Arnab Ray's Blog, page 5

The Greatest

I have waited a bit to comment on the passing of Irrfan Khan, and that is one of the blessings of not being on a deadline, under the gun to produce an obit while it’s all topical, leaving one time to pause and reflect. He was one of those artists who brought something rare to his roles, in an industry of cookie cutter characters and stock situations, there was something of himself in everything he did, and that is perhaps why so many of us feel a deep sense of loss, over and beyond what one feels when a supremely talented individual is taken from us, way before his time. There is always that “aah what more there might have been” when someone dies this young and at the height of their prowess, but again, this runs far deeper, and one has to ask oneself why.

It was said of Sachin that at his best, he was the only batsman who could take the pitch out of the equation, and the quality of the other batsmen, and as long as he was at the crease, it didn’t matter how everything else was. One can say something similar to Irrfan. He has held a scene with Aryan Vaid (Mr. Hundred Per Cent—the Real Player), as well as with Tom Hanks (Inferno), and if that range sounds amazing it surely is, because no man in the film industry we love has done this variation, but that’s not the point—it’s that Irrfan Khan spoke to you, regardless of the quality of the material he had to work with, or the calibre of his colleagues, or even the presence of any colleague, as his brilliant “Chota Recharge” commercials from Hutch bear testament to.

Perhaps some of the deep connect is because we see in Irrfan the struggles of everyman. In an industry where your worth is determined by your genes, here is someone who graduates from bit roles in TV serials to mainstream Hollywood, purely on the basis of his talent, a fairy-tale that just happens to happen.

Perhaps some of the love was because he was, by common consent, an extremely polite and friendly individual, full of life, who carried his fame light, in a world of arrogant stars, a grounded and articulate gentleman. Maybe that’s why we have always rooted for him, for the good man to win at the end.

Maybe.

But, and this is where I dip into the personal, my sense of loss stems from the fact that Irrfan Khan spoke to me.  Whether it be about coping with loss and death in “Life of Pi”, or about happiness in the remembrance of the small things in “Namesake”; these were not lines from a script only, any actor could have delivered them, but I doubt they would have made the impact they did, at least for me, had it not been for Irrfan Khan. Maybe it’s the way he said it, with that slight chuckle and the eyes, tranquil and sad and yet ethereally happy, with a quick blink, as Dr. Ashok Ganguly talking to Gogol about why he gave him that name,  but I don’t know, it is beyond my ability to analyze, just as I will never know why shehnai or my daughter saying “Good night bubu, love you” makes me sad as well as happy, but they do.

And somehow his untimely death, gives greater poignancy to those lines, as you can hear him, in his voice, “The whole of life becomes the act of letting go” and “Ah, remember it always. Remember that you and I made the journey and went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go”, and the significance of it all seeps in, of the time we have in this world, and why it is so important to savor the little things on the way.

Thank you sir for taking us on this journey, together to a place from where there was nowhere left to go.

We will remember always.

 

Ghost Stories—the Review

As the amount of decent cinematic content available online now vastly exceeds what one human being can reasonably be expected to consume in a life-time, the way forward for streaming services is not generation of content but in curation. Netflix India seems to be doing a terrible job of it, perhaps because of the Indian proclivity towards believing that big names like Karan Johar and Anurag Kashyap imply quality.

If there is ever a counterexample needed to violate that thesis, it is Ghost Stories. a continuing collaboration between Zoya Akthar, Dibakar Banerjee, Anurag Kashyap and Karan Johar, a platform of individuals collectively that make the Mahagatbandhan look like a viable alternative, whose last collaboration, Lust Stories, has less lust in it than the 7:30 samachar on Doordarshan.

There are four stories in Ghost Stories, and the best by far, in my humble opinion as not just a faithful consumer of horror but also someone who has written in the genre (The Mine for those of you who do not know), is the one by Karan Johar. Now there is nothing as damning to an anthology of short films as one where Karan Johar is considered to have had the strongest entry. Its like saying there are four people out of which Yogi Adityanath is the most secular.

[Spoilers from here on]

KJo’s story is authentically KJo, the sets are suitably grandly garish, and the new bride comes to breakfast wearing something straight out of fashion-week. Some of it is meant to be mock tongue-in-cheek, which straight of the bat, shows that unlike the other directors, KJo is not taking this all that seriously, which leads me to believe he is a bit more aware of his limitations than the others. But he shouldn’t have been that coy, given that he is fairly successful in nailing down one vital thing of good horror: that of plugging into an elemental human fear. Here that is the one of fitting in, what every bahu feels, being married into a joint family in an arranged marriage, of not knowing what to do, what is expected, and how much of who she is she is expected to compromise. The antagonist in the story is “tradition”, as symbolized by the Daadi, to whom all must bow. The fate of the heroine is the result of her fighting against this entrenched tradition. In the best line of the movie, she is told that none of this would have happened if she had just said “Good night” and given in to that very minimal expectation but no, she needed to be obstinate and scream “Eff it.” There is something genuinely creepy about this short story, not the least of which is the sleep-walking saans played by Kitu Gidwani, her sleep-walking symbolic of her having given in to tradition, and with that surrendering any semblance of individuality and choice at the altar of sanskari conformity.

