Ek Hulchul Si

It’s rare that we get a perfect film soundtrack in Hindi film industry. Dev D is one such album. The problem with a perfect album is that there are so many gems in it, not every one of them gets its due. Ek Hulchul si, didn’t quite get the attention it deserves, because there were bigger catchier numbers in the album such as Emotional Atyachaar and Saali Khushi.

Try listening to this golden nugget, in high volume in your car, on a long drive.

Agar dil mein hulchul na jage de to kehna

Enjoy!

Kash Laga!

Zindagi ke kash laga

Hasrataron ke rakh udaa

….

…

Choodi hui bastuyan jata hun bar bar ghoom ghoom ke

Milte nahi hain nishan, chhode the dehleeze choom choom ke

Only Gulzar saab can write like that!

Only Vishal Bhardwaj can compose like that!

Only Daler Mehdi and Sukhwinder can sing like that!

You’ll have to watch the whole film, if you want to make sense of the video.

Business of Religion

Lord Tirupati opens an offsite campus, for its devotees in Bay Area, California. I couldn’t believe my ears when I first heard it. It exactly sounded like it is, an infomercial about a top tier business school opening a campus right in your neighborhood.  A gruffy man in thick telugu accent was explaining how on very bhaari demand from devotees, Lord Tirupati will make an appearance right here Bay Area where His thousands of less fortunate devotees (from spiritual perspective) will be able to darshanam and offer their prayers and hard earned money to the Lord.

I am always intrigued by the business of religion, but it never hit me in the nose until a few years back. It’s one of those transformations you undergo when you turn from an I into an NRI. Back in India, religion is everywhere, it’s in the air you breathe, the water you drink. The point is you don’t notice the organized business like structur around religion. You fool yourself that you are doing it all voluntarily, nobody is selling you anything. You visit the temple on Tuesday because you want to. You offer prasad simply because your parents always taught you and it gave you a good feeling, not because the temple on the main nukkad and the crowd in it on Tuesdays gave you a guilty feeling that you are not remembering your Gods. You do get a bit uneasy when you get hit by the nosy and obnoxious pandas at Haridwar or any other religious place, but you ignore them as exceptions. But, here in the land of the westerners, where you are trying to retain the last few traces of Hinduism in you, to be able to pass onto your off springs so that they remember who they are when you are long gone, the business aspect of the religion is very hard to ignore. You realize that in the world of super powerful capitalism, everything is business. The Panditji you hire for doing small puja at your place has a day job and tells you his rate list for various rituals you may want to perform. You can ignore the first panditji you meet and go around asking for a more authentic pujari who has slightly bigger portion of the day dedicated to the service of the God, instead of writing Java code, hoping that the puja will be more effective and more authentic Gods will show up. Then you realize that this new panditji who didn’t tell you his price in the first meeting and said, “de dena, jo apka man kare” (Give whatever you feel like) was only better and more suave at his business. You realize that you ended up paying more money to him than the one with the rate list. What more, you realize that he has a way to upsell you to get more money out of your pocket. I once went to one such panditji and asked for advice to calm some grihas (planets for Hinglish), as we were going through some tough time and parents from India advised that we visit a panditji. I was taken aback when I was offered 5 different types of pujas, depending on how much peace I was looking for. I thought I was the one looking for advice here, but it I soon came to terms with the fact that I am in America where there is a choice for everything.

I then met a panditji whose holy attire convinced me that this is the Godman I was looking for. He was always dressed up only in a white dhoti, any time of the day you meet him. And, his house in Sunnyvale spelled religion. The auspicious atmosphere, the smell of agarbatti burning all the time and the cleanliness made you conscious of even your own breadth. I invited panditji couple of times to my place and he was perfect, did everything per the procedure, sang shlokas in pure Sanskrita and he even sang Om Jai Jagdish Hare perfectly, which I was a bit surprised about as he was a typical South Indian Brahmin, with limited knowledge of Hindi. I thought, what the heck, may be  Om Jai Jagdish became popular in South India too, after Rani Mukherjee sang it in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. My wife was a bit more skeptical; she thought he was adapting his marketing skills to be more appealing to his North Indian clientele.  I had one of those moments with wife, where you feel like saying, “Oh honey, you know nothing and I know what I am doing, so don’t worry”. Overtime pandtiji cajoled us for regular visit to the mini-temple in his house on Friday nights. On couple of the occasions I went, I was amazed to see the crowd in his small house and the garage that had been converted into a temple. There was puja, there was aarati and of course there was food. Before long, I learned that Panditji had now built his own full blown temple and was the defacto head of this new temple and wasn’t available for house calls as he was too busy. I used to keep getting chain emails and occasional cold calls from his devotees, after the full blown temple was set up. And then we had another one of those moments where wife says, “see, i told you in advance and i was right”.

