Sneha Jaiswal's Blog, page 293

Third Hand Tragedy

I went to bed at 5 am, which meant, waking up was not going to happen any time soon. At around 10 am, husband tried to wake me up, said something about a ‘gas leak in Vizag, almost like what happened in Bhopal’. That’s all I figured while still half-asleep. He said he spoke to my parents and they were fine.

Some context – Vizag is a beach city in south-India and Bhopal Gas Tragedy was a gas leak incident in 1984, which caused an immediate death toll of over 2000 people.

I have spent a significant amount of my life in Vizag, a little over ten years, up until college, which was 2011. Since my parents still live there, visits to the city are made pretty often.

When I finally woke up, there were several unread messages on my phone, from concerned friends and family, asking me if my parents are fine.

‘Read about Vizag Gas Leak, hope your parents and relatives are fine,’ was the basic gist of most messages. So I read 2-3 online news reports to understand what the heck was going on, before calling my parents with second-hand information.

This is what happened – there was a gas leak in a chemical plant owned by LG Polymers in an area called Gopalapatnam, which was on the outskirts of Vizag. The immediate death toll was 8 and over 1000 people were affected.

“Phew, that’s nowhere close to where my parents stay. Nothing to worry about.” I tell myself. In fact nobody I knew stayed any where close to the area. But suddenly I remembered that maybe a close friend of mom’s lived in the area.

One of the messages from my mother-in-law said “spoke to your mom, she is quite upset, which is understandable”.

A video call to my mother confirmed my guess, a close friend of hers did stay in the same area and had to evacuate her flat with family because they were within 1km radius of gas leak site.

“Her son said that they can move to a friend’s place. I told her that she could come and stay with us too. It’s such a terrible time. Because of this lockdown, most hotels and lodges are also closed…” Mom went on.

However, the timing was not co-incidental. Sample this from an Indian Express report –

An official of LG Polymers issued a statement that there was 1800 tonnes of styrene in the storage tank. He said that due to stagnation and changes in temperature it could have resulted in auto polymerization which could have caused vapourisation.

Almost all initial reports suggest that one of the reasons why this tragedy happened was because the plant was left unattended, owing to the COVID19 lockdown. A thorough investigation will help us better understand what really went wrong.

Mom seemed a little shaken from the incident and complained that the air around our house felt a little different. She seemed to be suffering from a negative placebo effect, because our house in Vizag is at least 12 kilometres away from Gopalapatnam.

I decided to check on a few other people I knew in Vizag, even though I was sure that they stayed at a safe distance too.

Turned out that a college classmate of mine who teaches, two of her students had gone to visit their grandmother in the same area and had to be rushed to the hospital. They were taken to the intensive care unit but were later declared out of danger.

[image error]Screenshot of an excerpt of the chat with my friend

I looked up some helpline numbers issued by the state government and shared it online, just in case it could turn out to be useful to someone.

[image error]Someone else mentioned a friend who lived in the area and saw people writhing helplessly on the roads. To him, death seemed all too real. For us, far away, miles away, death was just a third hand experience on our televisions. Not even second hand.

Reading Old Works

Have you ever gone back to something that you might have written a decade ago? Something that seemed exciting at the time, but now, with years in between, when you go back to those words, they seem alien, strange, almost unbearable.

Six years ago, I almost finished writing a novel, only the last chapter was pending. It was about a guy recalling his past relationships with women from a jail cell. Doesn’t sound like too bad a plot right?

I found myself reading the manuscript after discovering a hard-drive that hasn’t been touched in three years. It’s survival for almost eight years is almost a miracle. Because I am someone who easily loses things, including useful memories. Honestly, I could not read beyond a paragraph. In fact, that was the reason why I abandoned the project over a decade ago – it was unreadable. The sheer discovery made me seriously question my skills as a writer, but soon, I just went back to being a regular journalist, writing generic mediocre crap, with no time on the sides to write any fiction.

Sometimes, when the mood wasn’t right, my mind would drift into the need to write poems. And on extremely rare occasions, I would get this burst of desire to pen down a short story and most of the times, it would only be half a short story, sometimes just a paragraph and everything would be forgotten.

