OD'ed on LSD

Honesty is hard to find in mainstream Hindi movies and for it to succeed as a concept is almost unthinkable. The scope for pretence and falsehood, however, is ample.

LSD comes at a time when Karan Johar is 'allegedly' coming of age as a film-maker, Shyam Benegal is going mainstream, the literary giant, Chetan Bhagat is horrified that Bollywood copies without due credit (not only from mediocre movies but also from classic fiction), SRK and Aamir Khan are gradually moving away from films....more and more into sports ventures and social causes and the Bachchans have decided to counter public scrutiny by clarifying every single detail about their personal lives through regular press meets, blogs and of course, twitter, because as fans, we have a right to know it all.

The timing for LSD could not be more appropriate as the country overdoses on reality on television. Couples break up/make up/make out on facebook and spy on their spouses on prime time television; ministers tweet their frustrations with the government they represent; blood brothers fight over property at press conferences and arranged marriages find a whole new meaning on television where women queue up to marry Rahul Mahajan and if we can still believe what we see, they actually do!!

LSD explores and exposes the voyeur in all of us. Is it true? Of course, it is. Do we like to hear about it? Of course, not. And it is this shock value attached to something that all of us practice or partakes of, in our own lives is what makes us such hypocrites and such attempts, laudable.

Won't rant. Will just mention a few things that caught my attention and captured my imagination:

1. The three elements of Love, Sex and Dhokha run as a thread through all the inter-related storylines instead of taking the commonly tread path of all stories going their different ways until they converge..usually at an airport or as a result of some tragic accident or simply because the director decides to connect the dots at some point in the movie. But as is expected in this age of spy cams and live footage, there is more of 'S' and 'D' and less of 'L'.

2. The storylines are not unique, so to speak, but that is not a lack of originality on the part of the makers and is attributable to how 'real' these situations are and could be. To me, that is a great achievement.

3. The use of the camera/s as if if were a real character in the film was amazing. The use of digital cameras and spy cameras adds to the rawness of the sub-text and the drama lies in the situations that these characters gets entangled in over the course of the film.

4. The cast was well-picked and yes, all of them could act fairly well. May be they were NSD graduates..may be not (I just find it very funny when pseuds talk about theatre actors as a blanket category...Oh...he is awesome..he does theatre or he graduated from NSD...he should not be wasting time on that daily soap and my favourite...he is so underrated as an actor... he comes from a theatre background, yaar!!)

They looked believable in their parts and comfortable in their so-called (to use Bollywood lingo)..bold skins.

5. What is commendable about Dibakar Banerjee is his fearlessness. He is three films old...all three on completely different themes....the Indian urban middle class, the charming conman swindled by a doctor, and then this...the dark world of technology and titillation. Having picked up national awards for both his films (not that it means anything anymore....Arjun Rampal..the 'handsome piece of wood' has also won one), he seems strangely relaxed and unconcerned. His kind of nonchalance is rare yet not arrogant.

I just hope these honours do not corrupt the simplicity and satire; honesty and humour in his work that many of us have come to love. I also hope that LSD-the movie about voyeurism attracts more than just a voyeuristic audience.

Emotional Atyachaar: Reality Television at its very worst

Look what you've done, Mr. Anurag Kashyap?? While I hailed you for the fantastic effort that is DevD, I cannot help but blame you in part for inspiring the cheapest form of reality television (also, I am pretty sure the entertainment media will stoop lower...and lower in the future)

As if the horror of prospective brides violently blushing at the sleazy advances of the very unemployed and totally unmarriageable Rahul Mahajan and lost celebrities regressing into their past lives to find their lost fame on prime time television was not enough, here's another addition to the reality TV bandwagon...EMOTIONAL ATYACHAAR...

Claiming to be of extreme social value, this television show aims at helping young married/committed men and women to discover the status of their relationships through loyalty tests conducted on their partners with hidden spy cameras and undercover agents. The show is, of course, not about the sex and the sleaze but to rescue people from cheating partners and meaningless relationships!! The fact that the show is aired post-dinner on a channel called BINDAAS is also a mere co-incidence.