After that, I would put Zoya Akthar. Her entry has atmosphere. That it has. But the story is so amazingly predictable that after I figured out, and you will too, within minutes of it starting, that I kept thinking that this is a bluff, we have something deeper going on. Some of it is hinted too, in the backstory of the temp nurse, the blade-scratches on her hand and her tendency to try on the jewelry of others, but no, it was exactly as I thought it would be, and the most fascinating character, the nurse, is thrown to the side, for a predictable and hurried ending. There’s a much better horror story there, except it just didn’t come out.

For those who have seen the movie, to find Dibakar Banerjee at third spot must be shocking, given that almost everyone says it is amazing. Sorry. I was left cold and not in a good way. Nowadays it has become table stakes for those making content for Netflix in India to show fascism in India of the majoritarian type, Scared Games and Leila and Ghoul, and while I have no problem with films being political, or the message, repetitive as it now is, I do take issue with poking our eyes with the political rhetoric in a Mrinal Senian way. This is Del Toro, the influences are obvious with dashes of Walking Dead and Korean pastoral gore-drenched horror, and if I am going to see the same allegory about fascism and the death of innocence, why I will see the infinitely superior Pan’s Labyrinth again, and not this ham-handed attempt at something similar.

Maybe I should have put Anurag Kashyap’s entry at the top. In a way it is the best, because the body-horror, the terror of metamorphosis, is not so much in the story that is playing on TV, but in the subtext, of Kashyap waking up to see that he has become Ramgopal Verma. It is terrifying to see the man who gave us Gangs of Wasseypur and Ugly, getting so high on his own supply, that he unloads this dumpster fire on unwitting audiences. This is self-indulgent film-making at its worse, ponderously slow and unimaginably bland, with Kashyap lazily substituting shock for horror, and even then the shock barely registers so terrible everything about it is. This entry is squarely targeted towards Kashyap fanboys, for whom anything he does is high art, but for others, skip this one, and tune into Republic TV instead for more believable luridness.

Saamri. Please rise from the dead

Merry Christmas Everyone !

 

Merry Christmas everyone.

Remember what the day teaches us. Scrooge was a fiscally responsible, wealth-creator, and Tiny Tim’s family did not have health insurance. Santa Claus is a social-pressure-generating mascot of corporate capitalism that came from the brain of retailers to blackmail you to buy gifts, or else ruining the wonder of Christmas for your little ones. Andrew Lincoln, in Love Actually, on Christmas night, is trying to get it on with his best friend’s wife, and even though he writes “without expectation or reciprocation” on the oh-so-cute cue cards, the fact that he does get a kiss from Keira Knightly in the end, means he is on the path of destroying her marriage.

There are lessons from Christmas classics.

Just not the ones you thought.

Awwal Number—the Review

Many years ago, Aamir Khan nearly brought Indian an Oscar by playing cricket with the British for taxes, but the question that was seldom asked then was who taught Bhuvan to bat.

The answer to that is Dev Anand. In the movie “Awwal Number”.

Awwal Number is the greatest cricket movie ever made. Some say it is the greatest sports movie ever made, and if the imagination and reach of the human mind be the measure of greatness, Awwal Number surely makes a strong case.

Dev Anand is the director, story-writer and script-writer for Awwal Number and he is also the chairman of the cricket board, the chief selector, the Commissioner of police, who like Francis Xavier the XMen can communicate with people using telepathy, which explains how he can talk to the villain in the helicopter while being on the ground, and who can shoot like Deadshot, given how he brings the bad man down with precise shots as he flies above in that same helicopter.

 

Pushing the boundary of what has been accomplished in film, he makes Cindy Crawford a vital part of Awwal Number, going beyond uncredited appearance to unaware appearance, by casting her as his own deceased mother. Sheer brilliance, for who would be a more appropriate mother to Dev Anand than Cindy Crawford in the late 80s, for if child be the father of man, why not this?

Awwal Number surprises you with its unexpected insights and if you have seen the movie you know what I mean. Nothing really is what you would expect: people talk among themselves to provide exposition and back-story, a sign that says “Garware” is shown every time there is a boundary, the buxom vamp smuggles gold bars in her brassiere and later dances in a stage that is set up like a ladies toilet, cricketers are shown to be obsessed only about hitting sixes, and Dev Anand finds nothing unethical selecting his brother (played by the great Aditya Pancholi, or the man who knows paanch types of cholis) to the national cricket team and finds it perfectly fine to be only mildly annoyed when Aditya Pancholi as a kid shoots dead a man who disturbed him while he was playing cricket.  His investigative methods are simple but direct:  injecting truth serum into a suspected terrorist if he is a man and flirting with a suspected terrorist if she is a woman.

And that’s not all that makes you feel uneasy.

In a moment of prescience, Dev Anand lays out a sinister conspiracy by the LTTE, represented by authentically bad Tamil accented Hindi actors, to blow up the Prime Minister of India at a cricket game, in the late 80s (the movie released in 1990), a year before this would come to pass, and then that same motif of blowing up a stadium would be used by Christopher Nolan in Dark Knight Rises.

