Arnab Ray's Blog, page 17

A Few Thoughts On Delhi Elections

The scoreline is stunning. 67 for AAP, 3 for BJP and 0 for Congress. Yes the exit polls got it wrong, the AAP did far better than anyone could ever have predicted.

This is, of course, right about the time two narratives emerge, the victor’s and the vanquished.

For the vanquished, the loss is because the media was in the tank for the other team, our organization dropped the ball, the winner benefited from Cause A that was not in our hands, and finally that old chestnut, look at their vote-share, they didn’t even x% of the total vote.

For the winner, the victory is a new horizon in Indian history, a win for the forces of good over evil,  of the will of the people over money-power, and feel free to throw in your own cliche here.

We saw these two narratives emerge after the Lok Sabha election, and they emerge here once again, except that the people pushing the narratives have been interchanged. Not that these narratives have no truth in them, except the sulking vote-share argument, but a realistic analysis is in order, one that is made without Arnab Goswami trying to shut you down.

Is this the proverbial blow to Modi? The answer is “yes and no”.  It is “yes” because, for reasons best known to them, the BJP actually made it into a mandate on Modi. Perhaps it was because of a lack of faith in their local leadership (we shall come to that later) or because the performance of BJP corporators, as I understand it, has been less than stellar, Amit Shah brought in political rhetoric more appropriate for a Lok Sabha elections, and in a State elections, there is a cognitive disconnect when you do that, because people want to hear about local issues. As an example, in a speech that I heard on TV, Amit Shah kept on saying how under Modi sarkar, Pakistan may start border skirmishes but India finishes it. Even if you are impressed by the nationalistic narrative in the speech, why would you want to vote for the BJP at the state level based on that? By bringing issues that had the risk of irrelevance and by making Central ministers bear the bulk of political communication (as opposed to state leaders), the BJP made it about Modi, which is a very risky strategy in a state, where their electoral prospects had already been made dodgy (and they should have known this) by the inevitable vote flight from a broken Congress and the consolidation of anti-BJP-votes under one banner.

It is also “no” . The Modi government has neither been an abject failure, partially because of factors they cannot be credited for like falling global gas prices, nor has it been a stupendous success, specially in terms of its roll-back  on corruption.  The most pragmatic assessment of the Modi Sarkar is that it is firmly in the band of “acceptability” (or as my school teachers would write in my report card V. Fair) as far as governance is concerned. If Lok Sabha elections were held today, Modi would still win pretty handsomely, and many of the people who voted for Kejriwal for the State would vote Modi for the Center because at the time of writing, there is still no national alternative to BJP, with the Congress having passed away. Also lest we forget, this same party was winning one state after another, only till very recently, and nothing catastrophic has really happened, except Modi’s questionable fashion choices, to sink the government.

So then, what happened in Delhi?

The first thing to consider is that in terms of state elections,  Delhi is very special. It is significant politically purely because of the media attention it receives by virtue of it being India’s political and political news capital. It is also special because it is a city-state, that has both affluent and highly educated class, less prone to politics of caste and religion, as well as poor migrant workers. Because of the fluid structures of migrant communities, the baggage of caste and religion and history is not as heavy for them in Delhi as it would have been back in Bihar. Which is why both the rich and the poor, are more interested in questions like “What is in it for me?” as opposed to “What’s the religious/caste identity of the candidate you are putting up”. In other states, an Amit Shah can cobble together strategic caste alliances, or pit local satraps against the other, or play up to local chauvinism, and that’s sometimes enough to give him victory, but in a place like Delhi, it’s mostly about getting the messaging right.

And there the BJP absolutely tanked. Even its counter-messaging, or negative campaigning, was all wrong.

It attacked Kejriwal for being a “bhagoda”. Kejriwal promptly “apologized”. I put the quote-marks because it was not a real apology, for that would have “I was auditioning for PM-ship because that’s what I wanted, I used my time in the government to primarily get into the national conversation, I jettisoned the government strategically to pursue my ambitions for being a PM, I spread my resources too thin, and I am back now to my old job”.  But then again, it was still an apology and given that Indian politicians never say sorry, and the Indian electorate is more than forgiving, the apology was powerful enough to totally take the wind out of the sail of that attack.

It attacked Kejriwal for accepting donations from shady people “at night” which actually ended up shifting the conversation to political funding in general, which, to put it mildly, is not BJP’s strong suite, corruption is a important issue in Delhi than, say, it would in the backwaters of Bihar.

And over the last few months, it has let the Sakshi Maharaj and assorted other loonies emerge as their most popular faces. Modi’s mandate, in urban India, was development, and the kind of wide media play these fringe elements got (and it is a virtuous circle here, the anti-BJP media will cover the worse stereotypes of right wing politics and the same elements will revel in that coverage) did real harm to the party, specially in mild places like Delhi.

In contrast, AAP got the messaging correct. It was also appropriately negative but it constructed the narrative around familiar middle-class bogeymen, namely sinister big business houses and vague conspiracies to tamper with EVMs and other assorted inflammables that would get the old boys all agitated during their morning walks and community samosa-eating.

And in it’s positive messaging, it had everyone beat. If elections are about “What will you do for me?” the AAP came up with such an extensive feature list of deliverables that it was no wonder that BJP didn’t even want to get into a feature fight-out with them, delaying their manifesto as much as they could. It had a free “something” for everyone, from bijli and paani right up to Wifi, a veritable Santa Claus in February. CCTVs? We will install 15 lacs of CCTVs and boom woman’s safety. How will one pay for 15 lac CCTVs? Ah well, did I tell you about the new power plant we will set up? How? Where? How much will it…Err wait, have you seen point number 45? It’s frightfully easy for AAP to play this game, because they have never been in power before, and so have no record of not-kept-promises. Oh yes, there was that 49 day thing but they have apologized for it. So it’s cool.