The format is simple....the formula...tried and tested....sex sells!!

Allegedly, the emotionally tormented/ tortured (atyacharit) partner approaches the EA team, like a NGO, counsellor or even the police, and seek their assistance in establishing the loyalty of their better or battered half, as the case may be. A loyalty test is thus, conducted, with full consent of the tortured party against the accused party and the proverbial linen is washed dirty in public. There is some serious cheating, buckets of tears, shot of abuses followed by some hardcore slapping, punching and beating, if you are lucky.

The tortured party orders the loyalty test on their partners with the disclaimer that they love and trust them, despite the test. The accused party, invariably, picks up the undercover agent (almost always, struggling models and actors) at the very first meeting at a coffee shop. Things move quickly and soon (by soon...I mean a day or two..tops), they are a couple. Nothing is hidden from the hidden cameras...and all unedited footage is shown to the tortured party with them bawling and screaming beeped unmentionables at the camera and the hapless host mumbling...'we can stop the footage if you want' or 'this is all live feed ..they are in this building now' but the tortured party, being iron-willed, tough individuals, continue to watch the misdeeds of their loyal partners despite the tears and the heartache.

It all ends with a confrontation, often violent, drawing the curtains on the relationship, at least on camera, with the tortured party thanking the show for saving their so-called lives and the makers and undercover agents shouting LONG LIVE INFIDELITY!! But mind you, this is all a sociological experiment not merely entertainment!!

Who will write your obituary, Mr. Salinger??

Jerome David Salinger is no more...

Contemporary and competitor, Joh Updike predeceased him...

Now, the thing that immediately popped in my head mind when I heard of Salinger's death was not what the world will miss (because he hasn't written a book in the last half of his life and at 91, one wasn't really expecting anything from him at all), but who will write him a fitting obituary now that the rockstar of a literary/culture critic of all times is no more.

I am confused...I don't know who I like more...Updike or Salinger....I don't know what saddens me more...Salinger's death or the fact that every obituary (and there will be many) will repeat every boring cliche that every existed on the man (reclusive, cool, crazy, inspirer of assasination plots and the whole Mark Davuid Chapman-John Lennon reference etc etc etc) in the absence of Updike, who, if alive, would have produced a legend of an obituary..yet another thing to remember Salinger by, after Holden and the Glasses!!

That, however, is not to be for reasons as mundane as mortality....

But I remember reading a review of 'Franny and Zooey' a few years ago by Updike, which confirms the big loss I just talked about.

'Franny and Zooey' is a big favourite with me despite my contempt for precocious children which is exactly what this book is all about. But I guess the written word can change all of that, which is what Salinger is loved for...for turning phonies into heroes, idiots into icons!! :-)

Anyway, F & Z was panned by critics as a rich person's guide to raising children all wrong. Updike shared this view:

Salinger loves the Glasses more than God loves them. He loves them too exclusively. Their invention has become a hermitage for him. He loves them to the detriment of artistic moderation.

but ended the review on a note of respect and appreciation:

When all reservations have been entered, in the correctly unctuous and apprehensive tone, about the direction [Salinger] has taken, it remains to acknowledge that it is a direction, and that the refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.

and the words which perfectly explain why I, like many others, love Salinger:

We live in a world, however, where the decisive deed may invite the holocaust, and Salinger's conviction that our inner lives greatly matter peculiarly qualifies him to sing of an America where, for most of us, there seems little to do but to feel. Introversion, perhaps, has been forced upon history; an age of nuance, of ambiguous gestures and psychological jockeying on a national and private scale, is upon us, and Salinger's intense attention to gesture and intonation help make him, among his contemporaries, a uniquely relevant literary artist.

Salinger had the rare ability to convert extraordinary feelings into ordinary words (incidentally, that's what all writers intend to do) and who could know it better than Updike!!

That Updike feeling is what I am going to miss when I read those factory-made obituaries about Salinger that I shall read starting later today.

