“Please note: a refusal to acknowledge the several purposes of this room will be met by contemptuous stares”

(Published as "Restrooms are the Most Happening Places in Offices" in Zeitgeist, The New Indian Express, dated 31st May 2008)

Having worked in ten organisations, each with vastly different functions, end-products, employees and infrastructure, I was naturally thrilled to find a thread that linked them all up perfectly. Unfortunately, it is not something I can put without a degree of incongruity into my resumé, but it is something that gives my rather psychedelic career a sense of pattern. I am referring, ladies and gentlemen, to the multi-purpose restrooms in offices.

The epiphany came as I wound my way between two women, trying to wash my hands. They were whispering, and moved a micro-inch at a time as I apologised and waited to dispose of the tissue, and then to dry my hands. I had the misfortune of dropping the tissue on the floor while negotiating the tiny crevice they allowed me, which required me to make them move again while I lifted the tissue, and then wash my hands again and then prevail upon them to give me a little more space. It was while walking back to my desk that it dawned on me how many avatars that ten-by-eight room takes.

The Escape Capsule: You’re hunting frantically for someone on a day when everything is out of control, and that person is in charge of everything that is spiralling out of control. You try calling him or her, you run outside in the hope of finding him or her on the wrong end of a cigarette, but no…the person is officially missing. You figure out where s/he has been spending the last hour when s/he makes a sudden reappearance after the commotion is over.

The Smoking Room: For some reason, the forty feet from the restroom to the smoking zone (which translates, of course, into anywhere that fresh air is available to pollute) are more strenuous than the journey from Base Camp to the summit of Mount Everest. Your nostrils are usually assaulted by fumes from cheap cigarettes, and then you walk into the restroom to find someone hastily walking out of a cubicle, where you find a telltale cigarette stub that refuses to get flushed down.

The Eavesdropper’s Paradise: I made this discovery a few years ago, when a colleague rushed up to me and said, “you won’t believe what I have to tell you!” He then went on to tell me his boss was negotiating with a prospective employer. “How do you know?” I asked. His reply was, “oh! I heard it from the horse’s mouth. He was talking to the HR guys from there in the loo!”

The Room of Flirtations: In most offices, smoke breaks are the norm, coffee breaks may be excused, and breaks for telephone conversations are blasphemous. So, when a poor girl has a boyfriend, or a poor boy has a girlfriend s/he needs to keep in constant touch with, where else does s/he go? It would help, though, if these beings in love had mercy on those using the restroom as The Escape Capsule and not as The Eavesdropper’s Paradise. When you want to be alone with your thoughts, which are usually too many to leave you quite alone, you’re quite often subjected to a detailed insight into the love life of a colleague, who either does not know or does not care, that you’re locked up in one part of the eight-by-ten room.

Bitching Central: This, of course, is the most frequent purpose the restroom serves. And gone are the days when two women caught in the middle of a bitching session would pretend to talk about makeup or work. Nowadays, they make it perfectly clear you’ve intruded into their personal space…a point that was made clear to me as I left the restroom on the fateful day which inspired this column, to catch one of them saying, more loudly than required, “I don’t know why people never respect privacy these days!!!”

I Contemplated Making this Title an Amalgam of All the Languages I know Words in, but Decided Against it Coz I Know People Who Know Those Languages

I grew up with Tagore, grew into Marquez and lost myself in Rumi. I've always wanted to read them in the languages they thought, but the only one for whom I've gone the extra mile for so far has been Marquez. Jo hablo un poco espanol, pero muy poco.

Having lived about 90% of my life in Madras, the languages I am perfectly fluent in have remained English and Tamil, possibly in that order. After three miserable years of first-standard-level Hindi which only taught me how to read and write in Hindi, it was only in the past four years or so that I found myself exposed to the language...thanks to theatre group colleagues who would start speaking in Hindi when they wanted to shut me up, an Afghan and a Pakistani roommate who would constantly talk in Urdu, and a move to Delhi.

But it dawned on me suddenly that languages I didn't understand could wring emotions in me I didn't know existed. Gitanjali was one of the works that made me realise my own religious leanings. I read it, of course, in English, but for the past few months, I've been listening almost everyday to Tomar Binai Gaan Chilo, and Pankaj Mullick's rendering of Ami Tomari Sange brings me to tears every single time, although I still haven't figured out which of the songs in Gitanjali's English version it corresponds to.

