Dr. Kalam

Does American hubris know no bounds? Do they think no one else in the world matters at all? That if you’re not American, you’re lower than dust? The staff of the Continental airlines had the audacity to frisk Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam at the airport. One of the most respected scientists of our age and what’s more our past President! How dare they? Do they think he’s some terrorist or what? And when this matter came to light, they had the temerity to call it “routine procedure”, saying they had no special treatment for VIPs. I bet they would never pull this off on Bill Clinton! Try frisking Bush! A lot of expletives come to mind. Those smug b******s think they’re above it all. “routine procedure” my ass! Just shows how utterly lacking they are in basic decency. He’s a former Head of State for God’s sake! How the f*** can they do that?
The matter came up in parliament and an FIR has also been lodged. There were calls for cancelling the airlines license to operate in India. Normally I never see eye to eye with our ‘respected’ parliamentarians, but on this issue, even though the proposal seems a bit extreme, I support it wholeheartedly. It’s time the world came to realise that we are no longer pushovers. An extreme measure like what Dalmia did during the Tendulkar controversy in SA (the first time India flexed its financial muscle at the ICC) becomes, at times, necessary to make a point clear. Since that episode, the BCCI has got its due respect in world cricket, no matter how sad some of the old Brit and Aussie administrators and players feel about it; they didn’t feel quite so bad when they ruled the roost!
Something similar ought to be done in this situation too. Remember how shabbily Air France treated Indian passengers a couple of months ago? I’m sure some action against Continental will make international airlines sit up and take notice. Just idle talk of a ban has got the Continental people singing a different tune. Suddenly it is no longer “routine procedure” but a regrettable incident that they apologise for, though Dr. Kalam hasn’t yet received any apology.
Some papers are making the point that Dr. Kalam has not made a hue and cry about it, nor has he publicly objected to it and it’s only our politicians who’re feeling outraged. I say that even if Dr. Kalam, the gentleman that he is prefers to stay silent or doesn’t take umbrage at the incident, we as Indians should. It is not only a matter of frisking an individual; it’s an insult to our polity and our country. It reeks of double standards and sheer disdain on the part of the Continental airlines. We cannot as a nation let this matter lie. We are not second class citizens in this world, and indeed, no one should be considered so. Unfortunately this is a message that does not enter white skulls as easily and has to be oftentimes hammered home. Although I don’t hold out much hope of a proper sustained response in this from our politicians, I hope this is one time that I am mistaken.

Face the truth!

Quite a bit of noise being generated by this new show, “Sach ka saamna” on Star or some such. Granted that most of it is planned advertisement in the form of news and panel discussions and I don’t usually pay much heed to it, but I accidentally got to hear a debate on some news channel (Headlines Today I think) about the show. There was the anchorman, who’s also the producer or something, a muslim advocate and a sociologist. Mostly nonsense but what got me going was that they were actually debating how the show was going to affect our society! There was actually some talk of Indian civilization being damaged, about how families could break up, about how bad an example it would set our future generation about how it was immoral, amoral, cutting edge, and sundry other adjectives the choice predicated by which side of the debate the speaker was.
I listened in wonder and disbelief. Our civilization doomed because Kambli admits to feeling let down by Sachin? A bad example of a two bit TV actor admitting to stealing bed sheets? Some random female from Bombay “caught” lying that she wouldn’t have an affair? I wouldn’t have bothered but this was on one of the main “news” channels. People tune in to it and form their opinions based on what they hear. This is what they see portrayed as serious debate. The anchor of the show was defending it and calling it a cathartic experience for many and that it would make people face the truth and feel better about themselves and that it was so life-affirming and their aim was to promote a frank discussion in society about hidden truths or something. What a load of crock!
Let’s get some facts clear. “Lie detectors” are at best iffy at what they purport to do. A show on “truth” based on it has about as much truth in it as any public CIA document on what they did during the Cold War. It’s a nonsensical premise and should be scoffed at. But that’s another gripe altogether.
My issue is with the so called social relevance of the show and its impact on the same. And I find fault with both sides of the debate. The idea that it can tear the fabric of society is as laughable as the claim that the show is about life affirmation. Much more than any TV show, you are influenced by your family and the circle of people that surrounds you. Kids from broken homes have a greater chance of being emotionally tangled than those from close families, even if the latter spent their entire childhood seeing divorce court or “the War of the Roses”. The simple fact is that TV does not influence us as much as sociologists like to think. If it did, Pulse Polio would have been a great success because Amitabh (arguably still the biggest icon in UP, a state with one of the worst Polio records) was plugging for it. We’ve been showing happy, simpering families for ages and that doesn’t seem to increase the general happiness quotient in the nation. TV is entertainment and beyond a few fashion pointers (what bindi pattern did Akshara wear for her wedding?), I doubt we take much away from our serials and programs. Not that the said programs are fit for any better!
As to the positive intentions of the producers, puh-lease! Give us more credit than that! You are after money and that’s that. It’s all about grabbing eyeballs, and you saw a show on Star World asking “lewd” questions in the garb of serious television and you saw an opportunity. How else could you get away, on Indian TV, with asking people about adultery, incest, streaking and the like? And why else would the sexual shenanigans of everyone from insignificant young housewives to elderly actors form such a major part of your show, or at the very least of your entire promotional campaign? It’s money that you’re after and money you’re raking in, hand over fist I’m sure. You’re providing the audience a chance to peer into the private lives of individuals and they’re lapping it up as you knew they would. Vicarious living is the mantra for reality TV and you go farther than ever before. Well, kudos to you for Xeroxing a strong money making scheme from the west. I don’t admire the producers for being copycats, after all many more clones are spouting and have sprung forth in the past too, but I don’t grudge them a few million rupees that they make by appeasing the baser instincts either. What I do take issue with is the attempt they make at passing this off as serious television. Go make your money every which way you like, but do not attempt to insult our intelligence!