But then, thanks to the old hard-drive, there has been a discovery of some interesting old short stories, some half-forgotten novels, some terrible, others exciting. I am trying to salvage one, which originally was intended to be a long novel, but it’s silly, so maybe I would curtail it to a novella for personal reading and as some writing practice.

Mrs Serial Killer – Why?

I rarely watch films without seeing the trailer. And when Netflix boldly showed Mrs Serial Killer on my home page last Saturday morning, I thought “okay, let’s give this a try”.

It starts off with the leading lady Jacqueline Fernandez (Jacky) crying and saying “this story is about to end”.

It doesn’t look like the start of a movie. Instead, it’s like you are watching a very bad audition tape of some wannabe actor.

She does a mix of crying and laughing that is hideously terrible. Her way of talking is *cringe cringe*

And then somebody with an even more irritating voice starts shouting in the background.

There is a girl tied on a bed and apparently Jacky has been torturing her.

The scene looks unreal and out of some early 2000s video game. What the hell are so many glucose drip bags doing there?

Anyway, this other actor says something on the lines of “you think you can scare me with your psycho stare? I can do better”.

And then comes the horror. The other actor gives what is supposed to be a mean glare to Jacky. As a viewer you are totally confused. You cannot decide who is the worse actor!

Next we see Manoj Bajpai, who plays Jacky’s husband talking to her over a video call. And that scene was just uncomfortable to watch. Bajpai is naturally acting his part, while Jacky with her unnerving Hindi is so bad, so bad, that I couldn’t watch further.

I was wondering how did Manoj Bajpai even do his role without breaking into a laugh at his co-actor’s lack of skill?

This movie was extremely unbearable in the very first few minutes. Just didn’t have it in me to ruin my Saturday morning. Had Jacky been a side character, it would have been a different story. But with a lead actor so bad in their role, you just cannot survive this movie if you value your time.

The Farewell, Or Not.

‘The Farewell’, a 2019 film directed by Lulu Wang piqued my interest because it has actor Awkwafina in the lead, the actor who stood out in the romantic hit film ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ as the zany best friend of the protagonist.

In farewell, Awkwafina stars as Billi, who despite growing up in New York, is extremely attached to her paternal grandmother who has been left behind in China by her two sons. While the elder brother is settled in Japan, the younger one, Billi’s father, is settled in the U.S.

The central plot is about how both brothers decide it is best to shield their aging mother from the knowledge that she had been diagnosed with cancer and has only a few days to left to live.

“In America it would have been illegal (to not inform a person about their medical state)” Billi tries to argue with her parents, when they fly to China to spend some time with her grandmother.  Since I am not from China, I am not sure how normal it is for families to get doctors to hide the real diagnosis from aging patients, but if the makers of this film are to be believed, apparently it’s very common.

‘In China, we have a saying, it’s not cancer that kills, it’s the fear of Cancer,” Billi’s mother explains. That seems to be the clinching logic.

The film is slightly slow, but the kind of slow that I don’t mind, because as a viewer I was prepared for a realistic, simple film that is just about a family trying to cope with the impeding death of a close relative. How fast or exciting can that be? To the director’s credit, she does manage to make this grim subject interesting and heart-warming. But this one is definitely not for the impatient viewer.

While Awkwafina is brilliant as lost 30 something emotional wreck, Han Chen, the actor who plays Hao Hao, is highly underrated as her first cousin who is forced into an early wedding with his girlfriend of three months, so that the entire family can fly to China and spend time with his grandmother without making it seem unnatural.

[image error]The actor who plays Hao Hao (the groom) was low key brilliant. Source – YouTube

The entire cast slips into their roles effortlessly, there is no weak link in the movie, the casting director needs a pat on their back for the perfect ensemble. Despite being a lot about Chinese culture, ‘The Farewell’ has scenes and moments that are universal to families across the globe.  The story not just explores the theme of death, but that of alienation from one’s roots and culture, and the sacrifices one makes for a supposedly ‘better’ life.

