? How often you turned those pages to read politics, sports or entertainment? Did you always think that economics was the obverse side of entertainment?

Don’t give up just yet if you are starving to build a foundation in economics - sans the complexities - even though you haven’t formally studied the subject. Help is not far. “Free Lunch” is just the right sumptuous banquet to fill your belly to your satisfaction.

Introduction to economics had never been so simple and interesting. Those who couldn’t read more than a paragraph or two of core economic articles have read the whole book and released a burp of never-before-seen satisfaction after reading “Free Lunch”. Economics, suddenly, was no rocket science to them.

David Smith not only copied the second name from Adam Smith – the man who introduced the world to microeconomics - but also bettered him in teaching economics to novices in a lot simpler manner. He, very skillfully, cuts through the intimidating jargons that surround the modern economics. He simplifies the explanation to near layman language and provides very relatable instances to make the complexities look surmountable.

Why do house prices rise and stock markets fall? How does it affect us when interest rates go up, and why? What is a lesser evil – Inflation or Deflation? Does a budget deficit matter? Suddenly people, after reading Free Lunch, won’t be so indifferent to the economic jargons.

Just like any normal human being, I was always disappointed at the seeing so much poverty, hunger and sickness around me. Other than wondering at the divine plan for such inequalities, I would always search for an economic solution – to whatever extent my mortal knowledge of the subject would allow – towards resolving the problem. One solution I always thought, obviously out of my naiveté, was to distribute cash to all the poor so they could spend their way out of poverty and hunger and at the same time the society could trudge its way out of inequality and suffering.

I smugly marveled at my solution and wondered why nobody on the planet ever thought of such a solution to this problem. That was until I read Free Lunch.

David Smith, in this book, takes help of innumerable such hypothetical instances, then suggests some solution, which to a layman might look like a perfect antidote at first, and then systematically dissects the solution to show how the solution would lead to another set of problems.

Economics, as you learn through this book, is not about finding perfect solutions to grave economic problems; it is about finding a solution that would lead to least number of subsequent problems or more subsequent problems that might not warrant immediate attention.

Using one such hypothetical scenario described in the book and the incremental knowledge I gained from lapping it up, I could, all by myself, prove that my solution was not a solution at all.

An attempt at emulating Smith’s style of explaining is in order. Assume for a moment that there are only ten people in an economy. Two of them are very rich, five are middle class and three are beggars. Assume just one commodity – Rice, which is needed by all to survive. The demand for rice is generated only by the first two sections (rich and middle class) of the society as the beggars eat only what is leftover. The quantity of rice is constant and just enough to meet the demand.

Now what happens if we distribute enough cash among the beggars so they could buy their share of rice? The demand for rice suddenly jumps from seven to ten while its supply is still the same; just enough to meet the demand of seven. Now we don’t need to be a connoisseur of economics to realize that the excess demand would cause the price of rice to rise. But the price hike would be just enough to bring rice beyond the reach of beggars once again and to not dissuade the middle class from buying it. The great thing about the market is the way it brings this equilibrium. So, the sudden availability of cash would breed sudden inflation, which would leave the intended beneficiaries deprived of those very benefits.

While there might be flaws in my conclusion or the means to this end, I still have come a long way in interpreting the way market works; a far cry from where I was before I read this book.

All is not that rosy though. The author is British and an overwhelming majority of the historical examples he cites, to explain his theories, are on Britain’s economy. At times, the reader is left groping for the background of the events in question. For a book intended to be as globally relevant as this one is, “Free Lunch” makes an unfair assumption, though not always, that readers know what it is talking about. A slightly detailed background of some vintage events would do a world of good to beginners in their quest of conquering economics.

Except for this, ‘Free Lunch’ is a big leap towards making economics an enjoyable read. I realize that there is indeed no such thing as 'Free Lunch.'