The same goes for the song Baghdad by Kazem Al Saher. I know about ten Arabic words, and yet the song makes me yearn for Baghdad in the old days, before 2003, as if it were my own hometown. When Russian operas throw you into Moscow, Italian operas turn you into a Sicilian, Bengali songs stir the chords in you that turn your thoughts to God, Spanish songs have you pillion riding with Che Guevara through Argentina, Arabic songs make you Iraqi and Persian poetry has you running from Shiraz to Tehran, I wonder what quality music has that transcends all language barriers.

Sometimes, I wonder whether the phrase "language barrier" should even exist. When you think how often it happens that you break into your native language with someone you're close to, without it occurring to you that they don't speak it, maybe the phrase should not exist. One of my best friends is Iranian, and I remember our struggling to film a sequence outside a bar. People would walk right across the camera just when the sequence was almost over. She turned to me and screamed, "oye baba, ajab adamiyaha!!!" And I understood she was saying, "dear God, what weird people!!!" A few days later, I broke into "illa, Mahsa, idhai ippadi pidi!", which she understood to mean, "no, Mahsa, hold the camera this way."

It also makes you think about what the language of thought is. You struggle to express things you feel at times, and none of the languages you know seem to convey quite enough. I like to think there is a layer to the cosmos where thoughts can be transmitted without requiring a medium...where the past, present and future melt into a universal consciousness, and people don't need language to communicate either amongst each other or within themselves. They are scattered moments in time, but each one of them is precious.

Curls the Clumsy

My day officially began when I tried removing a scented candle from a shelf I could not reach to blow it out, and ended up spilling hot wax on my (incidentally, freshly waxed) arms, and most importantly, on the sofa I take great pride in owning.

Having had the unique experience of falling out of an auto in Delhi, after banging my head against the meter and my knees against the base of the meter, I know David Fincher should give me a call if he ever decides to make a Fight Club II, this time starring a woman. I would give Edward Norton a run for his money without even trying.

I've dropped three phones several storeys down, and all of them decided to give me a second chance. I've also dropped my brothers a couple of times when they were babies, I think...which, now that I come to think of it, explains a lot.

There are very few parts of me that I haven't scarred by falling down stairs or sliding down walls. I've also managed to run into a Sumo on my bike, and got away with a broken toenail. I ran into a bike once, and got thrown across the road, and got away with a dented earring and a slightly disorientated mind...which, sometimes thankfully I think, has stayed that way since. I think God keeps me alive to amuse himself...or out of mercy for those people looking to start an afterlife without a criminal record.

So my superpower is a Supreme Ability to Hurt Myself and Put Myself in Danger...or simply, Clumsiness. Given that I don't quite have the figure of a superheroine as yet, I'm planning to call myself Curls the Clumsy.

And I think I might have found a sidekick in a close friend who banged her head and nose against a cupboard the day before yesterday. Like I told her, the way I see it, it's better to be clumsy than have a stutter. D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-do y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-you ag-ag-ag-ag-ag-ag-ag-ag-agree?

You might like to know: My costume also has a retractable device that occasionally pulls my foot out of my mouth.

Double D is Not Always a Good Thing

(And now that I have your attention, read on...)

(Published in City Express, The New Indian Express, dated 5th December 2007)

In a city which has so much to offer couples, from concerts to cosy, deserted streets, from couple seats in theatres to long walks by the seashore, single women are quite obviously tempted on occasion to break out of their singledom, and experiment with the D-word. Unfortunately, the decision most often results in DDs (Disastrous Dates), but the good thing about DDs is that they’re a great laugh when one sits down with the other SFFs (Single Female Friends). And the great thing about DDs is that technology has spawned a fresh breed of them. The penetration of Orkut into every system connected to the internet has breathed new life into the hitherto “bleaaaahhhh.....zzzzzzzzzzzzzz” world of DDs. Where you used to die of boredom while some swaggering Mr. Desperate who hasn’t been on a date in five years tried to convince you he’s had 15 girlfriends, and dumped the last one because she was way too clingy, and jealous because four other women were hitting on him, now you get entertained by someone who has read your Orkut profile the previous evening, believes everything it says and is out to subtly bring out that no two people have ever had more in common. What follows is the story of one such DD.

So I walk into Bike and Barrel to see this person (who’s asked me to a drink at a get-together at a friend’s friend’s friend’s place) pretending not to have noticed me yet, while he examines a couple of CDs he has just taken out of a Landmark bag.

“Oh! Hi!” he says, looking surprised, “so you’re right on time! Most girls are usually late...I hate it when people are not punctual.”