Have you ever seen a better business strategy? Build early customer successes, convert them into references, spread through the word of mouth, leverage your early customers to scale up, grow and expand and before you know you are a large corporation, listed on Nasdaq.

When we came to Bay Area in 2000, there were two major Hindi temples. One was a church converted into temple and the other a brand new construction from scratch. Being the naïve, Hindu Indian, it made perfect sense to me and I felt like saying , “Amreeka is great”. After all, people need religion as a way of life and two temples made a lot of sense, keeping in mind the size of the Hindu population. Overtime, we saw new temples creeping up in every corner of Bay Area. If demand exists, supply would show up, says basic principle of market economics and in this case, we were seeing almost a glut of supply. And yet, every temple was doing thriving business. Even in the midst of the recession, when restaurants started going empty even on weekend nights, temples would always be full and of course their demands for extra donation wouldn’t slow down.  Gods are not easy to please and their service costs money. The temple in the church, ran a long running fund raising campaign for further construction and raised humongous amount of money. We paid our share too, it just felt good and all of a sudden we felt grown up and mature because we were contributing to a temple construction, first time in our lives. The temple committee ran hard to resist offers. For mere $11, you could offer a brick. Now isn’t that better than even the Godfather offer, the one that you can’t refuse. In fact if I remember, so impressed I was by the sincerity and commitment of the temple committee that I sold the plan to many of my friends and appealed to the guilt in their minds and forced them to donate.

Construction did take place, we got a new façade, that made the temple look more like temple and less like church. Of course, the original walls were kept intact, the carpet from church days stayed and so did the benches in the halls. The bathrooms also remained intact as they were too scared to be remodeled, after all they were blessed by Gods of two religions. But a lot of construction did take place in the back side of the temple, the side you cannot see and the side where the temple houses its priests and other staff. Some of the atheists may find faults with that, but hey people serving God also need places to live, don’t they? And, what’s your problem, you did get your receipt and claimed tax exemption it, didn’t you?

Hinduism is not the only religion run as an organized business. Christianity and Islam have been doing it for centuries. Even though Hinduism is supposed to be the oldest religion, Christianity developed most of the business principles that then got adopted by other religions over time. But unlike Hinduism, Chritianity is run like a monopolistic, all powerful business empire, with big money and strong lobbyists in every part of the world. Any slight bit of resistance is quashed easily by all means, mostly bought by money in this day and time. Hinduism is a little less control freak and anybody and everybody is allowed to set up a shop, associate themselves with any of the hundreds of big brands from Shiva, Vishnu and Lord Hanuman to countless others. Hinduism is like Indian democracy, anybody with slight bit of ambition and entrepreneurial skills can start a part or set up a temple and secure the future of the next 7 generations of his family.

There is a positive side to organized Hindusim too. Even big brands like Tirupati or Vaishnodevi have a big volunteer side to them. Big business houses or people who believe that the almighty has been generous to them, donate lot of money and offer services to young and old, rich and poor who visit the place from far and wide. On the positive side, they don’t try to control anyone or advertize to anyone to come and visit them. The brands exist and keep growing stronger every year because of the faith in people’s heart.

Coming back to Tirupati, I didn’t mean to disrespect or hurt the feelings of the believers. I visited Tirupati once and like any other big shrine in India, Tirupati was full of devotees from far and wide who had come there on their own, without anyone telling them or advertising to them. The temple is obviously very rich, keeping in mind how much money gets offered by rich and poor and the management does an excellent job of keeping order. When I went there, I stood in a line that took 4-5 hours after which I found myself locked inside a big hall. I enquired around after finding someone who could speak Hindi and was told I was in hall number 26. There were 25 halls before me, full of people in them and our turn would come after they were done. It was almost like going to a ball game or IPL game, whichever one you like. There were vendors selling idlis and other snacks. After waiting for another 2-3 hours, I panicked, climbed the netty wall and jumped on the other side of the hall way. Two security personnel came and I requested them to just escort me out as I was no longer interested in darshanam and had to get back to Chennai, then Madras for my job next day. The security personnel showed pity on me and I was asked to get in another line that took only 3 more hours to reach the deity. I got my 3 seconds in front of the deity before I got ushered away, politely yet forcefully. Later I learned that I could have completed the whole process if I had paid some extra money and got into a different line, instead of the line for common men.

