The Fight for Tamil Eezham - Sinhalese Forces, LTTE and Beyond

செந்தமிழ் நாடெனும் போதினிலே
இன்பத் தேன் வந்து பாயுது காதினிலே
எங்கள் தந்தையர் நாடென்ற பேச்சினிலே
ஒரு சக்தி பிறக்குது மூச்சினிலே

- Subramaniya Barathiyaar

Translation:

Hearing the phrase "Senthamizh Nadu"
Feels like nectar against our ears
Talk of the land of our forefathers
Feeds firepower into our breaths

Most people are apprehensive about asking a Tamilian (and an admittedly militant one at that) what her position where the Sri Lankan Tamils issue is concerned, is. People at work have got used to my snubbing them with vile sarcasms when talk of "Sauth Indian" comes up...to the extent people who thought Tamilians wanted Tamil Nadu to conquer Sri Lanka now ask me politely whether I can follow Malayalam (note: 'Malayalam', not 'Malayali'). At a time when the Tamizh Eezham issue is being bandied about so Telugu politicians like Vaiko can win brownie points and the DMK can divert attention from the power supply problems, amid the political mileage of sundry parties and political incorrectness of particular news channels (which come up with stings as creative as 'Politics of Tamils'), here's an extremely honest, extremely subjective, and therefore extremely biased perspective.

Rajiv Gandhi's assassination was, like for many of my age and generation, my first encounter with terror. We had been brought up to think he was the face of New India...a progressive individual who had married outside his religion, caste and country, a man who had pleaded with rioters to "stop this madness" soon after his mother died, a young Prime Minister (the first and last, possibly), an approachable, open-faced achiever and the idealistic scion of a family of political heavyweights.

I remember someone in my family screaming, "Rajiv Gandhi is dead! He's assassinated!" It was also the first time I heard the word "assassinated". Television footage showed bloodied roads and body parts, and we heard something about a bomb hidden in a garland, and something else about a belt of explosives. A few days of mournful music on Doordarshan, interrupted only by the funeral. The Italian wife of the dead Prime Minister wore a white saree and dark glasses at his funeral, and his teenaged children stood grim.

As LTTE became a household name, everyone knew Dhanu and Nalini and a few other people were "bad", and Prabhakaran was evil. I could never understand why anyone would want to secede from a nation. Having grown up in Madras, until a move to London quickly followed by a move to Delhi disillusioned me, I believed one's nationality superseded all other allegiance. I'm Tamilian, Hindu etc., but an Indian foremost. I still see it that way, although now I know not every Indian does. The same went for Sri Lankans. To me, it was as ridiculous as Kashmiris wanting to be part of Pakistan was, back then. Why cross over to the enemy? It didn't help hugely, of course, that Ravana was from Lanka and they had set Hanuman's tail on fire etc. etc., and therefore India and Lanka were not the best of pals from time immemorial. Why had India chosen to intervene in their affairs now? And for all that, we had lost a promising Prime Minister.

Sixteen years down the line, though, I see things rather differently. Part of it has to do with the knowledge of Rajiv Gandhi's political failings and administrative ineptitude having overshadowed his image in the late eighties and early nineties as some kind of hero. But most of it comes from meeting Sri Lankans face to face. With the exception of a forgettable woman who went to my forgettable college and a writer called Elangovan, I had not met any Sri Lankan Tamilians till I went to the United Kingdom. There, I met three people who changed the way I perceived things.

BBC Worldwide Headquarters, Bush House, Holborn, London, June 2006:

Yashoda was polite and genial, but unlike the typical Tamilian, who would rather struggle to speak in English with a fellow-Tamilian than celebrate the camaraderie of a shared language, she addressed me in Tamil. We were waiting for a BBC Tamil interview. Her accent and the linguistic correctness of the first few words told me she wasn't from Madras. A couple of sentences later, she said she was from a village near Colombo.

"Ah, Ilangai!" I said.

"Aam," she replied.

She lived with her husband and children at Harrow, and had been working for a Tamil television station for more than five years. After the customary exchange of invitations to come home and eat, we moved on to other subjects. She said I didn't look Tamilian, and I returned the intended compliment by saying she didn't look like the mother of two. I asked her how long she had been in London, and she said, resignedly, "fifteen years."

I was aching for Madras one year after flying into Heathrow. A trip back to film a documentary had interrupted my stay, but even so, it felt like aeons since I had seen home. Fifteen years of living away must have been hard! I asked her how many times she'd flown back. Yashoda was silent for a while. Then she shook her head.

"Never? Not once?!"

"No. Angu poga iyalaadhu," she replied, in Sri Lankan Tamil. ("I cannot go back".)