The legacy of Awwal Number is not limited to Lagaan. In a famous scene, Ekta gives Aamir Khan a recorder with “I love you ” recorded so that he can play it when he is hurt and confused. This is exactly what Aamir Khan does as he is felled by a bouncer, which gives him a minor blackening on forehead, that then after he plays the “I love you” disappears from his head in the next shot, thank you Mr. Perfection. Keen watchers of sports movies will recognize the hat-tip to this scene in that year’s Rocky V where Mickey tells Rocky, “If you ever get hurt and you feel that you’re goin’ down, this little angel is gonna whisper in your ear. It’s gonna say, ‘GET UP, YOU SON OF A BITCH, ’cause Mickey loves you.”

Pretty much the essence of Awwal Number.

Surviving The SaddleRidge Fire

[Image courtesy: LA County Fire Department]

When I moved to sunny Los Angeles from nearly nineteen years of living on the East coast and the Mid-west of the US, I was looking forward to saying good-bye to longjohns, winter boots, shoveling your car out of the snow, and skidding on icy roads. Sure the state would impose a tax  for the beautiful weather and for every other things it could think of, but it was exciting to imagine living amidst sunshine all the while and maybe, perhaps maybe, run into Leonardo De Caprio at the grocery. As we were looking at houses to rent, we came upon a lovely property,  a two-storied house, nested at the foothills of the San Fernando Valley, go out to the backyard, there is a view straight out of a travel brochure, and a very decent commute time to office, and so of course we decided to stay there.

Over the past year, we discovered that the place had had a gas leak a few years ago, and decades ago it had been the scene of a major earthquake, and during the fall and winter we ourselves experienced the famed Santa Ana winds blowing through the valley that have the power to knock down a fully-grown man, but of course this was all fine.

If it was not, why would real-estate prices be going through the roof here, with new houses selling at upwards of a million and half, surely the market could not be wrong.

Or could it?

Thursday night, at 12: 30 pm, I am three-quarters asleep when there is a maniacal pounding of fists on the main door. Open it groggily, half-awake, to find a member of the Los Angeles Police Department saying “You have to evacuate now, there is a bush fire coming this way.” Now brush-fires happen in the San Fernando Valley every year, except every year it happens to someone else. I follow the policeman’s gaze and there right there, in among the hills that had once taken my breath away, and I kid you not, has appeared Mount Doom, the abode of Sauron, alight with tongues of flames. Seeing as me looking blankly at him, he says “Are you planning to leave or not?” and I said “Of course officer. Of course.”

My wife is down there with me, and the first thing is to wake up our six year old daughter, convince her we need to go now, since she is at the age of Plato, where she believes “the unexamined life is not worth living” even when there is a flaming conflagration making its way down the hills, and so we must explain what we are doing now and why. We take whatever we can think of, in that half-awake state, passports and a yellow box wherein I keep my important documents, and get into our cars. Nothing else, no clothes, no food, nothing.

By this time, there is pandemonium, our silent gated community has flashing cop cars all around like an episode of Cops, the winds are howling, and I am still not thinking straight.

We should go to Northridge Mall, my wife suggests. Now Northridge Mall is down south, away from where the flames are coming from, and it is a place both of us can drive to without looking at the GPS. So of course I suggest something different—let us drive down to my office. I am thinking at this point of time, that the fires will be doused by the time of dawn, and all we need is a place to be in with electricity, water, a vending machine, and a massage chair till that time. The only place I know that has all these: my office. So, like a moth to a flame, literally, I start driving towards where my office is, and ask my wife to put it in her GPS, and follow. The main streets are now full of cars, swerving, speeding, a scene straight out of your average disaster movie, when my brain finally breaking clear off the stupor of sleep has a moment of clarity: “the hills that I saw burning extend to my office, won’t they also be on fire?”

It was then that I realize another thing. I am the only car driving towards my office and there is an absolute cavalcade of cars in the opposite direction. As anyone who has seen a single zombie movie knows, this is a very bad sign. I pull up to the side, wife pulls up too in the car (my daughter is in her car), and I tell her “We are going to Northridge Mall. There is fire ahead of us.” I wish she had configured the hands-free in her car, which would have allowed us to talk to each other while driving, but it was too late for that.

I drive into the night, smoke on both sides, tendrils of fire curling up in what seems to be in the distance,  but I know is pretty close. Gusts of ash flit across the windshield, the stiff Santa Ana wind beats at the side of the car ominously, and I know what it means, the faster the wind, the faster the fire, and I can only imagine what is happening back home.

When I arrive at the Northridge Mall, I realize my wife is not behind me. Had she had an accident? With what we saw of traffic, it was quite possible. Of course I cannot call her, and risk her having an accident picking up the phone. Had she taken another route and gone straight into a flaming road? I had no idea.

That was pretty much the scariest moment of the night for me.

Finally, after what seems to be an eternity, her car pulls up, and I am like a castaway who has seen the boat. We need a place to stay, that is obvious. I start calling all nearby hotels that are away from the fire-line, and all of them, each and every, have all been filled up. And then finally, we get a hotel which says it has rooms available. We reach the place, and about half an hour later, there is a crowd at the front gate, other evacuated families asking for rooms, but it is “no vacancy” there now too.

Catching our breath inside the hotel room, we follow the updates on Twitter and on the live feed of local channels.

A reporter tweets a small mini-video clip of our street, mentioning it by name, and how the line of fire is coming straight towards it. There is another video of the street that is right next to us, with flames on both sides.