My experience of going to Vaishnodevi, was equally full of heroic tales. The hero was my newly married wife back then, because of whom I was visiting the temple for the first time in my life. She was heroic for tolerating me for the entire duration of 14 mile hike while I cribbed and whined the whole way. There it was not the wait, probably because we had gone in off season, but the sheer length of the hike to get there that made me panic.

I do not have any personal problems with religions being run as organized business, as long as they don’t turn into an organized mafia like business or try to control or kill people. I try to stay conscious of the fact that I came to the temple for a specific purpose and should not get distracted by the rampant commercialism around me. After all, they are not forcing me. They are appealing to the guilt inside me, but making the whole act very dramatic so that you end up offering more than you came planned for. But hey, that’s still better than some religions that turn people into killing machines or try to overtake people’s daily lives. Besides, organized business nature of the religion makes it accountable to the clientale in some direct or indirect form. But still, the idea of bringing Tirupati maharaj to Bay Area is a bit too ludicrous. Leave Lord Tirupati alone, please! Let people come to Him, they way always have.

Analysis of Team India’s paralysis

Back in 2007, when India won the world cup T20,

- Virendra Sehwag was recovering from loss of form and motivation under Greg Chappell. He was considered fat and unfit, almost like Yuvraj today. He was almost thrown out of test team and was struggling to hold spot in one day. His revival started with this tournament.

- Gautam Gambhir was in and out of the team, didn’t have a permanent place in the batting order. He had occasional good inning to his name but nobody took him seriously.

- Yusuf Pathan, who? That’s exactly what we all asked when we saw his name in the batting line up. It turned out he was Irfan Pathan’s brother and that’s how we knew him back then. It turned out he had a penchant for hitting sixes, was a useful off spinner and was cool under pressure.

-Among bowlers, Sreesanth and Irfan Pathan were recovering, were struggling for form and were desperate to regain their mojos and prove that they were long term prospects for India. Only RP Singh was in any kind of form, among the bowlers.

-We all know Joginder Sharma, who bowled the last over in the final was an unknown back then and still is an unknown.

- Above all, India had a new captain, the cool dude as he was known back then, Mahendra Singh Dhoni. He played the game, exactly the way it should be played- with passion and certain nonchalance and yet remained emotionally unaffected by it. That may sound normal, but we all forget that these were rare commodities in Indian captains of the great past.

What happened rest, is history we all know. Ever since then India has struggled in T20s, and particularly badly in the last two world cups. All sorts of experts have analyzed the causes, as they did last year and we see a pattern of probable causes and solutions that range from plain myopic to so long term that they would produce results only in 15 or 20 years. People have blamed IPL and their parties, fatigue and above all, the inability of our batsmen to handle short pitched bowling and our bowlers to bowl at 150KPH consistently for 4 overs.

But we are all forgetting that, none of this mattered in 2007. These were the exact same batsmen, a few changes here and there, very similar set of bowlers. None of our bowlers bowled above 150KPH for 4 overs in their entire life, forget about a single match. In fact, we had plain medium pacers back then, RP, Irfan and Sreesanth. And it’s not like WC 2007 was played on flat sub-continental pitches, it was played in South Africa.

We can argue that the format was new in 2007 and Australia weren’t taking it too seriously back then. Now flip the argument, and see the irony of it. It’s India who is not taking the format seriously now and that explains it all. In fact it’s not just T20, now a days India is not taking any ICC tournaments seriously. Our fearsome and obscenely rich board wants to organize its own tournaments, on pitches and conditions where India can win consistently or regularly enough and we well know about how they betted everything on IPL, a tournament fixed in many ways such as 4 foreign players per team and designed to produce thrilling entertainment, not necessarily cricket.

But it’s not just the board. In fact BCCI or its policies didn’t win us world cup 2007. Yes they took credit for it, organized a big shameless celebration through the streets of Mumbai and hogged all the front seats at the ceremony in Wankhede, but the fact remains that we won the WC not because of BCCI but despite it. In fact BCCI back then, took the game and format even less seriously than today. They sent a second rung team devoid of the then stars such as Tendulkar, Dravid and Ganguly and Zaheer Khan. It’s the rag tag bunch of players they sent to South Africa that surprised one and all. They enjoyed their cricket, showed will to win, many of them saw it as a lifetime opportunity to revive their careers or establish themselves in the international arena.

