Dev D.

After a small hiatus, I am back. And what else to start writing about but the last movie that I saw and that was Dev D. It was one of those films that left a lasting impression in my head for a couple of days. The last film that had given me a hangover like this was Maachis. There were many other good films that were released between these two films but the depth and clarity of the film maker comes out so rarely.

I could never accept Devdas as a glorified character the past films tried to perceive him as. I couldnot sit through 10 minutes of Sanjay Bhansali’s Devdas, and could never digest the Bimal Roy’s version with Dilip kumar as Devdas. Sharat Chandra Chattopadyay must finally be smiling at this new age version of the de-glorified Loser.

It is always difficult to make a film version of a book. The reader, as he/she reads the book creates his/her own visual imagery and characterizations in his or her mind, and when a director interprets it through his/her eyes, the film looks flawed and it lands into the critics domain. Devdas was an interesting character, though not heroic. He was flawed in every sense. He was a character who dumped his childhood sweetheart and then found solace in a tawaif and then destroyed himself to death. The problem with the earlier versions were that the director wanted the audience to be sympathetic to him, feel his pain, cry with him and die with him. I feel, that is where the entire problem with the earlier films lie.

Dev D takes on a very different route and sticks to the essence of the story and a positive deviation towards the end. The characterization is so well etched that the film takes you away from the character of Dev and makes you hate for what he is. And when you see the film, each scene, you know that there is a lot of thought put into each scenes, right from its characters, to the locales, to the emotional conflicts and the metaphorical understanding of the subject right to the editing, background score, lighting. The film comes out trumps. There are only two kinds of reactions you can expect to the film. Either you love it or you hate it. There is nothing in between.

The incidents that take the film forward are inspired by real life incidents, be it the MMS scandal and drunken driving. The existence of drug dealers in the underbelly of a metropolitan set up, rich spoilt kids, the characteristic pimp, Chunni, all seamlessly makes the traditional Devdas novella into an extravaganza.

There are some scenes, which are out of the world. The scene where the married Paro comes to his shabby hotel room, washes his clothes, changes the curtains and finally snubs his proclamation of love and gets even with Dev is brilliant. And so is the scene earlier in the film when Dev snubs Paro and she goes ballistic with the hand pump. These are scenes that cannot be written by the Karan Johars and Farah Khans of Bollywood. These are closer to real life and miles away from the world of rich industrialist families shown in the scours of Bollywood films that hit the screen every Friday opening show (Note that Dev’s family is one of the rich industrialist families in Punjab, yet the potrayal of wealth is so much understated and real)
The camera work is excellent. The beauty of the rural Punjab and the congestion of Delhi, the psychedelic world of Drugs and alcohol, Chanda’s haven where she stocks disguises are all fantastically shot.

The editing is top notch. Note the change in pace of editing as it shifts from the village to the city. The edit during the village phase is much slower and as it reaches the city, the pace quickens giving you a feel of hastiness and restlessness. The use of water, where Dev occasionally dumps himself after a drug inhaling session acts as a metaphor of cutting himself from the rest of the world into his own and drowning himself even more into his own self destruction. Every shot has a reason to be there. Every character is needed. Every character has its positive and negative traits. Nothing is black and white, only different shades of grey.

The film would be incomplete without its songs and the background score. Emosional attyachar is one song where I saw people literally clap as it started and you would feel to clap too. The juxtaposition of comedy with the tragedy is perfect. The background score and the songs truly makes this film a musical.

I would highly recommend this emosional attyachar. And would also tell you that if you are a filmmaker, you should grab a copy of it. Hopefully, if it comes out with a directors commentary, it would be a school of learning on the thought process that went through each scene.

The silverlining

This post is dedicated to a friend.

Once there was a little flower. A little flower that lived amongst the million strands of grass. She would bloom in the morning looking at the sun. They were the best of friends. When the sun went behind the clouds she would wait for the clouds to pass. She would smile, and glow a radiance that would bring a smile to the eyes of the beholder.