Chalk and Cheese

Dr. Vijay Mallya and Anil Kumble just do not belong together...so didn't Mallya and Rahul Dravid...

As far as I am concerned, this is an absolute travesty!!

Strange Idols....

At the very beginning of this post, I should mention that it concerns a representative from a group of people I dislike with single-minded devotion. I have faced maximum rejections, not at the hands of employers or men but ….auto-rickshaw drivers.

The upside of this is that any auto rickshaw driver, who does not reject me, agrees to turn on the metre or is even reasonable in his demands and is not a lech appears GODLY to me.

I encountered such GODLINESS on my way to work this morning. Not only did the first auto driver agree to take me to my destination, he agreed to do so on my terms. If I remember correctly, his exact words were, “De dena madam, jo aap ko theek lagey”. To a hassled public commuter, this is pure, unadulterated sweetness!!

On the way, I took a look around the small vehicle and was slightly surprised not to find laminated Rs. 10 posters of skimply clad Bollywood actresses on both sides of the seat.
( I have noted that auto drivers prefer Kareena and Priyanka to the rest of them!!) Although these pictures officially offend me, I totally get it!! While searching for Kareena inside the auto, I spotted something rather odd but oddly reassuring.

On the mirror, there was not one, but two unevenly cut out (heart-shaped, if I might add) postcards of two unlikely heroes…..Ritesh Deshmukh and Rajpal Yadav.

Now, not only did I wonder why those pictures were up there and how, in God’s name do you get postcards of these fellows for a price?? (I am pretty sure they weren’t newspaper or magazine cut outs but an actual, 50 paise/ Re. 1 postcard), I decided to wonder aloud.

The answer I received was obvious in many ways yet it appeared to me as charming. He said, ‘Woh hasatey hain madam…unka chehra dekh ke din achha jaata hain’. My response to that was a dim, not so charming “Oh” (Not that I intended to discuss my sociological findings with him and appear even more stupid).

Today, I learnt to keep it simple, go back to the basics and I already feel good. What I did not learn, however, is where you can buy postcards of strange idols as I have some of my own!! :-)

Food for Thought: Globalisation and Androgyny

Heterosexual, Homosexual, Metrosexual, SNAGs (Sensitive New Age Guys), Retrosexual, Neosexual.....

Cross-dresser, Transvestite, Hermophrodite, Androgynous....

When girls go baggy and boys go skinny....

For every Audrey Hepburn and Aishwarya Rai, there is a Tilda Swinton and Charlotte Rampling (Strong yet sensual)

For every Hugh Jackman, there is a Justin Timberlake (with that falsetto voice and boys too can cry kinda' appeal).

An actress, Diane Keaton, whom I love just for her spontaneity on and off screen, starred in a movie titled Annie Hall in the early 1980s, where she iconised androgynous fashion as it is known today, wearing baggy pants, waistcoats, oversized shirts, neckties and fedora hats. She was consistently voted as the Worst Dressed Female for years for her conservative and rather 'eccentric' fashion sense. She never changed though. Today, international fashion swears by that look.

The importance of trends and buzzwords in our daily lives is overwhelming...Ah...the things I have to keep up with in this lifetime!! Having said that, the revival of androgyny continues to fascinate me in its impact on gender relations (not only in fashion but in the real world..inside our homes, at the workplace, in other informal social spaces etc) and someday, equipped with better knowledge on the subject and a live muse, I will seek to undertake detailed research on GLOBALISATION AND ANDROGYNY...SERIOUSLY!!

A.Kashyap is angry and it works!!

No Smoking could have been a masterpiece if told simply and of course, if John Abraham himself understood his character a little better. Dev D and Gulaal, however, have turned the tables in favour of a trend that was increasingly losing its stronghold in Hindi cinema. 'Anger' that made Amitabh Bachchan the legend that he is and 'Revenge' that cemented SRK's career is now being re-invented by Anurag Kashyap to tell it as it is.