That’s what was the big missing piece in 2009 and now in 2010. The team lost the freshness, the bloody-mindedness, the strong desire to prove themselves individually and as a team. They lost the appetite to play the sport, enjoy their game and win it. There is a certain fatigue about this team and it’s certainly not physical, IPL parties and all. The fatigue is mental. It seems the team on both occasions wasn’t able to figure out why they are there, why they are playing this tournament, who they are playing against, what kind of preparation they need to make, who is supposed to play what role and stuff. In that the IPL being staged so close to the world up dates, second time in a row played a big role. The team barely had time to see their families for a day or two, get together or prepare as a team. They were all flown to Caribbean and probably met in the team bus or woke up in the dressing room and saw who else made it to the team this time. You can blame it on the greed of our players and their inability to take a stand or their own personal decisions about attending IPL parties etc. but the reality remains that their bodies and minds were struggling to understand why they are supposed to appear on the field of cricket again, after non-stop cricket for 60 days in a row, intermingled with parties, cheerleaders, models and Bollywood babes being thrown at them at random. After being asked to become mass entertainers by Mallya, SRK, Preity Zinta and Shilpa Shetty, they were being asked to be sportsmen again, within a span of 4-5 days.

I am not saying the technical issues such as inability to play fast bowling or quality of our own bowling are non-issues. But they matter far less in T20 than they are being made out of. And, for God sake, the solution is not to bring Tendulkar back and beg him to revive the fortunes of our T20 team. We should get used to the fact that very soon Sachin wouldn’t be around to save our ass in any form of the game. In T20 particularly, you need flamboyance of youth and dare devilry, you need 4 or 5 players who have the average talent but far bigger attitude and stronger spirit to make it in the international arena. Yes, you need solid backbone as well. But we have that in the form of Sehwag, Gambhir, Dhoni, Zaheer, Nehra and Harbhajan and Yuvaraj when he is in form. Around these people, we need new Pathans, new Rainas and new Utthappas, people still unexposed to the fear of Australian fast bowlers and willing to square cut them or even hook them and given full confidence by the captain to do so.  And players who feel like their lives have been fulfilled by IPL, they have actually achieved their self actualization in life, should be left in the backwaters of Bollywood to play extras on the film sets and occasionally appear in TV shows and play some more IPL games.  Life should go on without these souls!

Age of Innocence!

Original post, first published on Passionforcinema –  http://passionforcinema.com/age-of-innocence/

There is always a certain period in our lives that defines us, for the rest it.  For me, it was the 10 year period between 1984 and 1994.  I sometimes feel as if had lived my entire life during that 10 year period and now am i am living the same life again and again. The first 5 year period, i.e. the time between 1984 and 1989 was the time during which i lost my innocences. The second 5 year period, i honed my methods to deal with this world, as i had uncovered it by then. It still remember the day, Indira Gandhi was murdered and somehow i started becoming aware of the world around me. two years later, i found myself transplanted from  remote hilly village to a small town and thereby i started a journey that I am still continuing, a journey that took me to a larger and larger cities and finally beyond the frontiers of the country i was born in.

In the blog post below, that i wrote for Passionforcinema, i recapped the period of 1989-90. The post was mostly about cinema but in a way it was my tribute to my friends of that time, that i slowly lost touch with but i will never forget. Friends like Kamal Kishore Srivastawa, Rajesh Malpani, Vipin Pachori, Vivek, Tarun Maheshwari and many others. I still remember the special show of Maine Pyar Kiya that Kamal organized at his place, especially for me. These friends helped shape me, taught me many life lessons and helped prepare me for the longer term life battles. Whererevr you all are, i will forever be indebted to you.

Here’s the post as it was published on PFC…

The whole day, week, in fact month had gone by in a blurr. Whatever life was left in us after the brutal 3 weeks long board exams was sucked dry by the competitive exams, one after the other. REE, JEE, CEE, they came in all kind of acronyms and each one hit you harder than the previous one forcing you to question your will to live after spending 3 non-stop hours solving math, physics and chemistry problems that we would never see again in our lives. Finally, on one May afternoon, the nightmare ended and last of those exams got over. Luckily for the last exam, I had gone with my friends, not with someone from the family and we decided to have some fun after it. Our idea of a fun in those days as 116-17 year olds, was to be able to watch a film.