Now that they have been elected and come to the business end of the promises, it will be interesting to see how much of that was “jumla”. If I can hazard a guess, the most likely outcome of most their promises will either be non-fulfillment (the 15 lac CCTVs for instance), or a transference of blame to the Central government for the “stepmotherly treatment” accorded to Delhi. I use the term “stepmotherly treatment” from my personal experience of having grown up under CPM rule in Bengal, these being exactly the two words they used to explain everything from why Jyoti Basu’s ambitious Bakreswar Power Plant, which would solve Bengal’s power problems, (note similarity) to why the long laundry list of promises made to voters was not being followed through. The similarities I find between CPM of the 80s and AAP is striking. Both subscribe to politics of extreme populism, both are strongly cadre-based, both have many genuinely likeable and committed people who felt there were making a difference, and neither could never really explain how they would fund all that they promised. The only difference was of course that CPM was idealogically monochrome, namely red, while AAP is a rainbow tent, from “give Kashmir independence” types down to mild nationalism, chameleon-like, different things to different people, and absolutely perfect for a heterogeneous urban center like Delhi.

Which finally brings us to leadership. BJP had none. It waited too long, hemming and hawing about their Delhi strategy, giving their opponents time to get off the ropes and have a shower-down. They had little trust in their local leadership, having sent the reliable Harsh Vardhan to the center, and when they brought in Kiran Bedi, it was too late. Perhaps even more damning, she was the absolute wrong choice. In elections for a place like Delhi, where messaging trumps caste, it is very important for a leader to be an effective communicator, and Bedi, with her angry school principal demeanor and her scrapbooks, was just not cut out for this. Because BJP felt they were so light on leadership, they poached Shazia Ilmi and Krishna Tirath from AAP and Congress, and this like was an IPL franchise buying Dinda and Nehra to bolster their pace attack. They did bring the cavalry in, late in the game, but that just made things matter worse, raising the stakes in a battle they had been losing for a while.

In contrast, AAP was supreme. In AAP 1.o, it was all about Kejriwal. He was in the studios, he was lying on the streets, he was here, he was there, he was waving his finger about, he was throwing a press conference, he was tightening his muffler, he was coughing into the mic. In AAP 2.0, he wisely became the leader, the statesman, sitting back and coordinating, the cool politician that south Delhi-tes would say “choo chweet”. But then South Delhi isn’t Delhi. So AAP had different faces to appeal to different people, Yadav, the kind self-deprecating uncle with a silk-smooth voice, Khetan,  consistently on the attack in TV studios, Ashutosh raising Hell on social media, keeping the base riled up with wild conspiracy theories every morning, and Somnath Bharti Luther King with his feet on the ground, because Delhi. In addition, Kejriwal fielded pragmatic candidates , of questionable AAP quality, in outer Delhi, went easy on the “We are a social movement” and accepted that there were in the politics business, and ensured a wide targetting of different sections, Muslims, migrant workers, housewives, angry old men,  and the effectiveness of that is attested to by the final vote tally.

As an independent voice, I welcome the arrival of AAP. Any working democracy needs a strong opposition and right now, with the increasing obsolescence of Congress party, the BJP does not have a credible antagonist at the national level.  There is thus space for a party like AAP to emerge to take its place. With Delhi at an impregnable base, AAP can now again dream of conquest, but hopefully they have learned from the last time, the perils of spreading themselves too fast, too thin. A slow, graded, less greedy approach, predominantly concentrated around urban centers (and no I think UP is a bad move) would be the best strategy forward for them. As for BJP, the lessons should be clear namely that the people who really vote, they don’t really care for Modi hugging Obama or advice to produce more babies, because it’s not something that really helps them in their lives. I hope you get what I am saying. Also I sincerely hope that this defeat does not lead to the rise of the old BJP, both the shrill Hindutva-hawks as well as the protectionist-populist Swadeshis.

Finally congratulations Delhi. You will have five interesting years.

 

A Few Thoughts on the AIB Roast

If you an Indian interwebs-junkie and don’t spend every bit of your bandwidth quota in watching videos on the educational site also known as Pornhub, you would have heard of All India Bakchod and The Viral Fever, and if not heard of them, then definitely seen their videos. And if you have not a week ago, you definitely know of AIB now with their roast of Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh going viral on the Net and getting play time in the media, and then being taken down, now that random religious outfits eager to grab their two seconds of fame have filed cases against them for “vulgarity”, and the fans of a prominent star, who has apparently taken grievous umbrage to what was said, anti-hashtagging it aggressively on Twitter, because as you may have guessed it, this is very important issue for the youth of the country right next to global warming and Gautam Gulati winning Big Boss.

So, like every other young man like Rahul Gandhi, I too have something to say.

First of all, well done AIB. You has definitely struck gold with their roast. None of this, the approbation or the condemnation, is going to harm you guys even a little bit. On the contrary it has firmly established your brand.

Because, make no mistake, gaaonwaalon, this is business.

Along with TVF and several other similar comedy-collectives, AIB caters to an under-served market that has huge disposable income, namely upper-middle-class urban Indian youth, drawing their comedic inspirations from Comedy Central and pirated specials of Louis CK, for whom Kapil Sharma and Raju Srivastava are the Guddu Rangeela and Altaf Raja of laughs. The “disposable income” part is very critical because that’s where the business model is. Roasts and stand-up and fake movie award nites are perfect for brands,  and, it’s well known that advertising, explicit or implied, works best with humor.

Of course a vital component of popularity in India is Bollywood. No matter how much you “roast” them, it’s impossible to take the next step up in the popularity ladder without Bollywood celebrity endorsement. While that’s not rocket science, what’s less obvious is that Bollywood needs  comedy collectives too. The days of inaccessible movie-stars with large sun-glasses has joined abundant chest hair in the dust-heap of history. Now Alia Bhatt’s PR works with them to cleverly roll back a PR disaster for their client. Rising stars like  Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh want to associate with AIB, because it feeds in well with the persona their image managers want to cultivate, that of bindass stars who then become first choices to endorse youth brands, like condoms, with a direct connect to the Roadies demographic and it was not a co-incidence, I guess, then that the once-anchor of Roadies, its most recognizable bald head, was also on the Roast panel. Even someone like Shahrukh Khan, who you would think transcends the need for publicity, comes on TVF, because their insane number of Youtube subscriptions is too much for even him to let go.