I finished “Revolutionary Road” last afternoon. I do recommend you watch it if you can get your hands on it. Not going very often to the theatres I’m not sure if it released in India or not. Maybe you can’t find it in DVD stores too, who knows?
Back to the movie, it’s another deconstruction of middle-income suburban America. It’s set in the 50s and shows how Leo and Kate’s marriage falls apart under the strain of unfulfilled dreams and impossible aspirations. How seemingly normal lives are full of angst and repressed rage just beneath the surface. It’s a nice attempt to look at failing marriages and lost ambitions, but I do feel it is an incomplete attempt. It does not dive into the depths of the conflict and the tensions but just skims the surface. We see the ultimately tragic results of all this turmoil and are even able to maybe predict them, but the reasons behind the unfolding of the same are not elucidated in so many words. You do see plenty of hints and the discerning viewer can piece it together though. Both the leads have put in a wonderful effort. It was perhaps fitting that this should be Kate and Leo’s second film after “Titanic”. How the dreams of youth unfold in to the drabness and banality of adult life and how difficult it is for some to adapt and give up on their desires is an ironic sequel to that tale of love transcending time. This film brings Rose deWitt Buttaker back to earth and she falls apart. And unlike “The War of the Roses” of the 80s and “American Beauty”, Kate ultimately lashes back at herself and inflicts perhaps a harder blow on Leo than what Douglas or Spacey had to undergo. Kate as always puts in a superlative performance as the depressed wife, seeing her dreams and fantasies fading away before her own eyes and unable to cope with the loss, with the idea that “they are someone special”, trying desperately to break free from the confines of the dull middle class life she finds herself in, chasing every rainbow no matter how faint and fleeting it be. How the brashness of youth fades in the face of the grim realities of life! And how utterly unable she is to accept such failure. Leonardo is very good as the frustrated confused husband oblivious of what goes on in his wife’s head, caught in a dead end job, afraid to chart a new course for himself for fear of failure. He sees his dreams fading too, but he resigns himself to the non-significance of his life, at least superficially for under the skin the failures still rankle.
Unfortunately the film suffers from one flaw. There is no prelude. We meet the Wheelers when their marriage is already falling apart. We only get glimpses of what they were before and nothing of how they end up this way. Maybe it was a deliberate attempt on the part of the director to make us each form his own conclusions, I don’t know. But it seems as if you’re watching Act II of the play. Apart from that, it’s a nicely made film and worth watching.

Connections?