We all had a new crisp feeling of freedom in our minds and we could have watched any film we wanted, since we were in a different city. And we wanted to watch them all, because we were pretty deprived of film watching in those days. I was particularly deprived of films, except the Sunday evening film on DD and occasional visits to theater with the family, I hardly got the opportunity. But fascinated I was even in those days. I had had multiple bicycle accidents simply because I was too busy staring at film posters that used to be on every major wall on every street corner those days. I was particularly obsessed with film posters in those days, those large posters that used to show almost full scenes from the films on them. I would imagine myself sitting in theatres watching those scenes unfold on screen with all the sights and sound. It used to be a mayavi world for me that held a special attraction. For some reason, I don’t get that feeling anymore, visiting those air-conditioned multiplexes.

Back to the story, we decided to head out to the nearest theatre and watch one of those films that were tormenting me from the posters for past few months. A friend suggested Maine Pyar Kiya, running to houseful shows those days. I was’t very enthused because the film had two newcomers and a pigeon on the posters and didn’t seem to have any fight scenes. A good film in those days for me, meant lots of action, rona dhona, fights, emotions, songs in Oonty and everything else. I was suspect that I would like this weirdly named film. But my friends who were savvier than me were hell bent on watching MPK only. We went looking for the only theatre in this fairly large city that was running the film and after lot of dhakka mukki, we could get tickets, albeit for the front row only. By the time we settled down – Salmaan Khan was already back in the city and the first song was on – Tum Ladki ho…Main ladka hun. And everything looked so different, so fresh, the music, the cinematography, the sets, everything looked polished and well done and we weren’t used to it. This was a case for instant love at first sight for all of us. We fell in love with the film, but more importantly with the heroine of the film Bhagyashree. So madly we were in love that we didn’t mind that we were sitting on the first row. Despite the front row seat and sprain in my necks, this was the finest film viewing experience in my life. Yes, like other things, film viewing also has a time and place value. To us, Bhagyashree became Madhubala and Nargis and Nutan and every other name we knew combined. She was the epitome of beauty and more importantly innocence.

We all went our ways and I landed up in my engineering college. This love for Bhagyashree lasted several months for all of us. I just couldn’t like any other film for some time after that, so perfect was MPK, the film for me at that time. And I realized that, I wasn’t alone. Bhagyashree started a new trend of being on posters that adorned the walls of hostel rooms, fully dressed up, unlike other contestants on the walls. She was the one of the most popular faces on the posters that sold on footpath in those days that would end up on the walls of boys’ hostel rooms -only behind Samantha Fox, mostly without clothes and Madhubala in one of her classic back and white poses.

After these many years and after watching several hundred films since then and having lived through multiple growing up phases of Bollywood, it makes me chuckle how could we like Bhagyashree so much, with not beautiful enough and definitely not sexy face and that squeaky voice. But in those days, we were in love, head over heels. And, how did we explain our love for her – the innocence in her face. That’s what we called it – “Oh She has so much innocence on her face”, not even sure if that was correct English. May be we were trying to characterize her baby face, her squeaky voice, her cute smile, I have no idea, we called it “Innocence”.
Oh yes, for a brief interval in Bollywood, innocence was the defining characteristic of a Hindi film heroine. The phase was started by Juhi Chawla who appeared in Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, a year before in 1988, a film that I saw after Maine Pyar Kiya. Compared to Bhagyashree’s character, Juhi’s character was more real. I have come across many such north Indian girls who grow up in highly protected joint family environment, totally oblivious to the world outside. I am, in fact, married to one such person. So the plot background and characterization made Juhi’s innocence much more believable. Combined with that her dialog delivery style, using ‘Hum’ instead of ‘Main’ for herself and her pristine beauty made her instantly popular.

But Bhagyashree’s popularity was something else. When you put it in perspective of her later performances and realize how little talent she had, it’s just amazing how much impact she had with one film. Her decision to retire with one film and settle down in a married life with the lover of her life, made her aura grow even larger.
So impactful were these two heroines that for a while, they overshadowed their more talented and equally great looking male counter parts in the films. Not that Aaamir and Salman didn’t become popular, in fact they were the rage of the generation, but the love shown by masses for the heroines was something else. Aaamir was immediately hailed as one of the great acting find, even though the comparisons with Kumar Gaurav and dangers of becoming a one film wonder remained with him until much later when he found his groove. Salman was ladies’ heartthrob. He was what every girl wanted to be with and what every buy wanted to be like. For the boys, who wouldn’t want to be like him- drop dead gorgeous looks, rich spoilt brat who car races with his dad on his phoren return trip from airport to a his big palatial house. Heck, you wouldn’t even mind tolerating a squeaky voiced heroine if you got everything that Salman’s character had going for him in the film.

