Indian cinema before Om Shanti Om

Did you know that Bollywood produced movies much

before Om Shanti Om was made?

BD Garga, a highly regarded film historian, concludes an essay on Indian films by quoting critic Andrew Sarris: movies are livelier than ever. Movies are sillier than ever. Take your pick. All analyses of this subject have to eventually negotiate these binary bumps. Of course, it is not as though only Indian cinema has been a source of exasperation to those who believed in the grand promises made by the new art. Disillusionment has deepened darkness in screening rooms across the world. Somewhere in his Histoire(s) du Cinema, Godard comments that cinema was nothing but a peddler who supplied us with cut-price signs. But later, he also suggest that cinema has the capacity to reclaim its power to express restorative truths. There, the binary bumps again.

To take one’s pick from the Indian movies of the nineties, one would have to choose from the many ‘romantic musicals’ clamouring for attention. Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, a 1994 blockbuster is one example. It focused on rituals connected with marriage and examined such themes as the conflict arising from the pressure to adhere to family codes and the need to follow personal impulses. It was a clean fare: love, music and goofiness completely unblemished by violence or vulgarity. Audiences across India received the film with great affection.

A later release, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai replicates the formula successfully. Its vision of the ideal Indian woman a demure mother-figure, secure in the shadow of her man -- no doubt annoying to many -- is obscured by such fripperies as dances and elaborate script ploys to keep the lady away from the hero until the very end. At any rate, the audience reaction convinced producers to tick off similar conventions at a furious rate (I did not see many movies of that age, so correcy me if I presume too much). Formulaic postulations, it seems, can fail as far as action films are concerned. The disappointing performance of Major Saab, despite the presence of the original Indian superstar, Amitabh Bachchan, must encourage movie moguls to fete the virtues of family entertainment.

One cannot proceed further without paying obeisance to Bachchan though. His sinewy figure shimmered on Indian screens for nearly two decades. His rise began in the seventies, a troubled period blighted by an increase in crime, corruption and a degeneration of political institutions. The events were to lead to the Emergency of 1975. Bachchan, who often played the angry, embittered youth, was not always on the right side of the law. In Deewar for example, he is forced by circumstances to turn to smuggling. But the moral stand of the director is unambiguous in the end: Bachchan’s wealth and power are shown to be worthless. His righteous brother, a police officer by the way, crushes him by saying that although he may have the palatial houses and the cars, their mother has chosen the son who treads the straight and narrow. Sholay, a history-defining curry western, had Bachchan playing an endearingly gruff crook who redeems himself by sacrificing his life while fighting a greater evil.

The period preceding the Bachchan era was dominated by fluffy love tales frequently starring Rajesh Khanna. The mainstream did not provide works that could have endured as serious documents. But in 1969, Mrinal Sen with Bhuvan Shome, inaugurated the New Indian cinema. His appearance could not have come at a more appropriate time. The stars of such influential figures as Mehboob Khan and Bimal Roy were waning. Their attempt to make sense of the world around them was particularly important because it came so early in the evolving history of Indian cinema. Roy’s Sujata (1959) was a sensitive study of the caste system. In fact, to underscore the point that cinema is a powerful instrument because it can stare at uncomfortable social constructs, it must be pointed out that issues related to caste were examined by Achyut Kanya as early as the thirties .

This brings us back to the binary bumps. If SS Vasan produced a Busby Berkeley-scale spectacle (Chandralekha, 1948), then there was also Uday Shankar’s genre-twisting Kalpana. The following years were to be privileged by KA Abbas’s Dharti ke Lal, framed against the terrible Bengal famine of 1942; Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (The Song of the Road); and Guru Dutt’s meditation on artistic angst, Kaagaz Ke Phool.

The miracle of cinema appeared in India just months after its birth in Paris. It has kept pace, both stylistically and in terms of thematic sophistication. It is likely that commercial imperatives will continue to assail our filmmakers’ desire to craft narratives that seek to clarify the absurd reality of our lives. So, as Indian cinema keeps its engagement with history, the twin bumps of market forces and redemptive impulses will continue to shape it contours.