The reality of what has possibly happened to our house is seeping in. I am going over all the things I have possibly lost. Furniture don’t care, we should be replacing them anyways. My books from college and school, good riddance to that sentimental crap I otherwise can’t let go. Computer, good thing all my files are in Cloud storage.

My daughter is crying now, for her school certificates for good performance, from souvenirs of her old school in Maryland, the Harry Potter book collection that is her favorite, and I am trying to tell her I will get everything replaced, not to worry, nothing is indispensable, but I am breaking inside, I should have taken some of her artwork, not for her, because she will of course forget this as more memories will pile on top, but not me, and I feel this immense crushing sense of guilt—I should have been better prepared.

It’s the next morning, as we follow live feeds at the hotel of road closures and the fire extending, of footage that is terrifying, of miles of burning shrubs, of communities surrounded by flames. But then there is also footage of planes dropping fire-retardants on burning canyons, of armies of America’s finest firefighters lining up with their backs to houses, putting themselves between advancing fire-line and people’s property, creating barricades on the fly, cutting through shrubs with flames all around. It gives us hope, because firefighters were rushing to our house when we drove out, but then there was also that video of the ball of fire from last night, and the ominous implication of the tweet. Around 5 pm, I come to know that the Los Angeles Police Department is asking people who live in mandatory evacuation zones to congregate at certain meeting points where they will get a police escort to visit their homes to remove important things they could not. We go to one of these locations, wait in a line for more than two hours, and then get escorted to our house, the whole area now cordoned off like a toxic waste spill. The police confirm we are residents of the home we want to go to  by checking our license (to prevent looting), and give us five minutes to collect whatever we can.

We aren’t there to just collect stuff, we are there to see if our house survived the night. And it had, what a wondrous miracle.  There was still smoke billowing from the hills, but angry red flames were no more leaping towards the sky. If we had taken too little last time, this time we took too much, collecting all of what we had wished we had taken last night, the police were nice enough to give us ten minutes, and this time when we left, we were relieved, and thankful.

Thankful. Yes. That is the word. When the next afternoon we were finally allowed back in, after mandatory evacuation was called off, we saw first hand how the house had been saved. The hills that had been a sparse shade of green the last time we had seen them were all burnt black with ash. Towards the back of our house, from where the fire line was approaching, fire-fighters had hopped the fence using metal chairs from our backyard, and had, most probably, fought the fire from there, and one could not but be amazed at not just by the bravery of those who had risked their lives saving our homes, but also their training, coordination, ingenuity and engineering skill, and while it is tempting to say “Luck saved us” the truth is that men did. But of course there is always that randomness of the universe, while our house that had been closer to the fire had been unaffected, flying embers from that fire, carried along by winds at 50 miles per hour, had vaulted across the street and hit houses on the opposite side, burning roofs and backyard trees.

Wiping off the ash everywhere, and cleaning the backyard that looked like a war zone, we take a walk in the community. There we meet a long-term Californian, moving back after the evacuation, who unlike us, seemed positively unfazed by the carnage all around. Oh of course, he said, we had something like this in 2008, and then there was the earthquake, and there were a few more evacuations like this, but then we don’t have the snow, and that apparently makes it worth it all. When they say Californians are chill, they mean it, that is the only counter to fire.

Which leaves one with the question : can some good come out of an experience a traumatic as this?

I think so.

It’s experiences like this that put the real things in perspective, the stuff that gets forgotten amidst the minutiae of our daily lives, the delicate balance between man and nature, of how the fate of human beings are connected, of the very highest ideals of humanity, of people putting their lives on the line for a home in which a stranger stays, and finally, of holding your family close, and never letting go.

The day of the Saddleridge fire was over.

 

 

 

Joker—the Review

“Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music” is a quote wrongly attributed to Nietzsche, the favorite philosopher of angsty boys and fascists. In Todd Philip’s Joker origin story, Arthur Fleck dances to a symphony of violence and hurt, literally and figuratively, one that plays in his fractured mind, and while it is left open to interpretation whether this is the definitive origin story of the greatest comic-book villain of all-time or just the fleeting fantasy of a man who has lost his mind, one of the many pasts the Joker has invented for himself (If I am to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice, as the Joker says in the Killing Joke), a schizophrenic cocktail of narcissistic hubris, a punchline to a joke whose set-up we are never meant to see or to quote the titular character in the film “You won’t get it”, one thing is certain: “Joker” is a deeply unsettling and disturbing film.

It is also deeply personal, anchoring itself on one person’s perspective, Arthur Fleck, an unreliable, hallucinating man, involuntarily celibate, an incel as they call them nowadays and in my days the official label was “Jadavpur University engineering male student”, who lives with an overbearing, dominating and ultimately equally unreliable mother, trying desperately to excel at something he is so obviously so terrible at, being picked on by any and everyone, but persisting because of a belief in his purpose in life: to make people laugh. And when he finds that there really is no purpose to life at all, he snaps, or does he really, and becomes Joker, or does he?

This is as far removed as one can be Heath Ledger’s Joker, a super villain in the DC universe, flamboyant with a swagger and arrogance big as all outdoors, soaring set-pieces, crackling lines on the nature of evil and the need for violence in society, in violent conflict with Batman, memorable but in the cocoon of a world not meant to be taken seriously.