This is, of course, all a marketeer’s wet-dream. And like most great success stories, the different comedy-groups have their timing right. Ten years ago, when Net speeds were as fast as Munaf Patel, an Youtube-based franchise would not have worked. Now it does, rivalling television in terms of ease of access. If I had money, (which I dont) and the balls to invest (which I dont), I would buy stocks in AIB and TVF right now, because they are a bunch of digital visionaries,  firmly on the way up.

Coming to the show itself, I found it quite enjoyable. While some of the jokes missed the mark, either due to the writing or due to the delivery, and that anyone who writes comedy will tell you is inevitable, in all it was very professionally put together event. My favorites were Tanmay Bhatt among the stand-up comics when it came to the delivery, and Karan Johar among the celebrities. Not so much for what KJo said, but the way he said it. The best humor stems from incongruity, and it’s the dissonance between KJo’s “It’s all about loving your family” (which on second thoughts now sounds a bit Game of Thrones creepy) wholesome persona, and the way he comes across (which of course is also an act) in the Roast that’s makes for the best laughs. It’s like a Nirupa Roy character in a film looking tearily into the camera,  “Aaj woh hote toh yeh din naheen dekhne padte” as a sad Kalyanji-Anandji tune plays in the background and then suddenly fishing out a multi-speed dildo.

Of course there was the inevitable shitstorm about the language and the jokes. Here is how it works, dear fellows. Just like your clicking and loading a porn link implies implicit consent to nudity, your clicking on a roast implies implicit consent to bad language and overall filth. It’s not that difficult. And I am sorry to have to break this to you, but the language that your innocent self was exposed to when you sat through an hour of an AIB roast is exactly what you would find in a hostel room and in the backyard of a school, and again I am sorry the world isn’t different, but hey, duniye bananae waale kya tere man main samayee, kahe ko chutiya banaai.

But was the bad language necessary? Kind of. The best roasts are those that recreate relaxed meeting of old friends, where they reminisce, throw about embarrassing anecdotes, and talk the way old friends talk, without concern for feelings or propriety or the appropriateness of the language. You are the outsider, not normally part of such an exalted circle of celebrities, but being allowed, by virtue of having bought a ticket (or of seeing an ad on Youtube), to be part of this exclusive group of friends for an hour. The bad language is part of the act, it’s what creates the reality of the illusion, and hence inevitable.

If the roast falls short anywhere though, it is not so much the language, but that it breaks the fantasy of spontaneity, in that there are a tad too many places where the roasters seem to be rehearsed. I may be wrong but KJo seemed to have ad-libbed at places and those, as I mentioned before, were the best parts of the roast because it came off as natural. Part of it was inevitable, roasts work best when the people on the stage have a long history of prior work, and can play off each other, and I somehow think that Arjun Kapoor and Ranvir Singh, despite the back-slaps and the embraces, not really chaddi-buddies with the rest, coming as they do from different worlds.

What was not inevitable and could have been avoided, was the tendency to play the same things again and again, fat jokes at Tanmay, black jokes at Ashish, Catholic jokes at Abish. Not just because it was repetitive, but  because the cultural context that has “inspired” the jokes just does not carry over. Catholic priests abusing altarboys is a standard trope in American standup comedy, it sounds silly to an Indian audience because even the biggers haters of the church associate it with conversion, not underage molestation. A “You are so black” joke directed at Snoop Dog isn’t a joke at his skin color, but at his cultural baggage. A more appropriate adaptation would be “He is so Bengali that when a girl asks him to bring protection, he comes with a monkey cap”. Replace that Bengali with “AAP” and “monkey cap” with “muffler” for another variant.

The final word is pretty simple though. Like it or not, the roast is there and insult comedy is here to stay. Just like Honey Singh, Radheshyam Rasia, and Somnath Bharti. And while you are free to counter-protest, or turn-off, or unfollow or unsubscribe, you do not have the right to shut down, either through government fiat, very easily done given the sorry protection given to freedom of speech in our laws, or through implied threats of violence. Of course, this is all going to blow away pretty soon. Political parties love moral policing, while claiming not to, because it’s a cheap and dirty way to “We care” popularity, far easier than building hospitals or providing clean water, and so they will blow hot for a day or two, AIB will keep under the radar for a while, and then after an appropriate period of time has passed, everything will be back to normal and AIB will have a stronger brand than when they started.

And that’s good.

Because we definitely need more humor.

 

 

 

 

In Honor of the New Censor Chief

While there are many who swear by Govind Nihalni, I am more a fan of his brother Pahlaj Nihalni. This doyen of 90s movies, produced many of the most iconic films of my teenage-hood, like “Shola aur Shabnam” and “Aankhen” and “Andaaz” , giving me hours of pleasure that the boys of today, fed on an anti-cultural diet of “Baby Doll” and Honey Singh will not understand.

Thus it was with nothing but un-alloyed joy that I welcome his becoming the Supremo of the Censor Board. It’s like an old friend that has made it big, not that Mr. Pahlaj Nihalni was not big before.

Of course I am not a teenager any more. Now as a parent, I am extremely happy that the job of “maintaining the sanctity of Indian culture and values” and “preventing vulgarity” has now fallen on Mr. Nihalni, because I don’t know of many men, other than the director of the above movies( one Mr. David Dhawan) who is a bigger expert on the topic.

So here is my wishlist for the new board, using animated gifs from movies produced by the great man.

 

I hope that now the Censor Board will be more resistant to “pressures” from above.

 

That there will be more open communication of policies and procedures.

 

That film-makers should not have to reach beyond just to satisfy the Censors.

 

That Board meetings are harmonious

 

That sufficient focus be given to the educative qualities of cinema.