Her parents lived with her sister in Colombo, and hadn't seen their grandchildren. Probably wouldn't ever, because they did not intend to leave their country, and Yashoda couldn't go back. It was soon after Yashoda's marriage that their house in Killinochchi was bombed. One of her sisters had died. The family was away, visiting her husband's place when the incident had taken place. The Sri Lankan army was conducting air raids. Yashoda and her husband fled to London, while her parents moved in with their other daughter and her family, in Colombo.

Yashoda harboured no illwill for the Sri Lankan army, no resentment, no hatred. Just resignation. She only wanted to go back, just to see her parents and show them her children. She was afraid she wouldn't be able to return because of the stringent immigration laws. She was not part of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eezham. She was not part of the Sri Lankan government. She did not have a side. She only had a past she could not go back to, and a dead sister, the prospects of meeting whom were higher than those of meeting her living parents.

Pizza Hut, Harrow Town Centre, London, August 2006:

"Naan netru idhey sonnan! Order eduththukollungal, piragu meendum solgiran."

Hearing Tamil in London comes as a pleasant surprise. Hindi, Punjabi and Gujarati were a lot more common. I couldn't help smiling as I waited for the cashier to turn his attention to me.

"Sorry, madam, one moment," he said, and turned to explain how to take an order to his colleague. I would find out she was his sister.

"Illai, paravalley," I said. ("That's all right".)

He turned back to me, thrilled. "Thamizhaa? Colombo?"

"Illai. Madras."

"Oh, Indian."

I went back to Pizza Hut several times, and spoke Tamil to him each time. I never found out his name or his sister's. Our first few sentences had taken us to a level of familiarity beyond which an exchange of names would be embarrassing. He had come to London as an asylum-seeker, and had now made a life for himself, working out of fast food joints. His sister had been able to join him a few years later, and hopefully their parents would too, in time.

"Ungalukku thirumba poganum enra aasai illaya?" I asked, speaking written Tamil in my attempt to communicate better with his dialect. ("Don't you want to go back?")

He looked at me, first in surprise, and then thoughtfully.

"Why?" he asked.

"Don't you miss home, miss your country?"

"Don't you ever think about settling down here?" he asked me.

"I do, at times. But I know I won't. For one thing, I don't want my kids growing up here, and I would never want to change my nationality. I feel a sense of patriotism when I see my passport," I laughed, "besides, it's hard enough to speak proper Tamil in Madras, leave alone in London!"

He smiled, as one must, with eccentric customers. "I am here now. There's no point going back. I miss family, and I worry about them, but they will come here. Why go back to a place where there's always war and fighting?"

Wembley, London, September 2006:

She was a famous "organiser". Dancers and musicians approached her when they wanted to perform in the United Kingdom. A Sri Lankan Tamilian who owned ten houses in and around Wembley, and several businesses to boot, she lived in the sort of house NRIs in Indian films are portrayed to live in. She was gracious, and spoke to me about Carnatic music and Bharathanatyam at length, dissecting the talents of stalwarts, discussing whose abhinayams were better, and whose bhavams. I had met her about a concert my guru was performing in. She travelled to Madras and Colombo quite often, she said, and her three children spoke Tamil and English fluently. They were all trained in singing and dancing. In other words, she lived like the more successful Indians who had set up their lives in America. While speaking about her, with a degree of admiration, to someone else, I was warned, "but be careful...she must be having LTTE links if she's doing so well. You don't want to get caught for being associated with someone like that!"

As it turned out, she had no LTTE links whatsoever. All these people were just regular citizens, trying to live a normal life...trying to find normalcy outside their country, because they couldn't find it inside. Some might call them unwilling victims of the Eezham struggle. Some might call them success stories. Some might call them pawns of destiny. Whatever dramatic title one chooses to bestow on them, all of them were people to whom their ethnicity was manifest in the way they looked, the language they spoke, the clothes they wore; not in their political leanings.

Their Eezham is not the Eezham of Dhanu and Nalini and Prabhakaran. Their Eezham is not the Eezham of Karunanidhi and the other links in his human chain. Their Eezham is not the Eezham of the Sri Lankan or Indian governments. Their Eezham is not a movement; it is a place they once called home. A place lost to them now. A place from which they have been uprooted, or moved on, as the case may be. Generations from now, a writer may spring from amongst them, speaking of the angst of being lost between cultures, might use their stories to write a book that wins awards...a writer with a British accent and Sri Lankan features; a writer whose house would not be ransacked like Elangovan's, and whose works would not be burnt; a writer whose protagonist could be Yashoda or the man at Pizza Hut or the organiser at Wembley...an ancestor whose story had been passed down. And till that writer comes, Yashoda waits to go home, the man at Pizza Hut waits for his parents to come, the organiser at Wembley waits for a clean chit...their waits may come to an end at the epilogue of his or her book.