“I hate it when people generalise.”

“Really??? Me too! Hey, check out these CDs I bought. Have you heard of Blue Oyster Cult?”

“Yeah, they’re one of my favourites!” I’m beginning to get pretty excited – this is going to be a great story for the girls. “My favourite song is Oedipus’ Last Breath.” (To date, I don’t know if such a song exists).

“You’re kidding me, right? No way! That’s my favourite too!”

Over the course of the evening, I discover that we both like the same drink, the same football team, the same movies, the same actors, the same writers, and guess what! Our favourite book is One Hundred Years of Solitude by Salman Rushdie! To top that off, we’ve both missed trains in Bombay (that’s what tends to happen when your Orkut page has a link to your blog), and both of us were infuriated when David Beckham left Arsenal for Barcelona. But what clinched it was this – both of us were gloating inside about being the messer, while the other was the messee.

The only thing we did not share was our mobile numbers, but my date suggested that with so much in common, maybe one day we would share the same landline. That innovative flirtation was the icing on the DD cake, and I was all geared up for the final cherry – the emasculation of the DD-Perpretator by insisting on paying the bill.

And then, quite unexpectedly, came the chocolate flakes and praline – “I really like independent women. But I’m paying next time, okay?”

So he thought there was going to be a next time. Well, finally! – something we didn’t have in common!

"Oh my God, What's WRONG with You???????!!!!!"

(Published in Zetigeist, The New Indian Express, dated 17th May, 2008)

I remember, as a child, I used to wonder why the working women in my family asked each other, anxiously, "does this saree go okay with the blouse? Do my slippers match my handbag? Does the side-parting look better?" It wasn't like they were setting off to a party. It was work! Who cares?! But decades later, I can relate to the same sense of dread every time I step into my office.

It is a genetic curse, somehow cyclical in nature, that women feel a compulsion to comment on at least one other woman's appearance the moment they see her. Sometimes, you're met with a barrage of concerned questions, which will temporarily wipe out every ounce of self-confidence you have. "God! Why do you look so horrible? Didn't you sleep well? Your eyes are all puffy!" or "You seem to have black patches around your eyes! You should use cucumber and potato slices on them" (yes, these useful tips are also usually worked into the conversation) or "Your hair looks really weird! What happened? Did you get wet while coming to work?" or "Are your eyebrows crooked?" or even, "Your floaters make your feet look really broad! Why don't you wear those tapering slippers?"

The worst part of it, though, is even the compliments are couched in something offensive, as if to keep away the Evil Eye. When they're not telling you your eyebrows and upper lip need threading, or you need to get yourself a wax, or there are white patches on your skin, or blackheads on your nose, or your arms are so dry they look like old leather, they're always asking what you've had done. "Hey! Your face looks really nice today! Did you go to the salon?" and before you can even say "thank you", they're out with, "those suntanned patches are gone, and your open pores are less obvious".

"Nice skirt!" someone will call out, and then wrinkle her nose, "but why're you wearing it with this top???"

"Where did you buy those earrings? You should wear them with a necklace…your neck looks very bare without accessories!"

"Your hair looks really good! Makes your face look less chubby."

"That lipstick is just the right colour for you! And it hides the blueness on your lips so well!"

"You can really carry off sarees beautifully! But have you put on weight?"

The speed with which the salvo comes is one of those miracles of existence. I think men envy us, sometimes. One male friend whined, after watching an exchange of this breed wide-eyed, "how do you guys do it?! I would never be able to tell my boss 'Hey, nice shoes…did you buy them with your bonus? On the subject, when's my appraisal?' He would think I was hitting on him!" Yes, it is quite remarkable how the wrong halves of these sentences linger in our minds. While fuming in a blur of backhanded-complimenteedom, I completely forgot this woman had said, "You've got such perfect teeth!" before asking me why I did not use lipstick to brighten up my face a little bit.

What most women do not seem to factor in, though, is the discomfiture they put their male colleagues through when they conduct an analysis of this sort. I was once witness to this scene where this girl walked up to another and said, "hey, your face looks very different today. You've done something?"

Uh-oh.

"No, ya, why?"

"Okay…let me be a little politically incorrect." A giggle. "You look less hairy."

I don't think the now-non-hairy woman was as embarrassed as the two men who were standing with her. With blanched faces, they stood still for a few seconds. Then, in a moment of panic, one of them turned to the other and coughed out, "uh…you want to…uh…outside…smoke?" and the other was too overwrought to do anything more than nod with relief.