Marlboro goddess, philosophers, & ppt

To read the post in its newspaper form, visit:
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1093513

A few days ago, a suburban philosophical society in Mumbai - where I had applied for membership - invited me to present a paper. It was not a test, the amateur philosophers assured me. It was an occasion to understand my concerns. But their letter suggested that the understanding should last at least two hours (one comfort break allowed).
You will notice that the reference to the society is lower-cased and generic. The society is nameless because its tyro thinkers are divided on the branding issue. Other issues that divide them are life, cosmos, morality, and the least deceiving fruit vendor in Malad. They all, however, agree that the essential condition for a vada pav to be thus is to have at least two constituents: vada and pav.
I chose existentialism for the initiation and created a 45-slide PowerPoint presentation. PowerPoint lectures look slick and afford control over the pace of proceedings. And no one notices that you are reading from a prepared script.
Scholarly cues were vital for me. I tend to say Satyr when I mean Sartre. Jean-Paul Satyr would be considered a blameless bourgeois malapropism in most circles. But there are those who study Sartre, and his girlfriend Sunset de Boulevard, with the enthralled attentiveness I usually reserve for scrutinising my credit card statements. And such people are apt to be finicky about getting names right.
I was anxious to impress all members of the society. But I would have settled for an indulgent half-smile from just one. A chain-smoking goddess who was self-haloed by the incense of her Marlboros. Her eyes impaled those around her with the intensity of the red-chilly powder that elevates idlis, simpleton rice pancakes, to the gastronomic Elysium. Her voice was made of combustible gusts of disdain and seduction.
In short, she was the sort of woman with whom every Satyr would want an open marriage.
The presentation began with a cleverly heraldic slide titled "What is existentialism?'. My opening remarks consisted of a joke designed to disarm the audience: "Good afternoon. If you take away all the guff from existentialism," I said, "the philosophy really says 'life sucks and we all need mutual funds'. Ha Ha…er, right, we will move on."
The next slide was the gravamen of the existentialist thought, cut and pasted from a clear-headed online summary. I hit the scroll button on the borrowed laptop to get on to what I hoped would be the ripe stuff.
It was ripe stuff all right. It was a blazing picture of a blonde woman of indeterminate nationality. Her only garment was a squirrel of indeterminate sex. At precisely the moment the photographer had chosen to immortalise his subject, the squirrel - believer of the free will school - had chosen to cover the lady's throat. My roommate, from whom I had borrowed the laptop, had played a practical joke. He had wanted to 'check mail' minutes before I was due to leave for the presentation. His naked lie had been exposed now.
A hiss tore through the room. It was not a disgusted or an infuriated hiss. It was a gratified exclamation of those who had secured clinching evidence to justify the lynching of an upstart. It was a familiar sound. I had heard it in an Iyer gathering when a Punjabi neighbour was bracing himself to pronounce 'Shanmugam Doraiswamy Subramaniam'.
The Marlboro goddess left the room. At that very moment, I made the most affirming decision of my life: I would never make a presentation again on a borrowed laptop.

A very English rebuff

I received this mail from The Economist, on July 6, 2001, in response to my job application. Perhaps sensing my unsuitability, I had asked for a year's free subscription in lieu of an opening!

Dear Kannan Somasundaram,
Thank you for your recent e-mail. As you no doubt appreciate, we have a steady stream of applicants wishing to work for The Economist, but in a typical year, very few vacancies crop up. At the moment we have nothing that would be suitable to consider you for. However, we shall keep your application on file, and be back in touch with you should the situation change. We do not, as a rule, give out free subscriptions and therefore I am afraid that I will have to say no to that request too (Use of 'too' somewhat diminishes the reassurance of the rest of the mail. Rummy!)
Yours sincerely,
pp. Katie Hourigan
Bill Emmott
Editor
Dictated by Mr Emmott and sent in his absence. (He was, no doubt, busy writing a leader about poor countries.)

Poorly received pronunciation

Mumbai residents chop syllables to sound posh. Folks in the satellite town of Navi Mumbai say ‘tosh!’