 

That decisions are taken in an informed and consistent manner.

 

And that the censors and the film fraternity work together to give us more clean, wholesome entertainment.

On Dhoni

It’s strange, this phenomenon. Hours and hours of watching my favorite sportsmen on the telly, and I begin to believe that I know them personally. That’s why I tuned in when Sachin was close to a century and become all emotional when Ganguly walked out that last time. Even though it is extremely silly, I become personally invested in the individual successes of these strangers, that goes above and beyond my team winning, just like I would do for my friends.

And just like I do for my friends, I make these little mental stereotypes.

The passionate. Sourav.

The gentleman. Dravid.

The self-absorbed geek. Sachin.

The guy who never gets his due. VVS.

The maverick. Sehwag.

The relentless. Kumble.

But what about Dhoni?

I don’t think I have that personal connect with him, not in the way I have for the names above. As Harsha Bhogle writes, in this beautiful piece,  he could not figure out who he was and he is someone who actually knew Dhoni pretty well in real life.

Unlike my other sporting heroes, the sport was never Dhoni’s religion, never the be-all-and-end-all. It was a job, a job he did because he was very very good at it and because he made a lot of money from it, and he never showed it to be anything else, like a deep love for the sport or the country.

There was a fundamental honesty there and yet it was just too honest for the sports-fan in me.

The paradox, and some may say the hypocrisy, is that while I consider myself a pragmatist, I hero-worship those that are not, or perhaps do not appear to be.

That’s significant. This “appear to be”. I am sure that many of my heroes are cynical to the core, perhaps even dangerously two-faced, that their passion and devotion are only acts to be consumed by gullible people like me, and the truth of that was brought to me when Azharuddin was revealed to be doing what he was doing, a day of great personal trauma for me, because I remember actually crying, for he, not Sachin or Saurav, had been my biggest sporting hero.

For instance, I don’t know for sure if his commitment to India was more or less than his towards his IPL franchise, CSK, though I think that CSK came first, definitely over Test matches.

But wait. Why should it not?  He never played for India, he played for BCCI, a club by their own admission, and if there are two clubs you play for, and one pays you a lot more than the other for doing a lot less, which one should one prioritize? If I worked two jobs and one paid many times more than the others, I would do exactly the same.

His relationship with Srini, much lampooned and hated, was also based on pragmatism. Sport, despite all the marketing soft-soap about how it is a higher calling, is big business for those who are in it, and any pragmatist would know that one can only persist by being part of a  winning team, not just the eleven that walks out onto the playing arena, but a team that includes the big dogs in administration and advertising.

This pragmatic outlook, shorn of all the silly romanticism,  defined his cricket also. He had a horrible bowling attack and an ageing batting line-up, so he set defensive fields and hoped the opponent had a brain-fade. If he knew opponent needed a win, he would pack massive defensive fields and hope they get out to that (it worked once). This made for boring cricket and even after that India got their asses handed to them. The alternative would have been the charge of the light brigade approach, and while that may have worked once and people remembered it for precisely that, the odds were never on, and hence Dhoni would never try. If choice A was an unspectacular bowler who, at best could take three wickets and at worst, hold down one end, and choice B was an unknown whose only strength was that he was unknown, but who, in the worst case, would be creamed all over the park, Dhoni would take choice A. That’s why Ashwin played in the Tests he captained, and Karn Sharma in the one that Kohli did.

The odds. Yes Dhoni played the odds. Not the heart.

Which is why I have always thought of him as this super-genius, legendary, fund-manager. He has managed three funds—Tests, ODIs, and IPL.  Over the years, he has realized that the Test fund, given the resources at hand and given his own investment philosophy, is just not working out for him. The numbers are there. In red. They look even more horrible compared to the numbers on his other funds. He had been cutting his exposure for some time now, limiting dives because of his dodgy back, till he had come to the stage that five days of standing in the sun, mostly as opponents hit five-hundred-plus-scores, was simply not worth his investment. It reduced his value, there was too little reward, and the opportunity cost was too high.

All he was looking was for a time, just as he looks for that time, when he is pottering around in the 46th over and the required run rate is going up, to unleash the big shot.

So the time comes. He takes it.

He does not wait till the end of the series cause it would be the right thing to do. He does not play another Test and get the waterworks on.

He just picks up his hat and dissolves his fund.

Of course, used to I am to heroic narratives around commercial sport, this kind of mercenary pragmatism is disquieting, even though it is precisely because of this unsentimental odds-based approach that Dhoni has been such a successful fund-manager all his life, having brought back more trophies than any of my sporting heroes.

So that’s that.

Dhoni. Fund-manager.

Looking back, I wish though there had been some tears, some sentimentality, some faux-emotion, and even though it would have been dishonest and manipulative, I would have felt better. I wish he had shouted some gaalis when he batted, or gone nose-to-nose with Kamran Akmal, or made faces at Shane Watson. I wish he had given more soundbytes like “I love my India” and “Cricket is my life”.

I wish he had not appeared so detached. I wish he had been one of my hero fake-friends.

But he isn’t

And that, I suspect, is exactly how he would have wanted it to be.

 

 

PK—The Review

[Spoilers]

So I saw PK.

How was it?

TLDR: It’s a three-hour long episode of Satyamev Jayate.

For those of you who have not seen this program, which strongly makes me believe that you are not the kind that stops at a stop sign, Satyamev Jayate can be summarized as “social activism for those of us that like to watch Big Boss but feel guilty “. It picks a certain “problem of the week”, like police reforms or corruption or doctors, and then runs through an hour of over-explaining and music and appropriately emotioned-up guests.  The USP of the program, the reason why people watch it, is of course  Method-Actor Khan (known to mortals as Aamir Khan) for whom Satyamev Jayate is a perfect prop for his carefully cultivated  image as a socially conscientious superstar. Cycling through various  expressions, “the-oh-my-God-I-had-no-idea” (“Apko police ne yeh kaha?”) as if he is hearing the guest’s story for the first time, “the-oh-my-God-I-so-feel-for-you” eyes-welling-up-with-tasteful-tears, Mr. Khan straddles perfectly that grey area between reality and choreography, between the person and the persona, and if the topic of the week does not keep you watching, or that sharp prick on your conscience if your finger goes to the remote control to change the channel, Aamir Khan’s performance sure does.