Maine Pyar Kiya was Suraj Barjatya’s first film. After this super fresh approach he went on over drive and made Hum Aapke Hain Kaun and reached his peak after which a decline set in. Maine Pyar Kiya had some great dialogs, again a rage of the time, just like the heroine of the film and brilliantly spoofed in Om Shanti Om by Farah Khan. “Dosti Ki hai janab, nibhani to padeegi”, “No Sorry, no thank you” became catch phrases and equally popular was the thunderous dialog delivered by a boyish looking villain, Mohnish Behal in his debut film, “Ek Ladka aur ladki kabhi dost nahi ho sakte, yeh to ek bahana hai, tarapti hui ration mein, dhadakte huye dilon ki pyas bujhane kay”, yeah, something like that.

Anyway, back to innocence – as I said before, it became the single most important characteristic for heroines to have in those days. We saw several new faces debut but no one made the mark quite like Juhi or Bhagyashree. Ayesha Jhulka charmed us in Qurbaan and even more so in Jo Jeeta Wahi Sikander before sputtering out with films like Khiladi and eventually settling down into marriage. Divya Bharati seemed fully capable of carrying the innocence genre forward, but her journey got cut short by her suicide. Even Nagma made her debut as an innocent and fresh face in a Salman film, anyone remember “Kaisa Lagta Hai..” from Baaghi? I still remember that because I had two Butanese students as my neighbors in the hostel and they were fascinated by the tune so much that they would not just listen to it all the time, but would try to sing it too. Can you imagine, two chinki dudes, singing “Kaisa lagta hai” in their tone and with no idea of what the lyrics meant?

There were many more – Pooja Bhatt, Manish Koirala and some unknown Gulshan Kumar heroines. The biggest make over was achieved by Anu Agarwal who went from a almost lingerie model to an innocent face in Aashiqui. Aashiqui was probably one of the most anticipated films of our times. The music was so popular that our hostel mess manager played the album non-stop for three days during breakfast lunch and dinner for an entire week on the stereo player in full volume and no one complained. Immediately after Aashiqui came and became a runaway hit, posters of Anu Agarwal showing her midriff a little too much in a button open jeans appeared and made hysteria. It was almost like a Disney heroine, appearing in a porn video. In those days Mahesh Bhatt used to claim that he could make any even dead wood act. The way careers of Anu Agaral and Rahul Roy went after the super hit debut, proved him right.

The age of innocence in Hindi film industry didn’t last that long. The new queen B of tinsel town had arrived in 1988 , the same year Juhi had become the face of the new generation in QSQT. Madhuri had a quite start at box office during the peak of the torture era and went unnoticed until she stormed the box office in a bold new avatar in Tezaab. 1988-89 was a turning point in Bollywood in many ways. On one hand QSQT brought back the trend of musical love stories with fresh faces, on the other hand was Tezaab, the ultimate masala film and both were big hits. From then on, Madhuri made her own rules. In an age of innocence where most heroines were trying to play coy on screen, Madhuri gave us dum Dama Dum, Dhakdhak and Choli ke peechhe, a complete opposite of the innocent character. The innocent age beauties couldn’t stand the heat from Madhuri and wilted away. Juhi tried to repeat her innocent act in films like Tum Mere Ho and Love Love Love opposite Aamir, but it didn’t work because the films were simply bad but in many sense, times were also changing and audience were moving on to Madhuri. Juhi did prove her versatility later in Hum Hain Raahi Pyar Ke. Bhagyashree came back from retirement to deliver turkeys after turkeys on box office. Ayesha Jhulka and Nagma etc, disappeared without trace. There were few other faces in between, like the one in Sanam Bewafa and Manish Koirala who tried playing the innocence card but failed after their first films. Madhuri once and for all shattered the innocence image with films like Dil, Beta, Ram Lakhan, Khalnayak and many others. Even when she played the Barjayta heroine in Hum Aapke Hai Kaun, she played it in her unique style which was more sassy than cute.

The period from 88-89 to 1995 was coming of age period, not just for the people of my age and the Hindi film heroine, but also for the Hindi film industry and the nation as a whole. In the period of Dev D, it’s hard to understand but the seeds for most of the major changes we see today in our cinema were sown during that period. On screen the heroine changed from innocent baby face to sexy and a more rounded figure, literally and figuratively. The nation as a whole underwent the biggest transformation with the opening up of economy, opening up of media, mini-explosion of channels, and several other changes. With Rajeev Gandhi’s murder, our generation had lost the naïve dream of taking the country into 21st century and leading the world once again. But with the Manmohan Singh showing the way, we realized that we can dream again, even if it was a different dream. It’s not just the Hindi film heroine, but our society as a whole lost the innocence and matured overnight due to sudden exposure to the world outside.