Navi Mumbai is ‘New’ Mumbai, a newly developed IT hub. Bandra is a posh western Mumbai suburb; Andheri is a yuppie neighbourhood near Bandra; Worli is posher-than-Bandra precinct in south-central Mumbai. Other localities mentioned are in Navi Mumbai.

“I shall put all the ailments in place for yah wedding,” said the exquisite package of professional keenness and combustible beauty. Everything about her was reassuringly sharp. Creases on her faux-Armani suit, the highlights flickering on her precision haircut, and her colossal calculator that had more keys than a jail warden's belt. Yet my friend, who was on the threshold of terminating his bachelorhood, stiffened into shock. After all, you don’t surrender your life’s savings to a wedding planner so that she can add a touch of lumbago, gout, or even halitosis to the happy event. A tactful request for elaboration, however, clarified matters. The precious dynamite, it turned out, was affecting the posh Bandra accent and had meant to say ‘elements.’ Cannot blame her, her office isn’t too far from the Hill Road.

A worrying number of Mumbaikars flatten syllables to amplify their social superiority. Sadly, the message is often a wreck of syntax and intention. The misguided population that mauls language is distributed across the city. Yet Mumbai’s part-time sociologists (with alternate professions ranging from vada-pav peddling to screenplay writing) characterise the clipped gibberish as Bandra brogue. That is a justifiable reflex, given that the density of those who dice vowels is perhaps the highest in the city’s western suburb.

Some Navi Mumbaikars fear that it is only a matter of time before this brand of pretentiousness infects the satellite town.

“I was seeing this dishy guy from Worli,” says Bindu Joaquin, an engineering student from Nerul. “But he spoke as though he had a permanent sore under his tongue. Mo-thaw (for mother), saw-ray (for sorry)…he was insufferably stiff,” she says. It incensed her that the man’s fastidious extravagance in enunciation exposed his poor pronunciation. “He would sound like an illiterate tractor when it came to saying things like ‘pint’ or ‘honest’. I had enough, in about two weeks,” she says.

Joaquin’s new boyfriend is a Malayali from Vashi. She is, inexplicably, wary of providing an assessment of his pronunciation ability. “He is unlike the typical snooty Mumbai bloke. Besides, he has a nice dress sense and a heart of gold,” she says. Joaquin can take an odd ‘sweet-hard’ from a man who holds doors open for her. Anikhet Gargava, a Sanpada resident who works for a prominent bank in Nariman Point, believes he has an intelligible explanation for Mumbai’s conceited façade. “It’s all because of Mumbai’s tony pubs. Stewards there are better groomed, better built and better dressed than the average patron from, say, Andheri,” Gargava says. He reasons that the image-conscious Mumbaikars have acquired the mongrel-Oxbridge accent only to impress the supercilious waiters. “Here in Navi Mumbai, my faithful Raju bhau at the local bar does not care how I speak. He barely has the time to slam a large Old Monk^ on the table before moving on to the next bevda#,” he says. The exchange likely to be heart-warmingly homey and without airs: “Rum paijey, fast!”/“Ho!”/”Cheers, bhau!”/”Ho!” *

#Drunkard (in Marathi)
^Inexpensive rum preferred by college students and bourgeoisie baiters
*Ho = Yes; Paijey = want; Bhau = brother (in Marathi)

Savoir faire guide

With practice, anyone can speak with connoisseur's authority on wine or caviar.

Insider's idiom
Ummm: Risk-free, reliable, and easy to remember. This neutral term can be calibrated to express either anxiety or delight. 'Ummm' is of the same vintage as Dan Maskel's "Oh, I say". Maskell, the BBC's venerated tennis commentator, was the voice of Wimbledon from 1951 to 1991. His catchphrase, served in several subtle tonal textures, was always an ace.

Delicate as a tender mesquite: Works well for wines. Mesquite is an American tree often used for making charcoal. Similes that creep around botany's branches are still favoured by some wine critics. But beware of neo-connoisseurs who may testily dismiss you with the classic back-to-basics slight: "I personally prefer my wine to taste of grapes." By the way, mesquite can be interchanged with casuarina, pine, or verbena

It reminds me of that famous 'Combray' moment in Proust's great novel: Apt when dessert is being served. The incident describes how a hesitant nibble of the madeleine cake makes warm childhood memories course through the mind of the narrator. Don't worry, nobody has ever read the whole novel, which for the record, is Á la recherche du temps perdu. Yes, Proust wrote in French, and the English version is known as Remembrance of Things Past. No, the book has not been adapted by Clint Eastwood - just yet.