Epics in 55

In response to a comment on this post, here are my 55-word takes on the two epics. Surprisingly, Ramayan was more difficult.
Now, making it infant-friendly in about 1000 words does not look all that daunting.Guess what? Mahabharat has 18 parvas. I will do each one in 55 words, bringing the total to 990!

Paandavs and Kauravs are paternal first cousins. Kauravs hate Paandavs, as they would inherit the throne. They defeat Paandavs in a rigged game of dice and have them exiled. When the Paandavs return, the Kauravs don’t return their rightful kingdom and a battle ensues. In the battle, the Paandavs vanquish Kauravs and ascend the throne.

Prince Ram’s stepmother forces King Dasarath to exile him, so that her son can become king. Ram leaves the kingdom with wife, Seeta, and younger brother, Laxman. In the exile, Rakshas King Raavan abducts Seeta. Ram goes to find her, assisted by an army of monkeys. Ram kills Raavan in a battle and reclaims Seeta.

When You're Far from the Madding Crowd...Live Free, Die Hard

A bout of illness was what got me thinking about this. For years, almost ever since I earned enough to eke out rent for a tiny apartment, I dreamt of living alone. Finally, it was circumstance rather than freewill that necessitated a move to my own quarters. For a year, I only had to share a kitchen with roommates, and to my surprise, was quite glad to move back home, and to Madras, which I never thought I would leave again. On my last visit to my hometown, though, I found myself wondering if I would live there again. Now, I have five rooms all to myself, about two thousand kilometres away. And while the advantages are apparent, I wonder what changes the luxury has brought about in my personality.

Given the poise with which I climb the stairs and grace with which I go about my daily activities, I have often wondered what would happen if I were to break my neck while pirouetting down the stairs, and find myself not able to call for help. Some of my fears were brought to rest, though, when the paranoia of a friend and the power of cough syrup came together to cause my landlords and parents a panic attack. To put it in layman's language, a very unfortunate colleague was sent home to check on me, and when my drug-induced sleep proved too deep for the bell to have any effect, a phone call from my landlords to my parents ensured I was woken up by the secret landline...which resulted in my very unfortunate colleague receiving a barrage of abuse when I got through to his mobile.

But there's another side to living alone which hadn't quite struck me until recently. The time and the silence afforded to one by the absence of roommates ends up making one analyse things to a much larger extent. Close friends of mine know I've had more to analyse recently than is the norm, but the more thorough analysis of these more-than-the-norm number of things has had an impact on my personality, I find. To some degree, one becomes surer of oneself, and the things one wants. But, theorising has inclined what I had always believed to be a relatively androgynous mind to a higher proportion of femininity.

Contradictory, perhaps, but true. Writing my diary, recalling and dissecting events of the day, emotions passing through me, doubts and worries about various aspects of my life, have made me more of a philosopher-thinker than I was used to being. The epiphany struck me while I was writing my diary today. Through a process of analysis, I had arrived at the metaphoric oxymoron that my problem was I analysed too much, weighed words too heavily, interpreted stray phrases beyond their elasticity and split facts into answers to too many questions.

It is perhaps an advantage that living far from the madding crowd, one has conditions conducive to such epiphanies.

All said and done, though, the biggest advantage to living alone is...one can always be sure the toilet seat has not been left up.

Bas Yudi... A Dharma Productions Venture

Imagine never lying. NEVER. Never inflating your salary. Never deflating your weight. Never calling home from a pub to say you are working late. Yudhishthir did just that. Except for one - just one friggin' - time in his entire life, he never lied.
Of course, people completely lose sight of that because he lost his entire kingdom, brothers and wife in a game of dice - which he did not cheat in. But the moot point seems to be that he didn't stop either! He went all the way, ignoring all advice. And when Bheem wanted to pummel everybody present for - well - being present, he calmed him by saying "Shaant, Gada-dhari Bheem, shaant". So now you know where my knowledge of the epics are derived from!

BTW, he lost twice.
The first time was the famous episode - which ended with losing his entire kingdom, riches, brothers and wife. For good measure, Draupadi was almost stripped in full view of the court. But the elders managed to convince Dhritarashtra to give it all back to maintain peace, which was done.
Having done this, Duryodhan and Co. felt all their machinations have been in vain and convinced Dhritarashtra to call Yudi back for one final game. The loser would go on an exile for 12 years, followed by one year of incognito exile. If anybody identified them as the Paandavs during that final one year, they would have repeat the 12-year exile! Knowing fully well that he is going to be had (and really bad!), Mr Elder Bro came back and duly lost the game. All because his code of honour did not permit him to refuse an elder.