The Black Magic

As the carousel rolls and the projector throws the beam of light, the dead, bland, blank, abstract and emotionless screen comes to life and through the chiaroscuro of the projected rays, it emotes, taking the audience with it, in an otherwise dark, often faceless, hall. The usher guiding the latecomers, with the only other official source of light, through the aisle becomes a nightmare for those sticklers of time, who restlessly oscillate to see through the silhouettes as if their very life depends on seeing every inch of the screen. The ease with which the inanimate screen catapults the consciousness of hundreds of people, which normally revolves around their individual selves, to itself, is nothing short of a miracle. For the duration of the movie, the individuals cease to exist and the screen becomes the centre of their collective conscious universe. It almost enslaves them. They smile, sigh, sob, shiver with fear; all in unison -- so uncanny of individuals when they form a crowd -- and yet we fail to notice that single most radical change a movie screen entails in the crowd behaviour. The degree and smoothness of such a magical shift in the centre of consciousness of the audience is proportional to quality of the movie. Black, the recently released Hindi movie, is an undisputed apotheosis of such quality.

What would it be like to be congenitally- visually and audibly challenged? Being surrounded by vast oceans of blankness; a blankness consisting of eternal and ubiquitous 'blackness'. And a perennial deafening silence accompanying that blackness. You're left to perceive and identify the things around through their shapes; a practice not vastly different from what the majority follows, but the means to that end is touch and not vision. The very thought tingles our skin to discomfort. And where does this handicap leave the individual in the omnipresent nothingness? Would the people, who move and talk, be any different from the inanimate furniture when you just can't see or hear them? How would it feel to be happy and yet not be able to wrap it in the package of words or feel sad and be hysterical about it? How would it be to not know that there are more colours in the world than 'Black'? How would it be to not know that sound can also be heard and not just felt with the hands? Our life, in contrast, looks like an unending honeymoon. For so long, our film industry has fed us with the strong, smart, successful, larger than life, Adonis and Aphrodite image of lead actors that we forget there are people, for whom success isn't about saving the world or about winning the love of a nymph but about taking their first step towards a dignified living and being recognized as equals despite their preordained shortcomings. Michelle McNally, played by Rani Mukherji in Black, is one such character. Her deafening shriek of ecstacy, on realizing that her mentor Mr. Debraj Sahay is back, sets the tone of the movie and portends what is in store for the audience. Rani, through this movie, has put herself in the league of Nargiz of 'Mother India' fame. The mesmerizing performance is sure to make her the toast of Bollywood. Rani, you're the Queen.

The Academy awards committee that claims to be the foremost representative of the global cinema has actually never done justice to its own claim by restricting the global cinema under the "Best Foreign Language Film" category. Mahatma Gandhi never won the Nobel Peace Prize. Leo Tolstoy never won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Yet, one wonders if the mortal prizes like Nobel could've done justice to their immortal contribution by merely recognizing them. Amitabh Bachchan has also never won an Oscar. Need I say more? Or shall I say, with a movie like Black under his belt and having acted in it the way he has, he probably stands the best chance, he ever had, of leaving the distinguished company of those immortals? As he rightly conceded, his performance in Black effortlessly relegates his past and future performances to mediocrity. Not that he is to be blamed for that. Thanks to the parochial Bollywood film-makers, who cannot think beyond the much clichéd romance and the nauseating melodrama, Amitabh Bachchan, the colossus that straddles Bollywood, seldom got roles that could make him stretch his own limits. Until that practice is ameliorated, he will be wasted in utterly forgettable roles.

The very thought of Ayesha Kapoor, who plays the young Rani, scares you to death. Assuming that actors mature with age, I fear Bollywood might not have enough roles to even scratch the surface of her potential when she finally ripens. Her performance is the result of a child's energy channelized in the right direction by the director. I also wonder if there are enough directors good enough to tap her incipient potential.

There are moments that make you laugh. In 'Black', such moments come as often as oases do in a desert. But when they come, their innocence, simplicity, naturality and spontaneity give you a relief comparable only to the relief you derive out of oases. It forms a lump in your chest; a lump so full of emotions that you almost choke with suffocation and yet so empty that you fail to react in words. With his vision, Sanjay Leela Bhansali has created a song-less wonder, in an industry where songs, beyond anything else, are the USP. Inspired by "The Miracle Worker", "Black", with its power packed performances, riding on mesmerizing, almost magical play of light, gives any sincere watcher, a punch of conscience. It hits you hard, where it hurts most. In our daily selfish existence, it makes you wonder whether there could ever be people, except the "Indian house-wife mothers", who dedicate their whole lives to others' cause so selflessly. It makes us wonder, when was the last time we sweated for others? When was the last time we dedicated a day for others; for someone, who couldn't in any way, have returned the favours? It gives you a void of conscience, and then fills it with a thankful realization that you are blessed; blessed that you can see with your eyes and listen with your ears. As for the feelings, well, the heart can never be a vestigial organ.