But one day, the sky was full of clouds. It rained and rained. Deafening thunder and blinding lightning filled the skies. It seemed the sun had gone for ever. The ravaging wind tested the flower. The flower shivered in fear, scared that the wind would uproot her from her roots. She tried hard to fight the wind, but eventually, she was separated from the ground. She was taken by the gushing wind into the horizon. Soon, the storm had passed. She found herself dry, lying on unknown soil. She looked around. She had dried up. Her seeds had fallen to the ground. The sun smiled at her. She tried to smile back. She was weak, she was old. She went to sleep. She slept for many days.

One day the wind whistled into her ears. She opened up her eyes. She looked around. There were little buds surrounding her. They were dancing in the wind eager to grow up and bloom. As she closed her eyes, she understood, that she has attained her destiny. She closed her eyes one last time.

Culture Vultures

In line of the pub-culture that is ‘eroding’ Indian culture, a moral police force is being set up to save Indian culture. Political parties who have not been voted into power are asserting that the current and the past Governments have not upheld the Indian culture at its highest decree. These political parties are asserting that Indian culture must be saved at any cost and it is this culture that makes us better than the rest of the world.

Did I hear a chuckle, or was it a sigh, or is it a seething anger raging from within?

Firstly, one of the prime important aspect of this moral policing is the kind of people who are trying to guard Indian culture. I mean, how educated are they? How much do they know about Indian culture? If they know about Indian culture, they should understand that the entire epic of Mahabharat is full of Sex and Violence. How was Karna, Yudishtir, Bhim, Arjun, Nakul and Sahdev born?

If people still believe the Mahabharat that was shown on television where Kunti and Madri were impregnated by a ray emenating from the palms of Gods, they must be really out of their minds. And why did the Gods have to impregnate King Pandu’s wives?

For a brief introduction to people who are unaware of this, here is a snippet. Once King Pandu had gone hunting and saw two deers making love. It was actually Shiva and Parvathi (both Gods eventually) making love in the form of deers. Pandu shot the deer. Lord Shiva (Alternatively, the Sage) gave a curse on him that the next time he touches a woman, he will die. (Poor chap) That is when Kunti used a boon given to her by Sage Durvasa where she could call upon the Gods to bear a child. So, the first time she experimented before her marriage and Karna was born from Surya (Sun) and later after her wedding with Pandu, she followed it up with five other Gods. Every pandav and kaurav had affairs and flings, and childbirth out of wedlocks. Would these culture police deny its existence? The society then had accepted the sexual freedom then, so why this taboo today?

So, the concept of Indian culture being so conservative as a theory can be thrown out of the window. What the self-appointed culture police is talking about is baseless and hollow. Also, India is one of the few places in epics, where women had very powerful stance in the society and were treated equal to men. Those who have read Indian epics would vouch for it. I don’t know when the imposition of rules and discrimination against women started in our culture. Just when things have begun to change, a demented sect of the society wants to take up the act of culture vultures and bring back the discrimination. My question is, these politicians, or party workers, how many of them are teetotalers? How many of them can are actually honest to their women? If women consuming alcohol is wrong, why does it not hold true to men as well? Knowing their societal disposition, I guess everyone in their minds know the answers.

The Rajasthan CM said he has a problem with couple holding hands. So, does he mean, he has the right to oppose it by raising a hand?

Indian democracy is today in the hands of hypocrites. Do yourself a favor. VOTE!!!

Ouch!!!

Yesterday as I walked back home from the car park to my building, i saw a mother and a child rushing into the building. The mother was dragging the child holding his arm and after a few steps would slap him on his back and telling him that he would definitely fail this year if he does not stop playing and start studying. I looked at my watch. It was 9.45 PM. This reminded me of a similar incidences a couple of years back.

As it is very rare with people growing apart due to their constant fluctuations in priorities, many of us, childhood friends actually met at the gate of our colony. It was not planned, but it just seemed to happen. A couple of friends were sitting on the steps of the room that housed the step-up transformer, and friends trickled in and chatted and soon the entire gang was there, all joking about their work and apprising each other of where their life was heading. It was then that a mother was dragging a child home, beating him and complaining, while the child was jumping away trying to avoid the hits his mother was throwing at him. At once, all of us had become silent. When they had gone, we all looked at each other, and without saying anything everyone had traced their memory in the past. It was a moment for everyone present there.