Signs of a pretender
Delectable: Pretenders' padding, guaranteed to relegate you to the loneliest single-seat couch at any gathering. You can use this word with smug recklessness only at a costume party to which you go dressed as 'Microsoft Word Document'.

Melting in the mouth: Some prickly usage gurus have pointed out that even a dog's refuse would melt in the mouth.

Scrumptious: A dodgy choice if some drunk asks you to spell it.
This drink tastes great: Remember the hostel room, cheap rum, and plastic tumblers? Back then everything was either great or screwed. The chic don't like it straight, especially when talking of Scotch smuggled during a training programme in Bangkok. Go to google.com and try to learn something about the 'drink that sounds like Glenn McGrath'.

Abstract Expressionism meets Mumbai poverty, a rich collaboration

Poverty, hunger, and moral confusion debilitated the United States and many world metros during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The difficult years shaped the art of several young US painters who found creative integrity in Abstract Expressionism. The economic downturn had spurred two other art movements: Regionalism and Social Realism.
Regionalism refuted the promise of technology and urban culture by eulogising the wholesomeness of rural life. Social Realism wanted to “fight the beautiful art” and expose delusions of idealism by recording the struggles of the poor. But Abstract Expressionists were dissatisfied with both movements. Their experience required means of fulfilling a social purpose that rose above sloganeering. Personal consciousness was central to these artists’ works. And improvisation, which precluded adherence to dogma, was critical to their aspiration to paint what they really wanted to. So they would never have been susceptible to uncomplicated reactions, either pity or indulgent wonder, when faced with poverty, hunger, or moral confusion.
In Mumbai, desperation and the will to survive square up against each other every day. And in the paintings of Jiri Kobos, a German Abstract Expressionist of Czech origin, the conflict is recounted without the smug hysterical tone that foreigners usually affect while describing India. Kobos, who has lived in Mumbai for several years, has observed how a big city can degrade its citizens. More than 30 of his 40 works featured in his second exhibition in the city — Made in India, which opens on November 19 at Grand Hyatt in Santa Cruz — are based on life in Mumbai.
Abstract Expressionism allows Kobos to resist the temptation of issuing simplistic social messages. And his understanding of Zen Buddhism helps him appreciate the harmony that Mumbai brokers among its people divided by status, religion, and ideology.
In Vibrant Times, a large canvas (120X100 cm) that could be an aerial view of the Mumbai, Kobos represents a meditative sweep across a terrain that seems enchanting as well as forbidding. Alluring swathes of red and yellow are encroached upon by nagging patches of black, especially at the corners. Those who know Mumbai will recognise the allusion, but Kobos issues a challenge to go beyond connecting the painting with familiar facts and evaluating the work as a relationship between colour, form, and movement. The elements in Vibrant Times seem to be organised around a light-coloured nucleus. The arrangement suggests a continuous swirl in which no form can take its place for granted. In the Abstract Expressionistic tradition, every part of the painting invites equal attention, engaging the eye in a swift loop of gazing that recalls the never-ending bustle of Mumbai.
In Gate to Paradise (120X120cm) Kobos effects an assured pictorial balance of powers again. Black is no longer a mere encroacher. In a neighbourhood of red and yellow, it rises as a formidable presence from the bottom of the left corner. Other dark sections line the top and lower halves of the right side of the canvas. But thin streaks of yellow, running through black, install a glimmer of encouragement on the way to paradise.
After the Rain (180x150cm) establishes a reconciliation between Nature’s inconsistent forces: its power to resuscitate and destroy life. The furious spin of green, white and yellow creates a vortex of intensity at the centre of the painting. Like heavy rain, it thrills and frightens.
Kobos has lived through two Mumbai monsoons, as a painter and as the general manager of Hyatt Regency.