Twittering furiously for over a fortnight even though I don’t have a single close friend or family member on it. Who do I write for, I wonder? And why indeed do I put in the effort? FB and Orkut are sites where I have FnF available so I do communicate. But twitter is…..what? Maybe it’s just an attempt to reach out and touch someone. Reams have been written about how insulated we have become in our modern lives, how out of touch we are with a social network to support us and nourish us. Even someone with tastes as Bohemian as mine feels the occasional need (loathe though I am to admit it) to socialize. But with the absence of time, opportunity and energy, we often find ourselves retreating into a cocoon, more and more cut off from the world around us. And it is this emptiness that ‘social networking’ sites tend to fill. Too busy with work, so SN sites offer the convenience of logging in whenever we have the time, regardless of whether the people we want to interact with are there at the same time. No opportunity to socialize outside the workplace, so SN sites offer the choice of adding ‘friends of friends’ or even complete strangers who we might share a common interest with. No energy to go out and meet people, so SN sites give us our entire social circle in our laps, so to speak.
But even these lines of communication are undergoing a change. Time is a quantity that seems to be in shorter and shorter supply. From 3-4 page letters to one page e-mail to 10 word scraps. From lengthy diary entries to blogs to a 160 letter limit twitter. How much shorter will it get, I wonder? Will grunts soon replace scraps? An ‘ugh’ or an ‘argh’ in place of ‘lolz’, ‘wtf!” maybe? But no matter what happens and how busy we become and how little the time we get to spend in company, we will not cease from it. In one way or another, humanity will continue to communicate and interact and exchange ideas and information or just plain gossip. Old timers bemoan the loss of the hand-written letter which was a source of memories that was kept safe for generations. In the age of e-mail, they say, what will become of such social moorings. Then the other day someone told me she had kept a copy of all mail sent to her by her close friends, e-mail sent over the last 10 years or so and I thought, “Maybe it’s not all so bleak”. Our search for anchors and some constants in an ever faster changing world is strong and one of the strongest roots we tend to grow is our network of friends and family. One way or another, we will strive to keep our roots alive, even if in place of perfumed letters bound in ribbons, we hand over to our descendants a pen drive full with our precious e-mails and e-cards!

Saw the movie “New York” last evening. Ages since I last entered a theatre. Seema seems to remember it was in December last year. There was a time when going to the cinema was a magical experience for me. The smell of popcorn, the dark mysterious theatre, the images coming to life on a grand scale, the thundering voices you listened to as you sat cocooned in your own private dark space…..
Now it’s much more mundane. I’d probably enjoy a movie watching it alone in my home than in a public place with hundreds of other people, sneezing, coughing, talking, laughing, whispering, using the cell phone, trying to silence their mewling, puking children. Why should you pay for this aggravation?
Well, all said and done, it wasn’t all bad. It was nice to get out of the house and the film was good too. Nice story, taut for the most part, good production values, and mostly coherent from start to finish. Neil Nitin Mukesh impressed me with his performance. He’s only done a few films till date, but he showed a lot of promise. Few actors can express with both their face and their voice. At least in Bollywood, it is seldom seen. He’s the central character in the film and carries it off well. He should go places, I feel. The story centres around the treatment meted out to muslims in the US post 9-11. How John is picked up on some flimsy “evidence” and tortured for 9 months. He turns to terror to get back at the FBI. Irfan, as an FBI agent, ropes in Neil by blackmailing him into reconnecting with his old friend (John) and infiltrating his terrorist sleeper cell. They were college buddies and in love with Katrina who’s married to John and with a kid now. The story builds up to a nice climax, though it leaves you feeling somewhat empty, as if something else could have happened, though not so much. Editing is top notch for the most part, and I didn’t feel that I’d been sitting there for almost 3 hours (it’s a long one). Cinematography is good too and the music ain’t bad either. Especially liked the ghazal, though I don’t remember it now. But there are a few faults too. The opening sequence could have been much tighter. It didn’t create enough tension. The scene before the intermission where Omar (Neil) shoots a guy was unnecessary long. It’s almost as if the director felt that he had to do something Indian in the movie! So it drags on for a few seconds longer than it should have. And in the end we’re not clear why Neil gets custody of John’s son. Why not either John or Katrina’s parents? But these few faults can be ignored in the face of a Bollywood movie with almost Hollywood like production qualities (finally!).
The director doesn’t let the movie slacken a bit and never loses the plot. There are no maudlin scenes, no hyper emotional drama, and no theatrics. I’ve already mentioned Neil’s talents and Irfan Khan does his job as he always does, deadpan and right on the button. Even John and Katrina surprised me. I mean, they’re not exactly mind-blowing, but they do go a notch or two above their usual work. I always thought Katrina was just a pretty face (and body), but she’s not that bad as an actress either. Of course as an NRI she was in her element, but still she exceeded my expectations. John is too stony to portray real emotions but his honesty shows through, particularly in the first part.
The film is definitely a must-watch and I would recommend it to anyone who’s looking for something beyond the mind numbing “comedies” and “dramas” B’bay churns out by the dozen.