Everyone started sharing a story of theirs. It was nostalgic, but one of the funniest ones was by Amarjeet. He was always at the receiving end during childhood days. He was, the Sardar. Today, he runs a dealership of bikes. But as a kid, he was always the one who would hardly pass an exam. His father was a taxi driver and the family depended entirely on the income his father would bring in driving a taxi through the day. As usual, he had failed in the exam and his mother was tired of persuading him to study, and the only way out, it seemed to her was to put him in to the fury of his father when he returned home after driving his taxi, 12 hours in the congested roads of Bombay. When his mother told his father that he had failed, his father, who probably had a bad experience with a passenger was furious. He took out his belt and started hitting him with it. Blows came down in hard strikes and Amarjeet screamed for help. His father too was screaming.

He kept yelling. 'How many times will you fail in the Seventh Standard?'

Amarjeet screamed in pain and was crying, trying to tell him something. but the screams merged with the words and did not make any sense.

Finally when his father was tired of beating him, Amarjeet whimpered 'Papa, I am in the Ninth standard.'

Doordarshan Nostalgia

Yesterday, I was flipping through the infinite channels on television, and was not able to find one, atleast one show watchable. After taking approximately 12 minutes to find one, I switched it off to float into solitude. I was wondering of the olden days when searching for a smile-evoking show was not that difficult. I wondered how we had survived that era, of the 1980’s. I remember we used to abandon playing cricket and run into Sajith’s house on the ground floor to catch the animated Spiderman at 5.30. At 6 pm, we would be back to where we had started. It was a time when we used to break window panes trying to emulate Sunil Gavaskar or Srikant. A time when we would be crazy about Wimbledon because that was the only place we could see pretty ladies wearing short skirts (Doordarshan used to have a huge censorship board)

I switched the TV on and searched for Doordarshan, and apparently, I did not have it tuned on my television. Such an arrogant treatment to a medium that used to be the only entertainment source in the 80’s I wondered. I can still remember the sequence of programs that used to be played on Doordarshan almost every Sunday. 9 o’clock would start with He-man, 9.30 was a mythological roller-coaster, first Ramayan and then Mahabharat. We would sit and relish magical arrows flying from both sides and blasting off whenever they met. 10.30 would be Potli baba ki, a puppet show that beautifully captured the essence of Alibaba and the forty thieves. And at 11 would be Indradanush, about a boy who was a time traveler. At 1.00 there would be the news for the hearing impaired. I remember, we, trying to mute the television and try to figure out what the gestures were as muted Rini Simon used to read the news.

Doordarshan, I believed in those days, held together the entire country in a cultural code, with its tight ropes on censorship. Who could forget the Chitrahaar and the Chayageet that used to happen on Wednesdays and Fridays, and NDTV’s World this week by Prannoy Roy that changed the perspective of the otherwise mundane Newsreading. Usha Alberqueque, Preet Bedi, Sunit Tandon, Neethi Ravindran, Rini Simon, and the fiery Komal Singh had become household names of those times when everyone waited for the news in English at 8.30 pm to 9.00 PM. Many families used to time their dinners to watch the weekly episodes of Nukkad, Yeh jo hai Zindagi, Karamchand, Intezar, Waghle ki Duniya, Mungerilaal ke haseen sapney, Surabhi, Mirza Ghalib, and the intense story on partition, Tamas. Not to forget Swami of Malgudi Days, and the fiery housewife Rajni. Those were the days when there was quality in the content that we watched and stayed long in our memory. The pull of the content was so strong that we used to wait for the next episode which would be played next week. Sorry for interruption or Rukhawat ke liye khed hai, was one of the most used slates in Doordarshan during those days. Vicco Vajradanthi ads used to be played over and over again for years. The jingles of Nirma, Lijjat Papad, and the Lyril ads never tired us and we ad libed to the jingle as it played. The ads of Nirodh and Mala-D would see the elders, embarrassed, trying to take off our attention from the television by asking someone to check the door as if someone had rung the door bell or check if the fan in the other room was not switched off.