Dev D, a take-off on Devdas, the legendary lover a.k.a loser who 'sacrificed' his life in the name of unfulfilled love re-looks at the character of Devdas as he was probably originally written. Having read Devdas in the original, I can vouch for the fact that the one thing that the author did not want to do was glorify Dev's submission to alcoholism which is exactly what every movie interpretation- from greats like Bimal Roy and not-so-greats like Bhansali have done because creating sympathy for the protagonist is Bollywood formula. Even if you create a flawed character, you have to justify the flaws to the audience because according to trade pundits, the intelligence of the Indian movie-going audience does not allow them to accept 'simply flawed' characters without any emotional baggage. 'Pure evil' remains unacceptable, even in the movies.

Dev-D and Gulaal challenges that in a way. Kay Kay's character in Gulaal is supposedly a leader of a separatist movement that has no clear objectives. What becomes increasingly clear towards the end of Gulaal is that he is amoral and arrogant and will go to any lengths to achieve his ends (Rajasthan for Rajputs), whatever the means. Ransa, living in a ramshackled palace turned Democracy bar with strobe lights and Bob Marley life size posters is a bundle of contradictions. He wants no part of his father's aristrocratic legacy yet is dependant on that very legacy to sustain himself. He does not work, drinks and philanders yet is idealistic and moral in a way. Although he does not know what he wants, he seems to know what he does not want. Dilip Singh, on the other hand, just wanted to get a law degree but gets entangled in this dirty mesh of campus, family and gender politics. Naive as he is, when asked, what he knows of Rajniti, he says 'Politics'!!. In love as he is, he believes that his lover's abandonment was not an independent decision and was guided and manipulated for political gains. True as that may be, the audience is left to wonder as to who was really exploited by whom and for what purpose? Brother exploiting sister, Rajput exploiting co-Rajput, half Rajput leading Rajputana movement...what for?? Did any of the characters in the film know what they stood for despite their strong political ambitions and definitive plans of action? Casting Jesse Randhawa and that new girl in their respective roles was probably not a good idea but may be, Kashyap could not convince our 'holier than thou' Bollywood actresses to play murky female characters. While the female characters are not unimportant in the scheme of things, they are not fleshed out as well. This is a male film with female catalysts. Powerful performances were delivered by the 'male' cast and the music was phenomenal and very. very, well placed in the context of the film.

Coming to Dev-D...Dev is no more than a spoilt brat who cries because he did not get his favourite toy. Nothing exposes the subtlety of gender equations in Indian society as this film. Dev does not want Paro when he learns of her sexual history. This he does when he himself is 'sleeping around' to use crass Indian English. Paro abandons him....oh wait..Paro VOLUNTARILY abandons him...no family pressures here!! Now, that, of course, virtually kills Dev..it's not love, it's the male ego that is crushed to pieces in the process. Dev's ultimate rejection, of course, comes, when the very married Paro comes to meet him in the shady Paharganj hotel room, shows him she cares by offering to wash his dirty clothes and then leaves when they are about to make love...That, my friends is 'emosanal atyachar'...the brutal fact of rejection by a woman and not some cooked-up, well-packaged romantic idea of unfulfilled love that we've been fed for generations that we almost believe to be true. There would be no Devdas if the decision to split came from Devdas himself-Go figure!!

Unlike Devdas in the novel, Kashyap's Dev gets to mend his ways and interestingly enough, he does not flush it down the toilet (not in the movie climax anyway). Chanda, the escort girl by night and college student by day encounters Dev surrounded by a haze of drugs and alcohol. As is characteristic of Dev, she is spared no part of his ego-centrism but she stands her own-loving and supporting him yet not submitting to him. When Dev hits his lowest lows and finds himself alone and abandoned serving momos at a streetside food joint in Dilli, life gives him a second chance and he embraces it. But knowing Dev, a relapse is not totally out of character but for now, he seems to have found his feet.

Kudos to Kashyap and looking forward to his next..Meanwhile, KJo's masterpiece on the aftermath of 9/11-an untold story is also sincerely awaited!!