Critique-ing Swades

Success is a sweet poison. It smoothens the rough road ahead and then as the person prepares for a smooth ride, it dumps him by disguising itself as the unexpected pothole of others’ higher expectations. Even more so, if success is as humungous as that of Lagaan. Lagaan, Ashutosh Gowarikar’s oscar-nominated mega success, not only ensured that Swades began with a full house but also that eight out of ten people came back dissatisfied, thus ensuring a lower turnout in the days that followed. The damp squib that Swades turned out to be at the box office would’ve left Ashutosh Gowarikar feeling like a snake that has bitten its own tail.

Swades, unlike most of the contemporary movies pitted against it, is smeared in honesty. Lets start with the names. The ‘h’ in Swades(h) is conspicuous by its absence, and yet that is precisely how the rural Hindi populace pronounce it. After an eternity, we came across a mainstream movie that didn’t have seductively named lead characters such as “the Raj Malhotras and the Rahul Srivastavs” but chose instead to give them largely unglamorous and yet much more quotidian names.

Kudos to Ashutosh Gowarikar for restraining the unruly horse called Shahrukh. Shahrukh, who needs dramatics to survive and emotional catharsis to thrive, was completely subdued and yet gave arguably his best performance ever. The actor has done an amazing job even without his characteristic K-K-K-K-Kacophonic lilt of overacting. Be it the presentation scene at NASA or his argument with ‘Geeta’ (Gayatri), he has hardly shown the kind of restraint and right emotional expressions to boot in any other movie as he does in Swades. Arguably the best dressed Bollywood actor ever, Shahrukh restrains himself here as well; he dresses like a mortal in Swades and rightly so.

Gayatri Joshi ‘Geeta’ has a refreshing screen presence. Her confidence gives an impression that the role was tailor-made for her. The debutante manages to hold her own against Shahrukh, which is a good start to have. But a tad less make-up on her would’ve done well to augment the authentic theme of the movie.

Rahman’s music makes subtle transitions from the foot tapping and the hummable to the mellifluous. One wonders how easily he flows from folk to pop and back. He just can’t stop inspiring awe.

The songs, although good, are a tad too long. This affects the overall length of the movie; an aspect the director needs to improve upon. Unlike other movie songs though, songs in Swades don’t hold the movie to ransom. They are situational and the story continues to flow through them, which is a welcome relief.

Ashutosh needs accolades for not succumbing to commercial pressure. The movie breathes nobility and sincerity of purpose from start to end. Any individual who is not able to serve the cause he so dearly espouses will share Mohan’s sense of ennui. The dialogs are simple and yet effective. He rightly shelved the unwarranted ‘filmy’ rhetoric, especially the ones on patriotism, which in some movies border on jingoism. Lagaan was about winning over your adversary. Swades is about winning over yourself. The analogy is akin to what Buddha, Christ and more recently Mahatma Gandhi had preached. “If someone slaps you on one cheek, show him your other cheek”. Doing that is a distant dream; we’d rather punch him on both his cheek and bludgeon him to his handicap. Showing your other cheek requires winning over yourself and is not a cowardly act as is so often made out to be. This is precisely where Swades failed. In our failure to win over ourselves, to see beyond our immediate benefit for the holistic good and to dare go beyond the expected and ‘pragmatic’ reactions to events, Swades was doomed.

Swades they say is too preachy. But the movie is far better than the much-abused good-wins-over-evil gibberish, senseless romantic melodrama and the forced-to-laugh comedies that Bollywood dishes out ad nauseum. It shows us a way out of our rut. The least we could do is watch and appreciate the effort. Our failure to do so makes me think we’ve reached the wrong end of societal cul-de-sac and yet seem to enjoy it so much that we even fail to appreciate a sincere effort to take us out of our self-imposed predicament.

Swades is a flop. Not because it was deemed to be so by the box office. Box office is too insignificant a measure to measure the depth of this movie. Swades will remain a flop until it brings out a “Mohan Bhargav” from atleast one of the Indians who earlier chose to blame ‘others’ for or to gloss over the rampant malaise that plagues our society. One “Mohan Bhargav” for any village in India is worth much more than the millions a hit Swades would’ve generated. The day that happens, Swades will meet its success. Box office is a nonentity. It always was.