Like Satyamev Jayate, PK too has a “problem of the week”, long passages of preachy exposition, poking-in-eye messaging, and each one of Aamir Khan’s Satyamev Jayate stock facial expressions. Except being an alien, his innocent “I-had-no-idea” face makes a little more sense, though for old-hands like us, there is a bit too much of the Main Kahaan Hoon Tiloo from “Andaz Apna Apna” and one of the characters he played in Dhoom 3, for me to be overtly blown away by the acting. Just as Satyamev Jayate, despite its flaws, is an improvement on the brainless muck that passes for entertainment on Indian television,  PK is definitely better than the “Bang Bangs” and the “Ready”s, a low bar surely, somewhat like complimenting a fast bowler for bowling faster than Venkatesh Prasad.

It had a lot going for it,  like Mr. Perfectionist’s perfect derriere, though obfuscated by mist, Raju Hirani at the helm, and some funny sequences involving pee-ing, peek-ing, peekaying and anal-probing, which I would perhaps have better appreciated if I was nine years old

However it is let down by two major cinematic boo-boos.

First the climax was so god-awful that it made the baby-delivered-by-vacuum-cleaner in Three Idiots seem kind of okay.

And second, Raju Hirani becomes so focussed on the agenda, the moral at the end, that rather than let the story deliver the message, he had the message write the story. As a result there is a really weak narrative and absolutely zero chemistry between the characters, nothing like the way there was between say Munnabhai and Circuit. Instead of story and memorable characters, there are lengthy lectures facing the camera, extremely contrived situations, and possibly the most-rushed-romantic-tale I can remember, between Anushka Sharma and Sushant Singh Rajput, reminding one of the Ravi Behl-Divya Dutta romance in “Agnisakshi”,  scurried primarily because the only reason it existed was to establish the message.

The basic problem I believe is that Raju Hirani is way out of his depth in PK, biting off way more than he can chew. To be fair, it is extremely difficult to make a movie that is anti-organized-religion without coming down inordinately on one religion, and unless you are willing to go fully “equal opportunities offender” like Maher in Religulous, which again is a very difficult thing to do in a fictional setting, treading carefully is a must.

Unfortunately Hirani is as subtle as a sledgehammer, a deft touch he doth not have.

Not that I believe Hirani has an insidious bias or that PK is part of a global anti-Hindu conspiracy, which you would believe if you followed the boycottPK loony hashtag, but it is true that Hirani exclusively ends up using Hindu religious practices as his pincushion. Sure, there are throwaway blink-and-miss-it references to Christian conversions and Muslims treatment of their own women, but the focus remains firmly on the Hindu faith. It’s the man dressed as a Hindu God who runs like a coward, it’s the Hindu Gods who stand ghoul-like silent as PK prays in front of them, which happens to be the most powerful scene of the movie. The villain is a fake baba, a supposed anthropomorphism of everything-that-is-wrong-with-religion, except that he ends up as a stand-in for only Hinduism. If it was just one character, it would be still fine, but then there is another Hindu priest who is shown as a glorified pick-pocket, taking away Anushka’s wallet in a way that is more like a hood in a dark alley than a man of God. No other religion has their people in authority get consistently poor treatment.

The explanation for that, I believe, and here is the supreme irony, is fear. Like most people with a bit of common sense, Hirani knows that depicting a maulvi as a money-grabbing goonda would lead to  consequences more dire than the mild controversy that is brought on about by social-media outrage or the isolated court-case they have more than enough resources to fight, both of which incidentally are good for the movie publicity-wise. Hirani’s consciousness of “those who must not be angered” is perhaps most evident when PK, the alien, puts up signs of different Hindu Gods on a wall and, if I am not totally wrong there was also a picture of Jesus, but even PK knows, from news that might have reached him billions of light years away, that forget pictures there are some depictions of deities  you do not put on walls, if you want to keep your head on your shoulders. In that context of fear, the rather provocative line “Jo Dar Gya Woh Mandir Gya” becomes ironic, almost as ironic as an actor convicted of Jihadi terrorism in real life being blown up by a Jihadi bomb on screen.

Personally, I loved the message of PK, mainly because being a non-observant agnostic with a healthy dislike for rituals and organized religion, I agree with what the movie is trying to say. The problem is how they say it, preachy, uneven, hammy and amateurish.

And while a lack of balance may be forgiven or even blatant bias (for are we not all biased), sophomoric  film-making cannot be.

Disappointing.

 

The Devil Made Me Do It

One of the sad realities of living in today’s world is how inured we have become to incidents of terrorism.

Do we know anyone who died today? Naah we don’t. So let’s hashtag, share update on FB, and move on. Which of course raises the bar for terrorists, obligating them perversely to be more “spectacular” to catch people’s attention.

Like bringing down two of the world’s tallest buildings on a busy office day.

Like storming 5-star hotels and butchering people in cold blood.

Like shooting dead close to one hundred fifty school-kids.

As a parent, it is difficult not to feel a deep bond of empathy for those that have lost a child,  for it is the most frightening thing that can happen to a human being. I would not have said this a few years ago but now that I am a father, I truly mean it.

But alas in this world, I cannot just be a father. I am an Indian. I am a Hindu.

Which in Pakistan, means I am the Devil.

Which means I did it.