Joaquin Phoenix’ Joker though is real. He is every-man, cracking under the pressure of maintaining a happy smiling face, as the world breaks down around him, awkward, conflicted, suicidal, desperate. Even though set in the Batman world, this is hardly what you would expect in a superhero movie, there is little in terms of special-effects, there is no antagonist to the main character, and most of the drama happens with no dialog, Arthur Fleck holding his lips in a parody of a smile, Arthur Fleck lying on the road in a fetal position after being jumped by punks, Arthur Fleck staring at a mirror, and of course Arthur Fleck dancing to the music in his mind. This is, in my opinion, a far far greater acting performance than Ledger’s, because of the singular absence of the props of modern escapist film–the action, the dialog, the twists, the conflict between the hero and the villain. Joker is almost like a single person play, the camera lingers on Phoenix’s face, and his misshapen body, and his eyes, and the only support he has is an amazing background score, but that is it, that is all he has, and the rest of what you feel, and trust me this will make you feel, whether it be repulsion or admiration I cannot guarantee, is all because of Joaquin Phoenix’s acting.

Is the Joker a dangerous film? Does it justify violence as the only purpose to an existence of hopelessness? Will it embolden the incels on social media? Does it promote white male victimhood? I don’t know, and frankly I don’t care, and if you do, please do read the hot outrage on the liberal US media on Joker, where it sits on 69% on Rottentomatoes whereas fun but strictly genre-fare like WonderWoman and Avengers End Game sits at above 90%.

But if you want to see what cinema can be, the power it has when put in the right hands, to shock and disturb and make you think, then watch Joker.

Now.

 

 

 

 

 

Gandhi My Way

Like many others who grew up reading history from joyless little tomes produced by doctrinaire historian hacks as part of our West Bengal board approved school syllabus, I had an uncritically simplistic view of Mahatma Gandh in my youth. The way it was told, Bapuji was the second Jesus who also brought us freedom, put on the cross by those to him he had given salvation, and this impression was reinforced by multiple mandatory watchings of Attenborough’s lavish hagiography.

Over the years, as I have read more, I have found Gandhi’s legacy to be deeply problematic, whether it be his use of the power imbalance in his favor to launch bizarre sex experiments in his ashram while fluffing it up as an “experiment in truth” to his asking Hindus, especially women, to embrace death and “dishonor” in order to shame the perpetrators into passivity, and his antediluvian ideas on industrialization.

While the halo on his infallible divinity has dimmed, I am still fascinated by his leadership style and, most of all his legacy to the world,  an uniquely Indian notion of participatory democracy.

The India of Gandhi was one of hereditary monarchy, of elephants and palaces and ostentatious displays of wealth, greater the pomp, greater the perception of power. Using his poverty, his singular lack of possessions, the frailty of his physique, Gandhi turned that model of power on its head. It was his abnegation that gave him his absolute moral authority. Much is now made of how Gandhi was a democrat, he was hardly, in the Congress it was his will or nothing at all as Subhash Chandra Bose found out, and when he felt he was losing control, or a movement had gone to the extent that it was now becoming counter-productive, he would pull the plug, irrespective of what others thought, and if he could not get his way, he would launch a fast, and he knew that the political capital he had, there was no one who could say no after that. This is what made him such an effective leader, being the Platonic ideal of the philosopher king, an autocrat who is decisive and not swayed by the passions of the masses. Plato,in his book Republic (not to be confused with Arnab Goswami’s abomination), says that the ideal king, what he calls the philosopher king, must have no possessions, because only then will the nation-state accept his decisions, since no matter how unpopular his verdict, there is no question of that having been motivated by personal gain. It has been said that it cost a lot to keep Gandhi poor, and there is a good solid reason for that. Successive generations of Indian politicians have tried to follow this model, from Sonia Gandhi giving up the prime ministership but keeping the reigns of power to Arvind Kejriwal’s “main to samanya aadmi hoon”, but consistent and absolute abnegation is a tough path to walk, and only Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had the moral fiber to keep at it consistently and without fail.

Not surprising his song is “Ekla chalo re”.

But this is only a small part of the legend of the man.

Democracy, as it was in the 30s was quintessentially British, an adaptation of the Aristotealian ideal of government, of gentlemen in large halls taking decisions, of jolly gents and old chaps, away from the teeming masses, who were allowed to vote, but not to decide, their engagement with the government being to write a name on a piece of paper and then leave the work of governance to the privileged.

Gandhi broke that way of mold. He understood the notion of virality before social media was social media. He had a knack for symbolism, of capturing the perfect viral moment, for what is the greatest Instagram moment than him bending and picking up salt, one frail old man challenging in one black and white picture, the economic might of the greatest empire of its time. Gandhi was perhaps was one of the first persons in the world to effectively link identity to mass mobilization politics. He chose emotive religious causes–the Khilafat movement for one, and cow-protection on the other, in the process forever linking religious identity to democracy, the perils of which were articulated by the Congress leadership that was being sidelined by Gandhi, a leadership that included one Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a firm believer in the traditional concept of democracy whose aim was to act as a counterweight to rather than exacerbate the Greek notion of thumos or community-spiritedness. And such was Gandhi’s legacy that even Jinnah realized the folly of his ways, that winning debates in Parliament and forging countries are not the same thing, and what happened next, we all know.