Why, Mr Bachchan?

Dear Mr Bachchan,
Why are you telling us who you are and how big?
You think by putting your KBC ratings and Shahrukh's Paanchvi Pass ratings side by side, you will end the debate that who is the bigger star?
You will not.
Because there was no debate in the first place.

The only competition you ever had was yourself. The debate was never Amitabh in Shakti or Dilip Kumar in Shakti. The debate was actually Amitabh in Shakti or Amitabh in Trishul.
The debate was never Amitabh in Mohabbatein or Shahrukh in Mohabbatein. The debate was always Amitabh in Mohabbatein or Amitabh in K3G.

My grandmother thinks you are fantastic. My mother has been a fan since Deewaar. I still get a lump in my throat when I watch Shakti. And the other day, my 20-month old son unblinkingly watched you perform in Don.
That's four generations. You think my son will even know who Salman Khan is when he grows up?

You think numbers prove stardom?
That you had five back to back hits in 1978 is the reason why you should be the Big B?
Or maybe because you starred in the Biggest Hit of Indian Cinema?

No, sir.

You are not our biggest star. You are the touchstone of our emotions.
We never knew silence could be so eloquent till you showed us how in Sarkar.
We never knew grief can be angry till you showed us in Anand.
Hell, we never imagined one can be angry with God till you gave Him a piece of your mind in Deewaar.

And you think all this can be reduced to a TRP chart? By that logic, Alok Nath is a bigger star because he got even higher ratings for Buniyaad.

Sir, numbers are not what makes stars.
For me, you are the greatest not because of your best films but your worst.
Any other hero walking into a climax with a crocodile on his back would have got booed off. When you did that in Ganga Jamuna Saraswati, the tension could have been cut by a knife.
That's my reason.
And every single Indian has a different reason - when you made them laugh, cry, happy, sad, wistful, aggressive, speechless...

That's a billion rating points for you.
And you are comparing that with 4.5 points of Shahrukh?

Why, Mr Bachchan, why?

Awww! He's So Cute...Can I Hold Him for Just a While?

(Published in Zeitgeist, The New Indian Express, 19th April 2008)


I have come to accept that I must have signed a deal with God when I was in some sort of limbo; a family sitting near me will always bring a crying baby along on every flight, train and bus that I board. But, as a borderline neurotic fan of movies, to the extent I will never allow anyone to quote lines from a movie I haven't seen, God could not have forced me to say, under duress of drugs, hypnosis or even torture, that crying babies will haunt every theatre I go to!

The word, I believe, is paedophobe. I might have invented it. As the person who shrugged when her friends screamed out that there was a rat running up her trousers, the person who said "awwww!!!!" when her mother squealed that a monkey was searching her pockets for munchies, and the person who picks up cockroaches and releases them into the wild while the rest of her family is shivering in fear and disgust, I came to realise quite early on that the only organisms I have a mortal fear of are children.

Fortunately, at some point in their lifespan, they morph into something you can come to terms with as part of your species. But unfortunately, as a woman, you're supposed to find them most adorable before they reach the butterfly stage – and it is not politically correct to use the words "larvae" or "caterpillar". You're quite hard put, though, to keep smiling when someone dumps a baby on to your lap on a crowded bus. You have two options – (a) force yourself not to recall Omen as the hostile gaze meets yours and …uh…shall we call them (out of concern for those people Freud would surmise have been toilet-trained too early) 'the after-effects of a tearful tantrum on its nose and mouth'….threaten to land on your clothes (b) get up and offer your seat to the mother of the child. I usually resort to the latter, having too weak a stomach for Option (a).

But when you're watching a movie, you're pretty much stuck. You could either try being polite and request the parents to quieten the child (which, of course, will get you a withering glare – and more importantly, make you miss part of the movie), or get argumentative and scream at the parents saying they should know better than to bring a kid to a night show, well past its bedtime (which will get you sworn at, labelled hysterical, vilified by every other parent in the theatre, despised by every other movie aficionado in the theatre – and more importantly than all of those put together, make you miss more of the movie.) One way out I am yet to try – and, most probably, will only wistfully think of – might be saying "awww! So cute! Can I hold him (or her) for a while?" and while pretending to pinch its chin and cheeks, quickly slip a sedative into its mouth.

The temptation was strongest when I, having scrimped and scrounged on a student's budget, went to watch the stage performance of The Lion King, at London's West End. I was to realise, while watching the audience filter out, that the only human beings under the age of ten in that enormous auditorium, had been seated in the row before me.