Those were the days when a wind would turn the antenna and we had to go to the terrace and turn it to the direction of the Doordarshan tower, which we used to call as Mecca of the T. V. antennas. Whenever a political hunk would have bade farewell to the world, it was the most boring week for us all, when sad music would emanate from the mono speakers of the television sets.

Today with so many channels and so many shows, mostly unreal reality shows and lousy soap operas, it becomes very difficult to tell one from the other. Even the news channel look like soap operas with each journalistic story extended into a reality show. With a fierce race to garner more TRP’s, I wonder if that era will ever return when television channels would focus on meaningful programming than churning the same old shit they have been churning out over the past few years.

Honestly, even though I love the technological progress that the world is achieving in media and communication, yet, I miss those simple little things one channel used to gift us. Gifts of memories that we all remember fondly, even today.

I do miss Doordarshan. I pressed the search button on the remote trying to tune Doordarshan on my T.V.

Untitled Story - Chapter 1

This story is inspired by a true story.

Death. The only truth that has always remained constant. Many of us live in search of a destiny. Some say we make our own, some say our destiny is already written. But, the fact is that all human beings in this world face only one destiny. This destiny makes no distinction between the rich or the poor, caste or color, or the era that we live in. Death is the destiny which we all, in this planet share.

Death is the only absolute truth.

On a cold chilly morning in Mumbai, Sujata found her grandfather lying motionless in his bed. The curtains waved in the slight breeze that entered into the room through the closed louvered windows. The light entered into the room through the frosted glass windows casting the distorted shadow of the flowery designed grill on to the mosaic floor. The rocking chair stood still waiting for someone to rock it. The only sound that broke the chilly silence was the constant grunt of the pigeons that had made home outside the window on the grill outside the closed windows. The air had an eerie smell of death. The superstitious would claim that the spirits of the ancestors had arrived in the room to welcome their son into the afterlife. The cawing crow on the barren gulmohur tree would have been the testimony, but the crows refused to descend.

He lay on the old bed made of rich teak wood and covered with a mosquito net that hung from the beams around the bed. His eyes were closed and he wore a content smile on his face. He was wearing a recently ironed shirt and his favorite khakhi trousers. An old HMT watch ticked away on his right hand oblivious to the cold hands of death that had taken away the breath of his master. He was well shaven, and wore the favorite perfume his grandson had gifted him four years back. He had dressed in a way he would have, if he were to meet an important person or an army dignitary who would visit him once in a while. It seemed as if he knew his time had come for the final journey.

On a normal day, Major Gandhi would wake up at 5 in the morning and go for his walk along the Marine Drive, where he would meet his retired Army friends. He would return home by seven and would be found reading the newspaper on his rocking chair. When Sujata found that the newspaper was not picked up from the door, the thought that came into her mind was that he might have been involved in some intense political discussion with his friends. But when he had not returned by 7.30, she decided to check his room.

As she saw the lifeless body on the bed, she felt weak on her knees and fumbled. She held his cold hands hoping he would tighten his grip trying to comfort her saying that everything will be alright. His cold hands were stiff. Tears filled her eyes, words failed her as she tried to call out. The entire room seemed to be enveloped in vacuum of silence. Sujata gathered courage and went to his table. His diary lay open on the table. The ink pen was neatly kept beside it.
A note lay next to his diary.

My lovely Sujata,
Everyone has to leave one day. I too have to leave. It is time. I have lived my life to the fullest and have been extremely blessed to have such a wonderful family who I am very proud of. There is so much to tell you and so less time. Alas, we all realise this when there is hardly any time left. I am leaving behind my diary. It contains a truth I had hidden from everyone for a very long time. I hope you all understand and forgive me from keeping the truth away from you.
Lovingly,
Your Dadaji

16 easy steps to become a fraud billionaire

Fraud is the evil version of smart. When the Satyam scam was revealed, the first thing that came to many minds is ’How many more companies like these exist?’ rest assured I can confidently say – Many.