The cinematography is apt. While this film is not visually brilliant, it’s not artistically challenged either. The colors are just right, nothing too dark to metaphorically represent the looming death. I did have a little problem with the background music, sometimes it was too jarring, or way too serious against what was unfolding in the scene corresponding to the audio score.

Shuzen Zhao, who plays the grandmother, blissfully unaware of her cancerous state, is the star of the film, the matriarch the holds the entire cast and story together. Some of us may be in need of a handkerchief for the waterworks this little film turns on. The film ends on a surprisingly positive note and that’s the best part. You go in expecting a tear-jerker that might leave you as a ball of mess, but you are instead left with a feel good sense at the ending.

 

 

 

The Gentlemen – Too Cool?

I hadn’t heard of ‘The Gentlemen’, a film directed by Guy Ritchie until my brother recommended it to me. This flick has an admirable cast – I mean obviously, Guy Ritchie has all the money to draw some biggies. There is Matthew McConaughey, Colin Farrel, Hugh Grant and Henry Golding who became famous after starring in ‘Crazy Rich Asians’.

The film has an interesting plot. Matthew plays baddie Michael Pearson who runs a huge, profitable marijuana empire in the UK and is looking to sell it off and settle down for a nice retired life on the money. Michael has his marijuana ‘farms’ spread over across various confidential locations that no competitor is aware of. He zeroes in on a potential buyer and demands his rightful pound of flesh for an empire that was built on a significant amount of blood on his hands.

However, one of his locations gets compromised and the buyer now tries to squeeze him tight by offering a much lower price. Enter Hugh Grant, who wants some X millions of dollars from Michael Pearson’s aide in exchange of what he claims is a fantastic ‘script’ that could reveal what really led to the compromise of the marijuana farm.

Henry Golding plays the role of a Chinese gangster who is part of a cocaine ring and expresses interest in buying Michael’s greens and begins to mess things up. It’s hard not to notice some racist tones when the Chinese mafia is talked about in the film.

Next, enter Hugh Grant, who plays ‘Fletcher’, a private investigator, who is trying to get money out of Michael’s aide in exchange of what he claims is a brilliant script that would explain why his plans to sell off his empire for a profit was getting fucked up.

The film is fast, funny, even gritty in parts. But one cannot help but feel that Guy Ritchie is trying really hard to make everything seem very ‘cool’ and ‘slick’. Despite a great cast, some of the acting is wooden, which I would like to believe is due to the fallacies in the script.

Some of the twists are pretty predictable, and if you are intuitive enough, you will be able to guess pretty early on in the movie who the real culprit is. I really enjoyed the small cameo of Colin Farrel, who plays a cool ‘coach’ who is training a bunch of kids to fight. His bits were fun.

The film also brilliantly mocks those who run British Tabloids and are always out to get it’s next salacious scandal on the Centre-spread. Woman don’t have much space in this all boys film, there is just Michael’s wife, who seems to be wearing the pants in the relationship, but barely gets any screen time.

‘The Gentlemen’ is a paradoxical and an obviously deliberate choice of title for a film that’s just about a bunch of bad boys running amok. It’s a fun film to watch, but all the style and the smart dialogues might begin to get on your nerves at some point.

Porco Rosso – Perfecto

Porco Rosso, a Japanese animated film, came out of the Ghibli Production House way back in 1992, when most of my generation was still learning to walk/talk. For 1992, the animation is bloody damn good. While I was already a big Ghibli fan, this film revived a new found admiration for them.

For anybody who has a Netflix account, that’s where I saw this absurdly beautiful film. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Porco Rosso is about a former World War I pilot who has become a freelance bounty-hunter and for some in-explainable reason – has a pig’s head on a human body.

The plot starts with Porco rescuing a bunch of adorable little Japanese school girls from the clutches of ‘Sea Pirates’. The rest of the story is about how Porco runs into trouble with both the Government and the Sea Pirates who have put a bounty for his head.

What I really loved about this film was a sequence which shows an all women crew, right from a 17-year-old girl to 70+ grannies, repair and refurbish a fighter airplane for our hero. This airplane is all ready for a series of dogfights that Porco would be forced to participate in. It subtly conveys a message of women empowerment, even if its unwittingly.