I bent over, as three of the children screamed and whooped, to whisper to their mother, in my most understanding voice, "hi, I know it's really hard to keep the kids quiet, but I've missed out quite a chunk of the dialogue, so could you please get them to talk softly?"

"Wha' you say, sees-ta?" came a rather forbidding voice.

"I said, can you get your children to be less excited?"

"Las' time I checked, you're too old for the play. It's Disney, remem-bah? You know whom Disney is for?"

I had to hand it to her – there was no comeback to logic of that variety. For a long time, I have dreamt of making a public service advertisement. In my head, the camera would focus on a steamy scene on screen, and then pan to an open-mouthed five-year-old, and then to the child's horrified parents. And then, a voice would boom out as bold red letters appeared on screen, "PREVENT TEENAGE PREGNANCY. DO NOT TAKE CHILDREN TO MOVIES."

Huff, Puff and He Blew the Smoke Up!

(Published in Zeitgesit, The New Indian Express, dated 12th April 2008)

It was a near-panic situation in the newsroom, when a colleague who was working furiously with me on a breaking story said urgently, "okay, there's something I
have to do. Can you just handle this? I'll be right back." Looking at the contortions working their way through his face, I decided the poor man was in a hurry to get to the restroom, and assured him the story would be taken care of. About five minutes later, he came and sat down beside me again, with one difference - he smelt of tobacco.

"So the thing you had to do was smoke???"

He smiled sheepishly and then tried to look professional again, "so, has the story gone on air?"

My mind was filled with dramatic, slow-motion images of a radio show host I worked with wringing his hands and asking me if I could put an extra song in so he could go out for a smoke before he had to do the traffic update, a friend of mine begging me to walk a few steps ahead of her so she could smoke without worrying about my allergies, another friend of mine from Singapore who used to carry a carton with her so she could ask the shopkeeper to transfer the cigarettes into it and spare herself the sight of the devastating pictures of cancerous growths that decorated cigarette cases…

Smokers never want to smoke. They need to or have to. I mean, you'll go crazy if you don't go out for a smoke right now. And you know, you have to because your boss does, and since you're pathetic at office politics anyway, you can't afford not to smoke. You know of people who've been smoking fifty years and outlived other people who never so much as touched a cigarette. And, by the way, an internet article pasted on someone's blog said an American university was doing a bit of research into the benefits of cigarette smoking. Let's be practical, if a little bit of wine is good for health, a little bit of smoking has to be, right?

But of all smokers, the most interesting category comprises the ones who "are quitting". Come on, they're serious about it, their 7:00 p.m. cigarette is always their first of the day. What makes them so interesting, though, is the procedure they follow and the ramifications it has. First up, they stop buying cigarettes. This assures them, of course, that they are quitting. Then, they incur the wrath of all their smoker friends by "bumming" cigarettes of them. So, in the course of a few days, all these smoker friends are not feeling quite so generous anymore, but unwilling to antagonise a member of their cult, they don't refuse smokes; instead, they pretend they aren't carrying any.

"Sorry, dude, I'm completely out."

At which point, the in-the-process-of-quitting-er will turn to a third smoker and ask, "dude, you carrying any?"

One course of events is for an indefinite cycle of people being "out" and bumming cigarettes off their friends to be set off. It's a survival-of-the-fittest application.

Alternately, the in-the-process-of-quitting-er, who is usually the most determined to smoke that first-cigarette-of-the-day, will turn to one of the non-smokers and ask for money to buy cigarettes. (By the way, it's also quite interesting how everyone who's out of cigarettes is also usually broke.)

Yet another is for the dramatic confrontation to take place. One of the being-bummed-off smokers will yell, "dude, you're supposed to be quitting, and you bum fags off me all the time!" at which point the in-the-process-of-quitting-er will throw his or her hands up in the air and say, "dude, it's impossible! You can't quit this overnight. I'm not trying anymore."

And all is well with the world again.

So far, though, my most memorable encounter with a smoker has been:

"Nandini, got a light?"

"No, I don't smoke."

"How?????"

"Eh?"

"Nothing, yaar, I thought you were normal."

On Location: Geographical Spread of Bollywood

Hindi films have mostly depended on amorphous identities and untraceable locations for their stories. This is not very surprising because traditionally, Bollywood has depended on stars and their personalities to project a characteristic. In such a scenario, character motivations become rather redundant. I mean, if it is Amitabh Bachchan who is playing the Angry Young Man, you hardly need any justification as to why he is angry!