BRR… (Byrraju Ramalinga Raju) truly gave us the chills this winter. He would probably be the only one to confess of his misdoings. Many will try to cover up. Had this event happened in China, the fraud would have been completely in wraps by the Chinese Government. They cannot allow their country to be tainted. But we do. Ours is a democracy.

I think setting up a fraud company is easy if you are a people’s person, and have a little bit of money to spend as investment to create billions. All you need is a bit of money to survive six months and panache in making friends with people who matter. Here is my version of things you need to do be a successful fraud billionaire!

Sweet Sixteen steps to a billion dollar future –
1. Look into the newspapers and find out the most emerging sector in the next three years. You have to be there in the thick when the boom has arrived.
2. Create a plan. Not just a business plan, but along with it a plan how you will make money and exit the business. You need to be focused on the end result.
3. Form a company. Start small, and make the business plan showing the large numbers that the business shall make for the investors. Collect newspaper cuttings to reiterate the fact.
4. Find a hardworking partner. A genius. This is the guy you would be F***ing up in the end. Show your large-heartedness by making him a signatory. He will take you as a God-send. But you are going to have the last laugh!
5. Get a fabulous website. Copy paste content from leading businesses in your competition site and make your own content. Focus more on polishing up with your credentials. Appoint a marketing guy who would bring in small time projects into your company. The marketing guy and the co-promoter you appointed will get the ball rolling for the company. But remember you are here to make the big bucks.
6. Network. Go for CII conferences, peer conferences. Wear a suite and remmber to wear a Montblanc pen in your suite. Make high flying friends. If you have the right aptitude you will never pay for the drinks or the dinner or lunch. If you can do that, you are closer to success.
7. Simultaneously, approach retired chairmen’s, vice presidents or ex-bosses to be a non-executive Director of your board. Or ask them to be advisors. They would always love to be part of a board of a different company. Sometimes a good ego massage and a bottle of champagne can do the trick.
8. Update your website with the decorated board of directors. Keep sending them gifts and personally deliver the quarterly reports. Talk about the business for five minutes and then shift to the weather and the best games and movies. Chances are they will become your best friends and trust you better.
9. Get a friend or his company to audit. Remember he must be as hungry for money as you are.
10. Get ready to get in investment. Announce that know you plan to go big. Cheer up the team. You need them. Announce Esops for all the loyal employees. Start hiring. Put a press release that you are hiring heavily. Take some loan from banks, even un-secure loans. Remember you are not the signatory ;)
11. Approach investors. Be vivacious. Be unrealistic. Use the word ‘passion’ as many times as possible. Talk about your past, or if you don’t have any decorative past, cook it up. Never take names. They might know the people. Drop names of people you have networked with from Step no. 6.
12. Chances are that a smart investor will catch you right in the start. If you get caught just use the statement 'Those investors did not find a convincing synergy with their business functions' or any likewise misleading statements. Remember, you have to fish for investors who are known for money laundering. It is just for this level of investment. Once you cross this, then the world is your playground. This is your biggest challenge. But once you have such an ignorant investor, you are cool on your way of becoming a billionaire.
13. Start international travels. Open an office in the US. Scout for work and apply for US citizenship. Hand over operations in India to someone dumb.
14. Start an LLC in your own company name, but just you and your family as the shareholders. Start sending work to India. Bill in your US firms name, say that the US firms are comfortable only if the company has a US office. Here is the big bucks coming your way. You send the operating expenses to your Indian counterpart. The profits are now yours alone.
15. After a few years, say that it is difficult to sustain and that you would like to exit. Demand a lumpsum for your shareholding. Hand the Indian counterpart details of your clients. You cant manage it yourself anyways!
16. If you are smart you end up being rich and start another fraud company or become an investor. If the scam is unearthed, the poor guy who you made as a partner is screwed and you are sitting safe in the US!

All the best!!

Disclaimer: I will not accept any responsibility or liability if someone fails to become a billionaire using this method. Oh yes, I shall definitely try to come and meet you in jail! Follow this method at your own risk!