And though Gandhi in his messaging always made non-violence a moral choice, it was also, in the long run, the most pragmatic. Gandhi understood the changing algebra of power better than his contemporaries and even those that came after him, that the world is changing, that physical violence and war and empire-building through razing of cities could no longer guarantee victory, that with the flow of information, the pressure of the masses and of public opinion would turn military victories into defeats,  and the US would realize it soon enough, through Vietnam when a military victory in Asia became a political catastrophe at home, and then the war in Afghanistan by Russia and then America and the Iraq War, to the extent that the best minds in foreign policy have come to accept that embargoes and boycotts and sanctions work much better in bringing countries to their heels than sending in a volley of missiles.

So while it is true that I do not see Gandhi as a beacon of morality any more, nor do I find myself agreeing with much of what he did and preached, there is no doubt in my mind that he was  pretty much one of the greatest political brains the world has ever produced.

The Three Levels of Desi Life in USA

There are 3 levels of desi-life in the US.

Executive level: Aka the Alia Bhatt life. Two high-income individuals in family, working in top tech firms or in high levels of management or being successful startup (non Telebhaja type) or, the oldest profession, doctors. Immigration status would be Green card or US citizenship. Clothes from Sak’s Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. Personal vehicles—hybrid or electric or premium, travels business class, owns $1 million house, invests in hedge funds, eats out at non-chain Michelin-star restaurants, won’t even enter Burger King to take a dump, takes pictures of themselves pumping weights in the gym or doing Pilates, spends long weekends in the Bahamas at luxury resorts, goes out for date nights with spouse with child at home with nanny or expensive baby-sitter, leader in local community (if Indian roots are to be maintained) or golf club membership (if not), man wants to own a brewery and does some beer creation on the side, lady wants only organic food and ethically sourced products in the house, man shares pictures on Facebook in polo Tshirts and lady shows slight tasteful cleavage and exposed shoulder(while restricting sharing to non-family friends on Facebook).

Developer level: Aka the Rahul Roy life. One medium-income individual or two low-income ones, technical people in mid-level tech firms.Immigration status: Green card or I-140 approved or H1B. Clothes from Target usually, shopping from Costco, and occasional discounted item from Neiman Marcus before trip to India, personal vehicles–Japanese, one car may be premium for Facebook purpose, travels economy class but sometimes may qualify for upgrades based on credit card privileges and those are immediately shared on social media (the lounge check-in, not how they got there), eats at TGI Friday & Outback Steakhouse occasionally and convince kids this is luxury dining, lives in rented house, invests in index-linked mutual funds and RSUs, long-weekend is usually going to beach or local state park or staying at home watching Sacred Games, children always with couple because child-care is expensive but official excuse is “We always stay together as family”, if you see the couple on date you can be sure parent is visiting from India, non-executive member in local community (usually gets Diet Coke and pizza for the events) or stay at home watching NFL (if desirous of integrating), pictures on facebook usually consist of parents visiting from India, less pictures of the husband and wife (usually selfies because they don’t want to draw attention to their clothes but also want to show that they have a satisfied marital life) and more of children (more social media capital per picture), and when spouse asks “BJs?” the answer is “Did we forget something from Costco?”

Graduate-student-level: Aka the Joginder Shelly “Roti khata, badboo aata” life. One low-income individual, student, just-graduated, tense immigrant visa situation (H1B). Clothes from Walmart, and occasional from Target, shopping from Costco and Patel Brothers, lives in apartment complex to be woken up by creaking floorboards or Despacito or noisy love-making from next apartment at full volume, personal vehicle: Hyundai, or other Japanese cars, possibly second hand (but 100-point inspection and dealer certified), travels economy class but feels bad doing so, more comfortable in Greyhound, premium dining experience at MacDonalds and birthdays and anniversaries at Denny’s, Costco hot-dog and drink is comfort food, and $3 footlongs at Subway (eat fresh), long weekends are spent at mall or state park with the very occasional visit to beach (not on weekends, parking is $40), prefers take-out to delivery and sit-down because of the savings on tips, children are thrown a cheap toy from Walmart to keep them occupied or given the Amazon tablet to watch Peppa Pig while husband-wife sip Mountain Dew and fight over expenses usually visitor health insurance for parents or the child’s swimming instructor or Kumon fees, exercise is usually going to apartment complex gym, invests in CDs and money market, entertainment is watching pirated Hindi movies or Indian cricket streams, goes to Indian events but complains about the mandatory contributions, hobbies including Khanna’s immigration podcast and checking USCIS webpage for retrogression dates, wears $5 Tshirts and discounted store-brand jeans, and lives on in the hope that their children may one day lead the executive level life.

(For those who liked this post, I had originally planned a trilogy of books: What the Phock, How the Phock, Why the Phock about desi life in the US through the story of a man who goes through from Level 3 to Level 2. Now all gone. If you like this and want writing like this, read amazon kindle electronic books, eliminate the middleman, the publisher.)