All that said, Porco Rosso is a visual treat, from the contrasting colors, to beautiful landscape painting like scenes, to some lovely women characters. There is the beautiful mysterious singer Gina, who has lost three husbands to the war, but that doesn’t stop her from wanting a happy ending. There is 17 year old Fio, a young sprightly girl who wants to build planes and becomes a pawn in a dogfight between Porco and the Pirates.

Well, this animated film has it all – a dash of fantasy, action, drama, romance with a pinch of the absurd. Despite the main protagonist being a walking pig, the makers manage to make the viewer take him seriously and in the end develop affection for the enigmatic hero.

 

 

 

 

Drishyam – A clever remake.

So I recently saw this Bollywood flick five years too late and it’s called ‘Drishyam’. It came out in 2015 and had been directed by Nishikant Kamat. The Bollywood film is a remake of a Malayalam film by the same name directed by a guy called Jeethu Joseph.

Fun Fact – Apparently, the plot is slightly similar to that of Keigo Higashino’s ‘The Devotion of Suspect X’, which is a murder mystery novel. One that I have not read, but hope to, because it’s supposedly fantastic.

The plot is simple – it’s about a middle-class man who is trying to protect his family from the cops after his daughter accidentally kills a pervert who was trying to sexually harass her. His wife is also party to the crime because she helps the daughter bury the body.

However, what makes this film brilliant is the ingenious ways in which the hero tries to erase all evidence, the rest of the plot is about how the cops are at their wits end to uncover the disappearance of the boy, who happens to be the son of a top cop.

The Bollywood film is helmed by Ajay Devgn in the lead, with Shriya Saran who plays his wife. However, it’s the script that is the real hero of the film, it’s tight, intriguing and keeps you hooked. In the first half however, the viewer feels like there is too much unnecessary build-up, especially to establish ‘what a nice middle-class family’ the main cast is. In the second half however, each little scene starts to fall into place.

Will the family get away with murder? That’s the question you are left to wonder as you watch this thriller. The climax is pretty damn good, even though I did manage to guess the plot twist before the end. The pace might be a problem for some, although, it is largely breezy. What really works for the plot is that it has the right amount of seriousness and is spiced with just enough drama.

For me, the only thing that was problematic was the trigger for the accidental murder, but I can oversee it, because if I go into details, that will end up in being a big spoiler.

Despite a 2 hour plus run-time, Drishyam makes for a satisfactory watch. Those who have watched the original Malayalam flick claim the Jeethu Joseph one is way better. And I totally believe them, after all, the film has been so hugely popular, that it got a Hindu remake, a Tamil remake and even the Chinese bought the rights to remake the film.

[image error]

The Chinese remake is called ‘Sheep Without A Sheperd’ and Jeethu Joseph has been given credit for the script. The Chinese remake also went on to become one of the biggest blockbusters in the country.

So if you are interested in the film, you have four languages to choose from. The original might be a good choice. Unfortunately, I was not aware that the film was a remake, or I might have chosen to watch the Malayalam one by Joseph.

P.S – The Bollywood one is available on Amazon Prime.

 

Once Upon A Time…

‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’, the ninth film by Director Quentin Tarantino, as the posters declare, is in large parts a documentary of a fictional actor. And despite the fictional liberties the makers can take, this film is slow, boring and almost unbearable at points.

The movie starts in black and white, with Leonardo DiCaprio starring in a cowboy western series. The basic premise is about how he is a fading star whose only reliable companion is his stunt double (played by Brad Pitt).

Don’t know if it would be an exaggeration,  but I think at least 20 minutes of the film is just various actors driving around town. I fast-forwarded a lot of those scenes where literally nothing is happening except driving. Maybe this is an ode to a bygone era that would only be appreciated by those who were in their teens in the 60s.

If this film had not been directed by Quentin Tarantino and had lesser known but equally talented actors, this film would have disastrously bombed at the Box Office and faded from everybody’s memory. But only because THIS IS a Tarantino flick, one is forced to feel that maybe this is a masterpiece, a work of art. Bull.