Not surprisingly, the Pakistani political establishment has chosen to blame “Indian intelligence agencies” (RAW) for the barbarity at Peshawar. There is Hafiz Saeed, an extremely influential voice in Pakistani politics, no matter what we would like to hope is not the case. There is General Musharaff, and I hope our Indian media organizations invite him over in one of their thought-fests to tell us more about why Indians/Hindus did it. There is, as NDTV points out, “not one single condemnation from mainsteam political parties on Hafiz Saeed’s statement”. Imran Khan has, last heard, refused to name Tehrik i Taliban because, hey, he should not be jumping to conclusions even though the TITs did say they did it but then again, what’s important is, who they are allied with and we all know who that is.

For many, it is TIT-for-tat (yes now you know why I did not write Tehreek-e-Taliban, just for that) if India can blame Pakistan for 26/11 why not India for this? It does not matter than the terrorists of 26/11 actually came from Pakistan, were Pakistani citizens, called Pakistan on their satellite phones, and had Pakistan-issued stuff and the involvement of Pakistan is corroborated by multiple sources, like US intelligence. It does not matter that Tehrik i Taliban is a radical Islamic organization that really does not like kafirs and only in a very warped alternate multiverse, would be allied with India. It does not matter that there is no proof except a photo going around social media of some men, supposedly the terrorists (though no one knows even if that is true), with the dark-skinned men being circled as “Indian” (I sincerely hope that’s someone’s idea of a sick joke, because it is even sicker to think that someone would actually take that seriously).

Nothing matters. India did it. That’s the story and they are sticking to it.

In a bizarre way this makes sense.  For a country that is founded on the basis of a “safe homeland for Muslims” it is fundamentally disruptive to accept that Muslims, that too those that consider themselves extremely observant, are themselves killing Muslim children. This, by definition of the country, cannot happen. And so rather than look in the mirror, the easiest thing is to blame someone that is external, the historically designated demon.

From “Dawn”, [link]

 “Religious minorities are often portrayed as inferior or second-class citizens who have been granted limited rights and privileges by generous Pakistani Muslims, for which they should be grateful,” the report said.

”Hindus are repeatedly described as extremists and eternal enemies of Islam whose culture and society is based on injustice and cruelty, while Islam delivers a message of peace and brotherhood, concepts portrayed as alien to the Hindu.”

….

The researchers also found that the books foster a sense that Pakistan’s Islamic identity is under constant threat.

”The anti-Islamic forces are always trying to finish the Islamic domination of the world,” read one passage from social studies text being taught to Grade 4 students in Punjab province, the country’s most populated.

Isn’t it natural, given that this is what is taught to students in Grade 4, in the way of Pythagoras theorem, that then becomes the truth itself, the straight line between any two points?

But forget books for a while. Let us look at a clip of Veena Malik, who since this appeared has been sentenced for blasphemy for something totally different. Structured as a dial-in show with a maulvi and with the redoubtable Ms. Malik as a host, this would be comic gold if it was not also so hateful. As a lady calls in, she is possessed by a demon (I am not kidding, watch the video if you have not seen it), and the maulvi asks the demon if he is Hindu or Muslim. Because of course, even demons have religions. And voila, the demon, in the best exorcist voice says, “Main Musalman naheen hoon” (I am not a Muslim). The maulvi, who makes up for Veena Malik’s over-acting with equally bad under-acting replies “Tum Na-Musalman Hindu hoke kaise is Musalman behen ke andar aa gaye” (How did you, a non-Muslim Hindu get into the body of a Muslim sister?)

Therein lies the problem. Any act that is demonic, any act that cannot be coped with or understood, be it making a chaste woman behave strangely or have an Islamic Jihadi turn his gun on innocent Pakistani children,  is by definition a possession by the sinister “Hindu”/Indian evil entity.  If such a transference cannot be accomplished in the national conversation, then the fundamental purity of the nation of the pure, the raison d’etre of its existence, is shaken to its foundation.

And that’s too much of self-doubt for a nation to put up with.

 

 

 

A Thousand Weeks of DDLJ

Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge is a thousand weeks old.

That’s a long time.

To put it in perspective, a thousand weeks ago, Narendra Modi was a small-time politician in Gujarat, Kohli was eight years old, Vinod Kambli still had a future and I was in first year.

My how days fly.

And yet it seems to be just yesterday that we were introduced to the great patriot Baldev Singh (Amrish Puri), who tracks pigeons from Punjab so great is his desh-bhakti, but who, despite the deep rumblings for mitti ki khusboo, never visits his desh, perhaps because he is too busy looking at “goree teeetli” and drinking Black Dog, (Ok wrong film), his wife the beatific Lajjo, an anthropomorphism of ghee and aloo parathas, their well-fed daughter Simran with a proclivity for dancing in the rain in itsy-bitsy skirts,  Raj Malhotra, the character that would be played by the actor, Shahrukh Khan, for the next twenty years in more or less every film, and his father, played by Anupam Kher, who would beat Sonia Gandhi hands down as the parent of the century.

It seems to be just yesterday that DDLJ came into our lives.

As is the fashion today, it is deemed very cool to diss 80s and 90s Bollywood, not just for the technical shoddiness, but for being “politically incorrect” and “downmarket”.  DDLJ, I am told, is a particularly insidious narrative that sanitizes “Hindu patriarchy”, with much to be read into the “handing off” of Simran from  Baldev Singh to Raj Malhotra, and the fact that the character Raj Malhotra chooses to not “rebel” against the regressive status-quo but instead finds his place in it.

Now I want to say a lot of things in response, but I am not going to, for the simple reason that I cannot be objective about DDLJ.

So I brush these barbs off with a gallant “bade bade deshon mein aisi choti choti baatein hotee rahetee hai”.

So yeah. It’s not a cinematic classic. Kajol screeches, Shahrukh Khan hams,  and so do many other people in that hyper-animated bubbly style that was typical of the age and which still survives in New York Life insurance ads and the story is predictable and trite and it did inspire a zombie apocalypse of NRI Punjabi movies for more than the next decade.

I will give you that.

But that does not make it any the less great.

For it was the tapestry from which, those of us that were young in the 90s, stole bits of our life.

When we wanted to propose but were afraid of ruining a friendship, we would do it “as a joke”, gauge her reaction, and then laugh it away if things don’t look too good.