Similarly, geographical characteristics are even lesser used. Traditionally, you have either a village or a city. But the characteristics of that city's inhabitants are hardly used.
Amitabh Bachchan zipped down an eminently recognisable Marine Drive in Muqaddar Ka Sikandar but the word Bombay is never uttered in the film. And there is nothing in the film to suggest that his go-getting character in the movie is a by-product of his upbringing in Bombay.
In Deewaar, his character is a North Indian who emigrates to Bombay but the underlying theme of the North Indian exodus to the City of Gold is never articulated. He may well have moved to Chennai for all its worth. And his gold would have landed on Marina Beach instead of Versova!
It gets curiouser... Anand is dedicated to the city of Bombay but the bon vivant in the film emanates from Delhi and is a Punjabi (Anand Sehgal)! The Mumbaikars in the film are rather long-faced, literally (Amitabh) and figuratively (Ramesh Deo). Of course, it is a comment on the cosmopolitanism of the city that the three male characters are from the North, East and West (in order of importance)!

Other films set in cities clearly identifiable by landmarks seldom refer to the psychographics. Bombay could well be Ahmedabad. The local trains of Saathiya were transported directly from the original, made in Chennai. The guide of Fanaa might well have taken his troupe around the historical monuments of Hyderabad. While on the topic of Hyderabad, Hero Hiralal uses the exact accent of the Dakhni Hindi and zips around the city in his auto-rickshaw.
On the other hand, Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar works on the premise that the story is set in a small town (Dehradun) with a snooty boarding school for outsiders and a fatichar school for locals.
Yuva's brand of corrupt political leadership facing off with the idealistic youth could be common with many states of India but the firebrand activism has become synonymous with Calcutta!

There was a large number of films based on destinations - An Evening in Paris, Love in Tokyo, Love in Shimla, Night in London, Johar Mehmood in Hong Kong, Orgy in Bangkok (oh sorry, not that one!) - but again they were completely interchangeable as glamorous destinations.
You can easily have Johar Mehmood in Baghdad and the film will be just as funny. Night in London came right after the Paris film and the only difference was the brilliant music of the latter compared to the former's insipid score. Of course, Sharmila Tagore in a bikini would have lit up Mughalsarai Junction instead of Champs Elysses!
Maybe Kashmir Ki Kali is the only one in this genre which tries to draw a parallel between its pristine beauty and the heroine's rosy apple cheeks.

In recent times, Bollywood has started to venture into identifiable cities - and even started to use the milieu of the place in the development of characters.
It started with Yash Chopra – who promoted the Punjabi way of life unabashedly in his films. First, they were not articulated but in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Amrish Puri intoned to the pigeons of Piccadilly that he wanted to return – “Mere desh ko, mere Punjab ko…”
And these cities – more often than not – are all small towns in the Hindi heartland.

Bunty aur Babli came from Fursatganj and Pankhinagar but it was a completely real-life district headquarter town of UP they were coming from. And each one of their exploits happened in real-life locales, sometimes identified by name.

Lagaa Chunari Mein Daag opened with a song that described the city of Banaras really well and the only redeeming feature of the film was that the characters remained rooted to their small-town beginnings. Rani Mukherjee sleeping her way through to a Napean Sea Road flat, notwithstanding!

And now has come the clincher - Tashan. No film – apart from how Woody Allen does with New York - has used a city so intrinsically in its screenplay as Tashan does for Kanpur. Bachchan Pandey (Akshay Kumar) and his antics as Raavan, crimes as an electricity thief, dialogues as a collection agent, sighs as a Roadside Romeo and most stunningly, his language are so Kanpuriya that its unbelievable!
And after a high-voltage fight scene, Saif pays homage to the city of Kanpur in a perverse sort of way by saying – “In logon ke beech mujhe zinda rehna hain, to mujhe akalmand banna padega, khatarnaak banna padega, Kanpuriya banna padega…”
Waah waah – people are dancing in the aisles of Alankar Theatre!

A Mop of Wisdom

The Funniest People in the World have Curly Hair

- The Truth, by Nandini Krishnan

I was born with curly hair, and at some random point in my life, probably weighed down by its length, it turned more or less straight...at best, wavy. Then, I got it cut, and the curls came to life again. I recently discovered these were the source of all my powers.