Some Thoughts on Article 370’s Demise

Ever since I have taken interest in Indian politics, the approach of the Indian government to the Kashmir problem has been similar to the guy who keeps on pressing the elevator button again and again, expecting that the elevator will pick up on his urgency and hurtle down to take him up. The Indian governments have engaged in “talks”, often using “PR representatives of secessionists” also known as interlocutors, and our wise men keep on telling us that we need to keep talking, about what I do not understand. This has led to the growth of a Kashmiri political class, who have, to use an old Wren and Martism, hunted with the hounds and run with the hare. They have benefited personally from such “talks” by playing both sides. However they have, over the decades, proven useless in addressing any of the core problems. As a matter of fact, they have made it worse.

Now as Article 370 stands dismantled effectively, despite still being on the books, two things are certain. One is that the business model of the political interlocutors has been disrupted. And two is that there will be immense outrage on social media. In order to prevent myself from having to say the same thing multiple times, I have compiled here a frequently yet unanswered but definitely will be answered questions, as the waves of outrage dash against my social media feeds.

1. Why not plebiscite?

Answer: Plebiscite is not for Article 370 but for annexation to Pakistan. The plebiscite, promised by once by Chacha Nehru (Greatness be unto him), could only be done, as per T&C, if Pakistan withdrew their troops totally and then India did, just keeping that part necessary to maintain order. Since the preconditions of Pakistan withdrawing from PoK will never happen, neither will the plebiscite. There is also that little moral problem I have that you do not get to do a plebiscite after demographic change, after communally picking out Hindu pandits and ejecting them from their homeland. Any plebiscite is rigged by default.

2. Why not discuss the “abrogation” of Article 370 with the people of Kashmir?

Answer: In other words, talks. Now, legislation is not done through SMS polls (unless you are the AAP government in Delhi). There is, unfortunately, no formal avenue for discussion with the people of Kashmir, other than elections. The way I look at it, the democratically elected government of India, which has an overwhelming mandate, twice in two elections, has implemented one of their fundamental election planks. They did not spring a surprise like demonetization for which truly they had no mandate. The power of abrogation of 370 comes to the current government from the people of India, Kashmir included, through our democratic institutions. You may say “this fascist Hitler is not my leader”, but unfortunately this is the way democracy works. Sorry.

3. Oh screw this all, you know as well as I know the people of Kashmir dont want to be with India. Why not just let them decide their own fate?

Answer: If you believe that an Islamic fundamentalist movement should be allowed to establish an Islamic theocracy after the genocide of minority Hindus just because they want to (as a point just listen to Geelani’s latest video to understand what the basis of their “Freedom struggle is” is in case you think I am a Hindu lying fascist), I hope you will be consistent when in some Pradesh, under the leadership of some Yogi, they want to throw out their minority of Muslims and establish their own Hindu theocracy, Harshavardhan-sthaan or Prayaag-super-raaj or whatever with the cow as their national animal. Something tells me you won’t be. But if you do, I understand and accept your opinion, while disagreeing with it.

As for me, I find all religious theocracies, Muslim and Hindu, fundamentally abhorrent, and the idea of India, if such a thing exists, is to make sure that religion does not define politics. Any religion. Yes including mine.

The door to forming countries on the basis of religion closed on August 15, 1947. If you open the portal again, then there is no telling what will come through.

4. Will this help the people of Kashmir?

Answer: The good people of Kashmir have been held hostage by a leadership class that consists of fundamentally honest religious fundamentalists and opportunists who are out for power and money. Talks with them or through them will not lead to any new outcomes. If there will be any solution to Kashmir, it has to be economic prosperity, people will be so busy making money that they wont have time for religious madness. As a friend pointed out, we want to become like the US when no one wants to split, and states like Puerto Rico desperately want to join. With the broker families and their enablers being short-circuited and ultimately made redundant, the benefits of India’s progress will go direct to the people, as they do to all other states. And with the bifurcation, it allows for development of Ladakh, a 70% Buddhist by population, environmentally sensitive part of the country, which has long claimed step-motherly treatment from the state government at Jammu and Kashmir.

Will the abrogation of Article 370 solve the problem? Will this bring jobs and prosperity to this desperately poor part of the country?

I do not know, but it is worth a try. Because we have been “talking” for decades, and there has been very little to show for it. The only realistic other solution is independence of Kashmir or accession to Pakistan, or more precisely the independence of Kashmir and then accession to Pakistan, and if you do not think that is the way out, well, this is the only other way.

Tirangaa–the Review

This past week, Tiranga TV was in the news, through layoffs and what seems to be its shutting down. Apparently the promoters of the channel, Kapil Sibal and his wife, were planning to blame this, like everything else, on Modi’s fascism, and what would have been yet another jamboree at the Press Club with “Accha Silah Diye Tunhe Mere Pyar Ka” Arun Shourie jumping out from behind the bushes to launch into another diatribe against those he once courted, fizzled out, as no one less than Barkha Dutt countered the narrative on Twitter.

But this post is not about Tiranga TV, but about Mehul Kumar’s Tirangaa. The film. Released in 1992,  unlike Tiranga TV, it was a major hit, and maybe the reason for that was that Tirangaa had its heart in the right place.

Oh what a cast it had.

There was Harish, fresh from his debut movie Prem Qaidi, also the first movie of Karishma Kapoor, where both danced in identical hot pants, in sequences where you could not make out who was who, so visually similar they were. In Tiranga, he has considerable footage but no name, but he leaves an impact, as he is implicated in a horrendous crime by the evil men, once his purse is found at the scene of the crime. Yes. You heard that right. Purse. In 1992, many thought he would be the next Shahrukh Khan, just like in 2019, many thought that Rahul Gandhi would be the next PM.