Is it Swades that has failed us or is it ‘We, the people’, who’ve failed ‘our’ Swades?

Roads to Heaven

My first attempt at comedy and prose.

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Old habits die hard. The aphorism stands true for any city and its 'city-zens' as well (Hope the purists would let me get away with the contortion). Also, older the city, harder it is to kill those habits. Hyderabad, the Nizam's city, which has held its own for the last few centuries is leading the IT revolution in India. The city, which was once ruled by the Nizams, has its roads still ruled by the direct or indirect posterity of the Nizams who are born with a license to fly on the roads.

The sleepy city of Hyderabad did see some rapid progress and light of modernity under the aegis and patronage of Chandrababu Naidu. Good roads and supporting infrastructure were built quite rapidly, but not fast enough to support the sudden rise in population which was the IT fallout. The result is for all to see. Traffic jams, accidents and pollution. Also, the traffic etiquette of the people make them as deserving of these good roads as celebrity marriages are for the contention of eternity.

My office is at a distance of twelve kilometres from home. For this much commuting, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that no two consecutive days pass without an accident materializing in front of my eyes. I'd rather keep aside the aside and hark back to relevance.

Did I say that Hyderabadis do not follow any traffic rules? No way.
Having stayed in Hyderabad for around three years, I dare say that, after all, there are certain rules that Hyderabadis swear by.

First: The distance between your vehicle and the one that immediately preceeds you should not exceed fifteen centimetres.

The autodrivers religiously follow this rule. They're always in a hurry to meet the Gods and take the lucky passenger along. Almost always, they run on a short deadline, a privilege denied even to the Prime Ministers.

Second: Green signal - drive fast. Yellow signal - drive faster.

This is the thumb rule. Even if, all one is going to do is meet an old friend at a paan shop and take a fag. Blame it on the crowd. What can a hapless individual do when everyone before and after him pushes the paddle at the remotest hint of the yellow signal?

Third: Colour blindness to red.

Red signals are very reverently treated as red herrings that are not supposed to be focused on or complied with while driving lest the ensuing driver, who almost invariably assumes you're going to ignore it, would bump into you.

Fourth: Zebra crossings are a mark from whereon you start applying the brakes, provided its been atleast five seconds since the red light was flashed. Otherwise, just vroom. Alternately, if there is a motley bunch leading you at the crossroad and has so far prevented the perpendicular flow of traffic in either directions, you are welcome to give a raise and augment the tail.

And if you think the above rules are a perfect recipy for an early appointment with God, you stand guilty of judging things too soon.

Fifth: Do not follow any rule. :-) ..

Signal right and then take a left.

Or signal left at the middle of the crossroad and turn immediately without a thought for the driver behind who is to run out of all the 'hard earned' luck very soon. You hear two sounds thereafter. A deafening din of the crash and an exasperated cry - 'What the @#$%'.

And the best of all, don't bother to show any signals. Just take a turn whenever you feel like and just hope that the following drivers have oiled and repaired their brakes in the recent past. If not, who cares. Both will go to the nearest garage very cordially. After all, the Nizams never fought on the road.
But if one or both are a posterity of lesser mortals, a fracas ensues. In the eventuality, the one with a larger frame and then the one with a better vocabulary in profanity, in that order, wins the duel. Profanity, in such cases, gives instant relief denied even to prayers.

And then there are the pedestrians who, in the presence of thoroughly incompetent traffic police, take matters in their own hands. They jaywalk by showing hands and stopping the rush of traffic in full throttle. But this may be a fearlessness acquired more out of natural necessities than anything else. He might just reach the wall adjoining the pavement and answer nature's call. He risked the traffic for this because he wouldn't want to pass it under his revered, late Chief Minister's statue. We hyderabadis love our legacies you see. And then there are stretches of roads that stink so obnoxiously due to this, that a daily passerby would gain enough immunity to survive Bhopal Gas Tragedy.

Multiple unsuccessful attempts have been made to free Hyderabad of this chronic recidivism. We need a more concerted effort on the part of the government, media and public to ensure our city is a better and a safer place to live in.
The sooner we realize this, the better.

Cities we build,
Characters we don't.
Joblessness we survive,
Lifelessness we can't.