A recent, rather fortunate series of events required me to straighten my hair, temporarily, for less than twenty four hours, as it turned out, and as I sit here now, with the curly mop floating around my head, I thank God for its rebirth. My straight hair did not just make me more-or-less unrecognisable, and give me the appearance of someone who would say, "oh, no, yaar, I've put on this micro-inch around my waist, I'm not going to eat lunch now...oh, Hrithik Roshan is sooooo hooottttttt...oh, Dhoni is soooooo cuuuuuuuuuttttttttte....oh, Orlando Bloom is sooooo sweeettttt", but also wiped away my sense of humour.

Having dinner in office, I realised the people at my table were smiling politely at attempted witticisms, and then my eyes clouded over as a series of events played out in slow motion in my head as, under the influence of decades of dedicated movie-watching, they always do when I'm having an epiphany.

I saw Jerry Seinfeld do a routine in slow-motion, and then, with a cross-fade transition, in came Stephen Colbert, and then some of my best friends and wittiest colleagues...and every mental camera I had panned over to the curly mop atop their heads.

It's true. My curls are the source of my wit and wisdom, and I am lost without them.

It's true. All this never occurred to me when my hair was straight on that unfortunate day.

It's true. Even if I am required to straighten my hair everyday, I will go back home and wash it so my curls come home to sleep.

It's true. The funniest people in the world have curly hair.

Rowan Atkinson is the exception that proves the rule.

Knight Rider

Last night, after Kolkata Knight Riders were tottering with four wickets down and fans had shifted to other channels, yet another Bengali with an unpronounceable first name was sighted. Wriddhiman Saha - a diminutive boy with a giant name (but certainly simpler than Mpumelelo Mbangwa) - scored a brilliant 59 off 32 balls in an innings which was quite explosive even by IPL's slam-bang standards. At one point, he and David Hussey looked very close to pulling it off - but that was not to be.
Today, rediff.com reported his heroics by calling him Shah instead of Saha.
Can't blame them as this is probably the first time they heard the surname. Just as we heard the surname Dhoni for the first time, some 4 years ago.
That good, huh?
Probably.

While on the subject of IPL, I was rather happy at the prospect of watching the tournament because I felt I would be able to follow several teams without heartbreak as all my favourites were spread across teams.
Mcgrath was in Delhi (where I stay), Dhoni was captaining Chennai (where I started my career), Rohit Sharma and Laxman were representing Hyderabad (another favourite city of mine), Sachin was in Mumbai (where I have stayed as well) and when all else fails, Preity Zinta's smiles would have lit up my life. Or so I thought.
Inexplicably (or otherwise), the sadness I feel every time the Knight Riders slide to a loss is rather distressing. Every single chromosome of mine seems to be programmed to support Mohammed Hafeez's half-volleys and Ajit Agarkar's full-tosses.
Despite having a plethora of choices, I remain shackled to the City.

My father, who has even less of a choice than I do, was rather concerned the other day when he asked, "What team will Joy support when he grows up?"
I broke the news as gently as I could. My son - who is known as Joey, DJ and Jai in different circles - will probably choose between Kings XI Punjab and Delhi Daredevils. He has no obligation towards King Khan's Knight Riders!
Whether that is fortunately or unfortunate, I have no clue of...

Those who lived in Calcutta in the mid-80s would remember a medium of great entertainment called Bangladesh TV. In the days of rickety aluminum antennae, we occasionally got lucky when we could receive a grainy version of Bangladeshi television. They showed some of the top rated US shows - Dallas, Dynasty, Scooby Doo - and we were very impressed in between episodes of Chiching Phnaak and Ektu Bhebey Dekhun. Those days, there used to be a programme called Knight Rider in which David Hasselhoff was the male lead and was about his adventures with a super-car (that talked, emoted, swam, drove at super-300 kmph speeds and what not).
No reasons or connection with IPL. This blog is famous for its pointless ramblings, I guess.

Jonoiko Mahapurush-er Kahini

For almost 30 years without a break (from the mid 50s to the early 80s), Satyajit Ray churned out one film a year. In his characteristic modesty, Ray had claimed that the reason for his prolific output was the need to keep his filming unit busy as most of them were exclusively associated with him and they had to be given work.
While most of these films have won numerous awards and have been accepted as masterpieces by diverse audiences at home and abroad, some of them have received reasonably harsh criticism as well. Though, the criticism – like in the case of most icons – was seldom balanced.

For example, Chiriyakhana (The Menagerie) was panned by the critics. Ray acknowledged that his involvement in the film was perfunctory to start with and he took on the director’s mantle only because his name lent a certain commercial weightage to the project (coordinated by his assistants). But the film went on to win the Best Director prize at the National Awards for the year. Ray was quite amused at this and wrote as such in a letter to Marie Seton.