Margot Robbie, who plays Sharon Tate, is nothing but a prop, and would mean nothing to the viewers who are not aware of her story. In real life, Tate was an upcoming starlet and wife of famous director Roman Polanski. Her budding career was nipped in the bud after she was brutally murdered by cult members of the Manson ‘family’. The actor had been 8.5 months pregnant. The murder is not part of the film.

‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ is only saved by some good acting on the part of Leonardo and perhaps the good physique of Brat Pitt. Pitt’s 56, but looks completely the part of a war veteran who is trying to make money by being a stuntman.

Interesting and funny only in bits, Tarantino largely wastes the potential of this film, considering the stellar cast and the money he had at hand. However, if all the reviews out there are to be believed, he has managed to make everybody believe that he indeed did make another piece of cinematic history.

For me, only the last 10-15 minutes of the film were good, because that’s were things finally pick up pace and interesting stuff happens. But it’s the classic case of too little too late. This Tarantino flick gives barely any new insights into Hollywood and to make things worse – it’s painfully slow and boring. Watch it only if you are a big Tarantino fan or like Hollywood nostalgia.

 

Castlevania Season 3

When I saw that Castlevania’s season 3 was out on Netflix, I literally did a dance of excitement!

“There is a Castlevania season 3, let’s binge watch it!”.

All that excitement slowly ebbed out as I started watching the first episode.

Season 3 lacked everything that made the first two seasons epic and worth watching not once, but twice.

It lacked pace. Indian dramas are faster.
It lacked action. All that kick-ass slicing-dicing and blood everywhere from the first two seasons just ain’t there.
It lacked a big baddie. But I guess it’s hard for anyone to match Dracula’s stature?
There was no suspense. It’s like they are not even trying.
Forget suspense, everything was predictable.
I would predict at least two plot twists and the actual plot-twist would always be the more boring one. One that I was already expecting
The background score was shit. Unlike the previous seasons.
The animation somehow seemed flaky. It felt like you are playing a game. And I know it is inspired by a game. But something about the animation seemed off this time.
Alucard had nothing to do. His whole sub-plot was pretty pointless. Which is very frustrating.
Hector, the forgemaster that betrays Dracula and in turn gets fucked over by the evil scheming Vampire woman goes through more predictable shit.
This time, we have the whole Church angle again and how those guys are assholes. But this time it doesn’t affect you much, because they are literally madmen. It’s different when you have sane men being evil. But when mentally unstable people do crappy stuff, you don’t feel as outraged.
The only saving grace was that Sypha and the Belmont boy still get some fighting to do. And their chemistry was intact, if not sizzling.
Looked like the makers made this one when they were high, only that can explain the snail pace and crazy shiny colour scheme. I mean look at this monster. Does he have shiny sperms for hair?

14. The scheming Vampire sisters are not evil enough and barely do much. Except for torturing poor Hector.

15. And the 18+ rating, which warns that there is sex around this time – don’t expect much.

I saw the first two seasons twice, savouring every second even the second time around. But the first season was agonisingly slow. I felt like weeping, because the latest season is a shame in front of the other two.

Also, I regret suggesting the series to someone just before season 3 came out. Now when they get to season 3, they are going to judge me.

Without Dracula, things are just not the same. Sigh.

 

Story Of A Widow

I read another book that had previously been lying around in a stall at the Delhi Book Fair. It’s called “The Story of a Widow” by Musharraf Ali Farooqi. 

Set in Pakistan, but not too different from social scenarios in India, I can imagine this book being made into an interesting mini-series on some streaming platform – Netflix, Amazon Prime or whatever.

The main protagonist, Mona, recently widowed, is struggling to come out her late husband’s shadow, and her life is thrown out of gear when a widower takes interest in her. Musharraf Ali Farooqi puts in quite some work in almost all his characters. So it’s easy to imagine all of them and their interactions.

However the book gets tedious halfway and becomes very predictable. In fact, to my disappointment, I imagine a more explosive end. That’s not to say the climax was a letdown, on the contrary, it almost redeems all the earlier plot flaws. Almost. However, this novel could have been chopped short by a 100 pages.