Just like they do in DDLJ.

When we wanted to test the waters, we would do the whole “What if you have fallen in love, with someone like me?” hypothetical scenario-playing.

Just like they do in DDLJ.

When the girl walked away in a Durga Pujo pandal after making an eye-contact or two, we would lean against the bamboo barricade and whisper to the heavens “Palat”.

Just like they do in DDLJ.

Did I forget anything?

Of course I did.

The music.

“Na Jaane Mere Dil Ko Kya Ho Gya” for that time you saw her dance in the college fest. “Yeh dil ki baat apnee dil mein dabake rakhna” for every crush that dare not be revealed. “Jadoo sa jaise koi chalne laga hai, main kya karoon yeh dil machalne laga hai” for those wet-wet-towel-clinging twinkle-toe moments.

The sound-track of our hearts. That’s what it used to be.

And now, now it has become a time-capsule, to gaze at and fondly remember.

For frozen in it, are moments from a thousand weeks ago, of bunking classes and going  in a group to Priya (or Naveena) to see DDLJ first week, of ooh-ing and aah-ing, and then having egg roll on the way back, with my head in the cloud, a spring in my step, and a whole world ahead to dream in.

Here’s to how we used to be.

Here’s to the next thousand.

 

The Battle For Delhi

[A version of this published in Huffington Post India]

There are no knockouts in Indian politics.  No matter how hard you have been hit, you can always bounce straight off the ropes and back into the ring.

Take the Aam Aadmi Party. It seems just yesterday that they were wiping their brains off the sidewalk after being hit by the Modi Express, and yet here they are, back for the Delhi elections, swinging hard and strong.

It’s well deserved this resurgence.In the last few months, they have brought their A-game. The AAP have ceased positioning themselves as a movement of Manoj Kumarian angels, or at least less aggressively so. No more the sanctimonious “Hum bangla naheen lenge, hum security naheen lenge” and other overt promises of piety. No more self-flagellating apologies about business class travel and of enjoying the fruits of celebrity-hood. No more the weekly dramas of exposes and press-conferences and other egregious attempts to hog the headlines. No more the excess flab of fortune-seekers who had quickly hitched themselves to the AAP bandwagon only to abandon the party during adversity or when not given tickets. No more the brand dilution in the form of Anna. No more spelling mistakes in Ashutosh’s tweets.

No more Roadies for Raghu Ram, which means he can fully concentrate on his future as an AAP ‘ambassador of youth.’

Okay maybe not the last one. That’s definitely a strike for the AAP.

Jokes aside , AAP seems to have learned their lessons for now.  Why wouldn’t they? Mr. Kejriwal is a smart man. No man who is not smart could have come from a Dipak Tijori support-to-the-hero to the chief minister of Delhi in so short a time, reducing his once-mentor to a footnote.   Smart men are greedy as much as the next guy but they learn their lessons better, more than those that are not smart. I doubt Kejriwal will make the mistake of “getting high on his own supply” (apologies to “Scarface”) and fall off the horse, in his obscene hurry to rush the gates, as he did so spectacularly during the General Elections.

This time, it seems he is deliberately going easy on the mayonnaise, staying away from the TV shows and debates and thinkfests, and concentrating more on fund-raising (ironically from the same NRI collective their supporters in the media deride as “Sanghi”). In his stead, he has let the redoubtable Ashish Khetan, once “independent” journalist , emerge as the media face of the party.  And by God, he is a force of Nature, outshouting and out-sanctimonious-blustering Arnab Goswami in his own show. With Mr Khetan and Mr. 83B Droid leading the media assault, Mr. Kejriwal is free to do what a good party supremo should do, pull the strings from behind. Some may balk at his continuous support of Somnath Bharti, currently facing charges of molestation, rioting and wrongful restraint,  but it is a smart political move. It shows the party rank-and-file that well-executed populism and unquestioned loyalty, and yes Mr. Bharti’s hounding out of innocent African women was immensely popular among local residents, will be backed. It’s rather hypocritical to call out Kejriwal for being unprincipled because every political party supports their most-effective rabblerousers, no matter what they do. Perhaps not movements but definitely political parties. Also smart has been the AAP’s shift from being “against both BJP and Congress” to “BJP is the devil incarnate”, a fact evidenced by the sidelining of the more Hindu-right-friendly elements like the Kumar Viswases in favor of staunch anti-BJP-RSS voices like Ashutosh and Ashish Khetan. This pivot allows them ideological space to strike up opportunistic alliances with Congress and regional parties, either overt or covert,  poach from the grand old party, and project themselves as a “secular” and “urbane” alternative to BJP.

The Modi storm in the last few months has left a vacuum in the Indian political spectrum. If anyone tells me that the Congress is an effective opposition, all I would say is “Are you serious, are you serious?” The Ammas are fighting to stay out of jail and the Didis have been cornered and the Mulayams are cutting their seventy-five foot cakes.  The space has never been more open for a new populist (yeah free Wifi) , socialist-communist, more-government-is-the-solution, urban, “secular” party, without the baggage of communal riots ,corruption and Azam Khan, to emerge.

But for Kejriwal to step in and be the primary challenger to Modi, he has to, at the very bare minimum, capture Delhi. Else he is a lord without a hold-fast, to be inevitably faced with desertions of bannermen and sellswords, from which he might take a lot of time to recover.

The stakes in Delhi have never been higher.

 

 

The Voice of God And His Silences

Originally appeared in SwarajyaMag

There was a time, around a few thousand years ago, that God would talk to us.

A lot.

Sometimes He would say something from behind a burning bush. Sometimes He would appear in a dream. Sometimes He would give us his words in the field of battle and sometimes He would just send his son down to the earth.

Then, for some reason, God became silent, round about the time Man started this whole “science” thing.

Now once again, after years, he has spoken, this time through a new prophet.

Not surprisingly, the chosen one happens to be a Bengali by the name of Boria Majumdar.