The other film, which is generally felt to be one of Ray’s lesser works, is Kapurush-O-Mahapurush (The Coward and the Holy Man) – a double bill of two short films, of which the second one (Mahapurush) is generally considered to be a rather weak adaptation of a landmark work of Bengali literature.

Of course, my problem is that I liked Mahapurush (the film) way too much and feel more than a little surprised at the rather cavalier attitude towards the film, shared by critics and some of the viewers as well. In fact, one comment to this effect is the reason behind this post – which is an attempt to defend Mahapurush’s stature as a great comedy as well as a brilliant adaptation equaling, if not surpassing, the original, which is a novella by Parashuram (Birinchi Baba). It has an extremely contemporary theme, that of the Indian social dependence on gurus and the large number of con-men in this field.

It tells the story of a god-man who lands up at the household of an affluent lawyer, spins a web of fantastic stories and looks to usurp the lawyer’s mansion as his ashram and the entire family as his disciples. The spanner in the works comes in the form of a suitor of the lawyer’s daughter, who sees the Baba as a serious threat to his romantic pursuits. His group of friends – who are more than a little appalled at the Baba’s tall tales – join to expose the Baba.
Apart from the Baba – brought to life on screen with great panache by Charuprakash Ghosh – the story had a series of excellently executed cameos. The Baba’s disciples, the friend circle of the suitor and even the smallest of characters were brilliantly cast and performed. The biggest addition to the film is probably the character of the Baba’s assistant (which is insignificant in the book), which is played on screen by one of Bengal’s finest comedians – Robi Ghosh.

In any story about a conman, there can be two parts.
The first part is the build up of the conman’s stories, which establish his aptitude and attitude. The second part is the puncturing of his spell by the hero(es). In the film, Ray inserted a very humourous third part in between, which was the hatching of the plan after seeing the conman in action. Here, the central character acknowledges the talents of the god-man as a erudite, intelligent super-actor. Somehow, this scene reminded me of Sherlock Holmes describing Moriarty as one of the most intelligent men ever. And indeed, Birinchi Baba was no ordinary mortal. For somebody who had seen Nebuchadnezzar as a nabalok!

I think the film did a great job of translating the verbal humour of the film into visual elements and this led excising some of the great one-liners from the book. Obviously, this rankled for anybody who had read and loved the novella (including me). But when you see the quality of the additions, the deletions become more acceptable.

The book had a perfunctory sentence to declare that the renowned advocate (identified as Buchki’s – the ‘heroine’s - father) had taken up a guru. The context in the book was a discussion between a group of friends on the proliferation of god-men in the country. While the descriptions of the various kinds of Babas were hilarious, they were essentially word sketches and translating them on screen would have meant having reams of dialogue or depicting them live (leading to long running times devoted to peripheral elements).
Instead, Ray chose to write a scene (not in the book) in which the Baba meets the lawyer and his daughter on a train and they get completely taken in by a psychological trick. The Baba made him believe that the Sun rose that morning because of him!
Every one of Baba's tall stories was presented in a different style, with perfect visual buildup that one is forced to hang on to every word. Be it Eisntein's consultation with the Baba or having roast hippos for lunch - the stories come thick and fast.

Mahapursh - despite critics feeling contrary - is, in my humble opinion, a great comedy as it follows all the requirements of one. A tight plot, brilliantly performed ensemble roles, snappy one-liners and a rousing climax. The film does a perfect job of threading together all the visual elements of a cult classic.

And if that was not enough, there is the ultimate depiction of the transience of NOW.
Imagine your right index finger to be the indicator of past and the left index finger depicting future. The right index moves clockwise and blazes away. The left index moves anti-clockwise and hurtles towards you. The point at which they meet is the present - Now. You cannot catch it. You cannot stop it. It comes and goes in a flash.
Those who have read A Brief History of Time would remember the two cones of past and future, with their vertices meeting at present. Only, Birinchi Baba said it about two-and-half decades earlier. And yes, while you are at it - you might as well try moving your right hand in a clockwise direction and the left hand anti-clockwise - simultaneously!

The greatest cinematic genius this country has ever produced wrote novels, drew pictures, designed book covers, invented fonts, composed music, designed costumes & sets, translated, made advertisments - and as the index-finger-rotation-in-opposite-directions suggests, was not behind a few parlour tricks either.
And 87 years on, they still don't make 'em like that any more!