It was a brief period, but it was a beautiful period and would always remain as great memories in the minds of all of us who grew up during the times.

My Issues with 3 Idiots

Previously published on Passionforcinema – http://passionforcinema.com/my-issues-with-3-idiots/

Recently I heard Raju Hirani, giving an acceptance speech after receiving either the Screen or Filmfare award. I can’t make out which one is which, now a days. In this quote-he dedicated his award “To the teachers who teach from heart”. Somehow I sensed a bit of self righteousness this time in one of my favorite directors. The kind of smugness you achieve when your flawed product achieves huge box office success. That’s when you tune yourself off from any murmurs of complaint from any corner and start believing every ounce (and some more) of the praise that comes your way. I think the best example I can think of for comparison was Sanjay Leela Bhansali after Devdas. Devdas was a highly flawed film, a fact well known by now, but was hugely successful when it released. In his interviews right after, SLB would smugly talk about how he went about creating the classic and would spit at all the critics who were pointing to the flaws in the film. The result of that attitude resulted in Saawariya. I hope that’s not the case here with Raju.

Somehow Raju Hirani stayed humble and true to his roots when he made one of the most difficult films in India cinema, that is Lage Raho Munna Bhai. I call that difficult because he brought up one of the most serious subjects with his audience, the subject that we in the audience keep hiding under the carpet, the kind of discussion we want to keep avoiding, the legend of Bapu that we want to keep pretending that never happened. He brought the subject up, thrust it right in our face and yet he did it in a very entertaining style, without being preachy even for one moment. Now, that was triumph! But no, back then, Raju Hirani stayed humble, not sure if it was the Bapu effect. But this time around, in a highly flawed story, with huge gaps and loopholes and if I may dare say, even a flawed message, he managed to deliver a far bigger hit, in fact if the marketing sources are to be believed, the biggest all-time hit of Indian cinema. I won’t blame Raju if he gets a bit smug and even arrogant.

I am writing this without denying that I got my full paisa wasool entertainment from the film, laughed out loud in some scenes and even may have cried in some. All kudos to the screen play writing, the dialog writing and the narrating style of Raju, he does know how to get the most out of a scene. But I cringe when I hear people, including my close friends, declaring it a masterpiece, a classic. Some of them are the friends that went to the same college that I went to, had similar experiences that I had. I am sorry I didn’t want to write another review on 3 Idiots when there were umpteen numbers of reviews and write-ups around the release of the film. But I did have something to say about the film, and couldn’t hold back any longer. So, bear with me, for another piece on 3 Idiots.

I had read the novel about 3 years back, had liked it, had found it breezy reading. Not great, but likeable enough! While Chetan Bhagat, did create unrealistic situations to drive home the humor, the premise, the plot points and the characters remained real and believable. Besides, the book wasn’t trying to deliver a message, there was a suicide in the book too, but it appeared simply as a plot point. The film maintained that mood in the beginning few scenes, particularly until Aamir Khan appeared. Aamir didn’t get Ryan’s character at all. He clearly butchered it and at times almost made Ryan look like a retard, particularly with the use of his eyes and facial expressions. Aamir in one of his interviews bragged about how he conceived that character from one of his teenager nephew. The problem is Ryan wasn’t an immature teenager but someone mature beyond his age, someone with a devil may care attitude, someone blessed with extreme self-confidence. But that’s ok, the flaws in Rancho’s characterization and acting was compensated by superb, almost perfect portrayal of Madhavan’s and Sherman’s characters. They came across utterly believable, almost straight out of an engineering college type characters. Raju also got the lingo right, the saale, kamine style of addressing friends, I think they even brought up KLPD somewhere in the dialogs.

The problem started with the central premise of the film and the characterization of the two leading characters in the film. Apart from Aamir, the other character they got wrong was that of Boman’s. Virus’s character was made into a cartoon. And he is shown as Director of the institute and is yet omnipresent. He comes into boys hostel to lecture the students on competition, a very farcical scene that almost reminded me of Amitabh Bachchan in Mohabatten. I wonder if an IIT director has that kind of time to focus on one student. Ok, you want to make a point about following your heart and teachers being too academic and not promoting original thinking, but why make the prof into a cartoon for that. Why not give him also a voice and let him make his counterpoint.

But, to be fair, if you look beyond the cartoonish caricature, they were trying to allow Virus to make his counter-point, at least in couple of the scenes where he explains that it’s his job to push his students to work as hard as they can and in another place where he explains the income levels of the parents of the three students. But the scenes were killed without letting the impact come out.