I apologize for the blasphemy I am going to commit right now. But I have to say it. Prophet Boria’s prose is, for the want of a less obvious word, boring. Not to sully the purity of His words, but one wishes that He had chosen a more accomplished spinner of sentences, someone like Rahul Bhattacharya for instance, who would have been less liberal with passages that sound like paraphrasing of score-cards.

But perhaps I am wrong. God knows best.

Perhaps only Mr. Boria would have been able to capture the voice of God without superimposing his own. Perhaps each exclamation point was an “Ailaaa”, and God does indeed remember how many balls he faced and how many runs he scored of matches played decades ago.

Perhaps.

Because, truth be told, “Playing It My Way” is authentically Sachin. (Note: I shall from now use the word “Sachin” interchangeably with God).

There is deference to higher authority, namely the BCCI for even Sachin has His Gods.

There is predictable silence on the contentious stuff. The Ferrari. Vinod Kambli’s outburst. The match-fixing that was taking all around him.

Needless to say, there is much carping on the interwebs for his silence on the latter. The problem in being God is that the infidels always carp. If he had said something about fixing, then the retort would have been “Why did he wait till his autobiography to say this?  He is just creating controversy to sell his book”. Now that he has not, they are still pitchforking him.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. See that’s the problem. Whatever He does, God can’t win.

And that’s often been the greatest criticism of Sachin, that he does not make India win,  something He lets go outside the off-stuff without a retort.

There is some controversy of course, but even here, Sachin has gone for Henry Olonga-like easy targets. Greg Chappell is the big bad wolf, as are Gilchrist, Ian Chappell, assorted Australians and that English match-referee who denied God.

Well I take that back. There is one rather dramatic beef with another God, a kind of Zeus vs Hades, that is never quite as front-and-center as the lightning strikes on Greg Chappell, but simmers and smokes throughout.  I shall not “declare” the details here, because that would be a genuine spoiler, but suffice to say there is material for massive crusades on the Twitters, some of it I see has already begun.

But then when has a Holy Book not been contentious?

“Playing It My Way” works (mostly) because it is this voice of Sachin that comes out strong and clear, despite the exclamation marks, the stilted prose and the unimaginative retelling of that-which-everyone-knows. There are remarkable insights into batting techniques. Though absolutely non-controversial, unlike a certain Sunil Gavaskar revelation in “One Day Wonders”, there are many personal anecdotes—of how he wooed Anjali, of his son resenting his prolonged absences, of self-doubt, anxiety, loss and fear. Even his broadsides against those who he feels have hurt him just goes to show that even God, with all the adulation and worship, can never forget a slight. And then finally there is my favorite, where he impulsively lets himself stumped after being beaten by a bowler who is hearing-impaired, even though the keeper flubs the chance the first time.

It’s these that make “Playing It My Way” worth a read.

You know the places where God appears a bit…human.

A Few Author Stories

1. Person at book event: “Your autograph please? This is for my husband, I would of course never read the stuff you write.”

2. Random person in store comes over to where I am sitting (just before book-event): “Give me three free copies”

3. Random person at Bangalore Lit Fest: “Are you a famous author?”

4. Standing behind two kids discussing MIHYAP at Kolkata Book Fair “Hebby nongra boi” (Very nasty book) in a tone of great reverence.

5. An old gentleman stealing a copy of MIHYAP at the Delhi launch event

6. Flipkart, during the release of Mine, organized an “event” at Kolkata Book Fair. Their stall was right next to Zee Bangla and a lot of the Grihini Games “public” had wandered over to the Flipkart stall because Flipkart was holding their own competition. “How long does it take you to buy a book on Flipkart” So this lady sits down, “wins” and asks “Perrize?” The eager 20-something man says “Ma’m you have won a book signed by the author Arnab Ray who is here (pointing to me) and you can sit down here for a meet-and-greet”. She looks at me, with eyes full of suspicion and asked “Keda?” (Lost in translation: Means Who?). Then she shouts at the Flipkart employee “Faltoo time noshto” and walks away.

7. Random lady at Bangalore Lit Fest: I am an author. I started writing a week ago. How much money do you make? Tell me no.

8. A man offering sex in exchange for meeting him. His words were “I would love to meet you but the only thing I can offer is…”

9. Being abused by book-store staff in two different Calcutta chain-stores, with the barked “We don’t talk to authors” still ringing in my ears.

10. Random person: “I have great ideas in my head. I want someone to write these up as stories and that’s how I want to be an author. Will you do it?’

11. Person *on panel* in my book event: “You are known to be a Hindu right wing fundamentalist….”

12. Media person: “Do you think it’s a good idea for bloggers to become writers of books?” I asked her to elaborate. She said “You know of late publishers have become desperate enough to approach bloggers to write books. Do you think thats a good idea given that they are, you know, bloggers?” [derisive smile]. I say “I am a blogger who got approached by a publisher. You know that, right?” She says “Oh”.

13. Media person interviews me in Hindi. I try to reply in Hindi. I suck at it. At one point I want to say place and instead of saying “jagah” I say “sthan” in my Bangali accent. I realize he may have thought I said “stan” (breasts) from his expression. We finish the interview in English.

14. Someone who read “The Mine”: I would never let you get near my child.

15. Multiple people on Twitter: Stop tweeting about your book on your own Twitter account.

16. Stranger at book-store event “I liked your book but would you appreciate some honest feed-back?” I say “Yes”. He says, genuinely concerned, “You should lose a bit of weight. Have you tried Yoga?”

17.  On email from person I never met (I was in Calcutta then): I would like an autograph. I have bought a copy. Could you come to Salt Lake Sector V and sign it for me?

18. Favorite question ever asked at a book-store-event: “Why cannot Bengali men pick up women?” to which my answer was “For the same reason they can’t start businesses. Too afraid of rejection”

19.  My father: Why do you speak whatever comes to your mind on social-media when you know you suffer for it?

20.  On Twitter, random person: Tell me why should I buy your book.