There was, of course, Nana Patekar, Inspector Shivajirao Wagle, in his deadpan delivery style, laying out lines like “Aaao aoo hijro ki aulaad aao” with the same casualness as a millennial would tell the barista “one cafe latte please”.

There was Rakesh Bedi as Khabarilal, Indian deep-throat, the mysterious insider who supplies critical intel over landline,  in a bizarre Akashvani montone.

There was Mamata Kulkarni, for one song and one sob, in a gloriously glorified guest appearance.

There was Varsha Usgaonkar, famous from that layered song, “Anchal ke andar kya hai, anchal ke andar choli, choli ke andar kya hai, bataoon batoon, holi hain”, and I was going to say something here, but the memory of that song from Khalnayeeka made me lose my train of thought.

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There was the legendary Deepak Shirke, playing the grandly named Pralaynath Gundaswamy, possibly the only Hindi film major villain to graduate from hotel management, for he wore a waiter suit, and white gloves and carried a kebab skewer, which he used to dispatch non-cooperative scientists as if he is serving starters at a cocktail party. He would attain great fame after Tirangaa, going on to star as Kaalia Danger in Khuda Gawah, Kaalia Patel in Meri Aan, and Kaalia Shirke in Jai Kishen and finally as Bacchubhai Bhigona in the greatest movie of all time, Gunda.

Finally there was Raj Kumar Sahaab playing Brigadier Suryadev Singh, the terror of desh-drohis, always two steps ahead of the baddies, and who has his dialogues well-thought out for all occasions.  I remember during my on-campus undergraduate interview, I was asked “What are the things are you afraid of?” by the HR on the panel and I was this close to standing up and declaring, Raj Kumar style, with a cavalier toss of my head, ‘Na talwar ki dhaar se na goliyon ki bauchar se, bandah daarta hai to sirf parvar digaar se”. Such was the impact of that character on me and many others of the 90s.

And why not? Brigadier Suryadev Singh was a superhero before Marvel came along, the panache of Ironman with the patriotism of Captain America,  the anger of Hulk with the fashion sense of Black Widow. The brigadier had supernatural powers, he could apparate out of thin air, Harry Potter style, when his name was mentioned, a power he described as “Hum kisi se bhi, kisi waqt bhi, kahin bhi mil sakte hain … hamara jab dil chahe”. He could hear everything, even when he was not in the room. He was the only one who when people watched him on TV, he watched them back through the screen.  He wore clothes that would make Dil Ki Armaani aasoyon mein bahe gaye, including Madhuri Dixit type chokers in many of the scenes, whose colors change, but not the Indian flag at its center.

Tiranga is etched in the anals  (intentional typo) of Indian cinemadom. It was one of the few movies of the era that gave a lot of attention to science and engineering. In times when Sridevi as a Naagin shot lasers out of her Nigahen and Aamir Khan acted in snake-epics like Tum Mere Ho and high-tech for Indians was Nikitasha kitchenette, Tirangaa went to great lengths to get its science right in  a way that Neel Da Gas Tyson would have appreciated.

For one, there was Brigadier Suryadev Singh’s tricked out Ambassador car, which makes the Batmobile look like Basanti’s tanga. Even though it did not have automatic transmission, it had bomb detecting sensors fitted to its bottom, a red flashing button on the dashboard, and a retractable floor which would separate on a detection of a bomb, right over a manhole. The good brigadier is shown to have military technology that would make James Bond say “never say never again.” For one, the Brigadier’s dual-chamber pipe not only carried tobacco but also dynamite, providing him with a nicotine rush and his dushman with death. He carried around a remote control of what seems to be a Sonodyne TV used to control anything he wishes, and he had a secret Batcave-like lair with flashing lights on the panels, a bargain basement version of USS Enterprise in a basement.

Which brings us to the famous fuse conductor technology, the heart of the missile, quantum technology developed by Indian scientist Khurana, which the evil Pralaynath in a display of Trump-like narcissism named Pralay. It has wave particle duality built in, with the name “fuse conductor” conducting as well as inhibiting conduction. In the iconic climax, Suryadev Singh holds up the fuse conductors, which seem to have been salvaged from the same Sonodyne TV whose remote was being used. The metaphor is very phallic, the missiles representing gigantic male organs, the fuse conductors the source of masculinity, the metaphorical testicles, which Suryadev Singh has cut away, reducing the missiles to “sirf dhuya hi rahega aur kuch naheen”, thus castrating the evil designs of the villain.

Tirangaa isnt the garden variety 90s movie, it appropriates the tropes of the times, but gives them unforgettable twists. For instance when the evil politician finds out that Gundaswamy’s son has impregnated a woman, he tells Gundaswamy that he should not worry about it, the girl can be paid off, the baby aborted, till, and this is where Tiranga shows its colors, Gundaswamy informs the politician that it is his daughter got impregnated, leading to a moment of stunning “karma is a bitch”-ness that one rarely sees on celluloid.

A true classic, one can and should see Tirangaa many times.

As for Tiranga TV, zero is enough. No loss.