I almost rose up on my seat to acknowledge the bravery of the scriptwriters when Virus starts explaining the income levels. I was thinking, ok now it gets interesting because that’s exactly the point. To have the kind of confidence and devil may care attitude that Ryan, sorry Rancho is supposed to have, you have to be a rich brat in real life, who doesn’t have to worry about finding a job as soon as you get out. I had many such students in my own class, who could afford to question the system, some of them very bright and original thinkers like Rancho. But then the film killed the point again and again in the film.

First they killed it, when Rancho started topping the class again and again. He then became a superhero at that moment, not a normal human being anymore. The fact is, no matter, how brilliant a mind you got, how original thinker you are, you still had to slog to get grades. Granted, you could still top a subject or two. There were some subjects such as Machine Drawing that you either get or you don’t, no matter what your IQ level is. But topping every subject, without any effort, while you are having fun drinking alcohol on the rooftop? I am sorry but that just doesn’t happen. No, I am not saying that you have to be Chatur to top the class. The reality is, the people who top the class are all very smart students, way different from Chatur, but they also have to slog harder than everyone else. I can say that, because I was a good student and slogged my ass off, still couldn’t top the class. Those who did, slogged harder than me and were brighter than me. It was never only one thing; you had to have both- IQ and the ability to work hard.

So, original thinkers like Ryan or Rancho would never top the class, but that’s the whole point. They didn’t need to. They didn’t care about grades, they didn’t need grades, they cared about something beyond that, and I can bet that some of the Ryans and Ranchos of my batch could be more successful today than the toppers, simply because they had more rounded set of skills to succeed in life outside the campus. If the message was, you should not follow grades, but gain and apply knowledge, and develop a broader set of skills that are needed in the real world, then it got killed by showing Rancho getting the best of the grades, all the time.

The character of Ranhco completely feel apart when he turned out to be a servant’s son. Why did they have to add that twist? To add to the drama? To increase the length of the film? I have no idea. He may have been smart, because you don’t need money to get the brains but where did he get the attitude of a rich brat, the confidence to take on the system, to be his own self? You don’t have this problem with Ryan’s character in the book.

My other issue with the plot was about following your heart. It’s easier said than done. Have you ever wondered what you knew and how aware of yourself you were at the age when you entered college? Did you have any clue what you wanted to do or what you liked to do at that age? I certainly didn’t and know that 95% of my class didn’t either. We probably had some idea about what would be cool but was that something we would love doing, we had no clue. In fact, there are very few people who are lucky enough to know what they want to do in life and even fewer who figure that out so early in their lives. To me, they are clearly Gods’ children. Even in the field of Sports or Show business which are full of stories of people who just followed their dreams, there are very few people like Sachin Tendulkar who knew at an early age what they wanted to do in life. Remember that dialog in the film Iqbal, where Naseer explains to the parents of Shreyas’s character, what a special thing it is to know what you want to do in life. That’s so true. I am in my late thirties and I still don’t know what makes me happy and what would have been an ideal thing or profession for me. I wish it were as easy as they show in films, click a few pictures of animals and voila you are a born wild life photographer! For most of us in real life, it’s a lifelong journey to know yourself, to figure out what works for you as an individual. And, some of us will never figure it out.

Now let’s examine that from parent’s perspective. I am sure, any loving parent would be happy to support their kids if they knew what would make their kids happy. But the problem is how do you figure out if the kid really knows what he or she wants? How do you figure out if it’s not an infatuation that will soon fade with the first brush of reality? Unfortunately, our system and society in general doesn’t give you a second chance. Even in USA, where youngsters take slightly longer to figure out what they want in life, people change their profession sometimes two or three times in the early part of their life, parents are extremely cautious and try to manage and guide their kids to focus on options they have in front of them, instead of chasing some wild dream. My ex manager, a white American recently described me how his entire family was completely stressed out for almost 3 months because one of his daughters suddenly declared that she wasn’t interested in joining college. Instead, she wanted to join Marine Corps. Where she could play in band and start making money as a musician from day one. Her logic was, “Why bother going through college when all I want to be is a musician and I am getting the opportunity to be one now instead of several years later”. I believe that parents also want their kids to chase their dreams, but they know from their own life experiences how hard it is know which dream to chase.

In the end, my objective wasn’t to trash the film, but just to raise few points that were going on in my mind and wanted to see if others feel the same way. As I said, I enjoyed the film a lot and have already watched it two or three times.