Despite all this monumentally stupid things, Yudhishthir's biggest strength - as the son of the Dharma - was the fairness in all his dealings and also his knowledge.
When the five brothers and Draupadi renounced the world and left for their mahaprasthaan, a dog followed them.
During the long walk to the heavens (!), each of the lead characters passed away as all of them had one fatal flaw which prevented their entry into the heavens in their mortal body. For every fall, Bheem asked Yudhishthir the reason and the eldest Paandav dispassionately listed them down.
Draupadi fell first. "She loved Arjun more than her other husbands."
Sahadev was next. "His good looks made him excessively vain."
Nakul after that. "He was so proud of his intelligence that he was dismissive of other people's knowledge."
Arjun. "He repeatedly claimed to be able to wipe off all his enemies in a day, which he was not capable of."
Bheem was the last to fall. "You were uncontrollably fond of food and did not think of others."
As everyone knows, the canine companion stuck on till the very end and Yudhishthir refused to enter heaven without him. The doggy manifested himself as Dharma himself and Yudi gained tonnes of brownie points for his honourable behaviour.
But frankly, this was nothing but common sense. When you see your ultra-virtuous family members popping it on the way to heaven and the doggy carrying on, you should logically conclude that it is no ordinary dog.

However, Yudi's crowning glory - in my book at least - came towards the fag end of their exile.
The tired brothers reached a resting place within the forest and were very thirsty. Sahadev went in search of water. He soon reached a beautiful lake of sparkling water. He was about to drink from it and take back some for his brothers when a stork called out to him. The stork warned that if Sahadev drank the water without answering his questions, he would die. Sahadev smirked at this claim, took a gulp of water and dropped dead. Nakul followed and met with the same fate. Ditto for Arjun and Bheem.

Note 1: The brothers always attempted stuff in reverse chronological order. See mahaprasthaan above.
Note 2: If the later brothers thought the stork was bluffing despite seeing dead bodies around the lake, they couldn't have been the brightest lights in the harbour.

Anyway, now our man - Yudi - arrives and realises this is no ordinary stork (doggy logic, see above). So, what follows is a wonderful Q&A between the stork and Yudhishthir as the eldest Paandav answered all the questions with a little bit of style and a lot of earthy common sense. Some excerpts...

Q: Why is a Brahmin respected? What is his strength? Why are they human? What is their failing?
A: He is respected for his knowledge of the Vedas. His strength is from his tapasya. Their death makes them human. Their failing is criticism of others.

Q: Why is a Kshatriya respected? What is his strength? Why are they human? What is their failing?
A: He is respected for his mastery over weapons. His strength is from his yagna. Their fear makes them human. Their failing is desertion of the weak.

Q: What is heavier than the earth?
A: Mother is heavier than the earth.

Q: What is higher than the heavens?
A: Father is higher than the heavens.

Q: What is faster than the wind?
A: The mind is faster than the wind.

Q: What's more numerous than grass?
A: Worries are more numerous than grass.

Q: Who sleeps with eyes open?
A: Fish sleeps with eyes open.

Q: Who remains static even after birth?
A: An egg is static after birth.

Q: Who grows by his own force?
A: A river grows by his own force.

Q: What's strange?
A: People are dying all around us. Despite that, we want to live till eternity. This is strange.

Q: What's news?
A: Using Sun as fire, day and night as fuel and seasons as ladle, Time cooks the entire living world... this is news!

Q: Who is happy?
A: Someone who manages to feed himself every evening without having to stay away from home or having to borrow is happy.

At the end of this gruelling session, the stork told Yudi that he was pleased enough to revive one of his four brothers.
Yudi asked for Nakul.
Yaake, Nakul drink????, asked the stork. Why not the valiant Arjun or the mighty Bheem?
Yudi replied that the Paandavs have two mothers - Kunti and Madri, whom they treated equally in all respects. His being alive meant that Kunti had one son left and Nakul's revival would mean even Madri would have one son left.
Taaliyaan... exclaimed the stork, promptly turned into Dharma and revived all the four brothers.
Now Yudi was nothing if he was not one to use up his brownie points. He remembered that the twelve years of exile was almost up and they needed to spend one more year incognito and Duryodhan would do everything in his power to find them in this one year. So, he asked Dharam Papa for a boon... and as per the boon, nobody would recognise the five brothers and Draupadi in the thirteenth year!

So, what happened in the thirteenth year? That's a story for another day.

I have just imported Rajshekhar Basu's translation of the Mahabharat from Calcutta. Bought on 19 August 1989, I have read this book countless times. It has to be the most lucid translation of the Epic - complete with a wonderful introduction by the translator, who has to be one of the most talented authors in Bengali.

Random Movies I Like: Loha

Chatting about the recent economic meltdown, a friend and I feared for our favourite business enterprise - the Indian film industry.
If in this suffocating atmosphere of layoffs and budget cuts, corporates spending godzillion rupees on Hindi cinema decide to cut down, what a mess it might be! All the multi-crore deals for the top stars would be out of the window... and Nilendu predicted that we may see a return of the 80's style cut-price multi-starrrers like Sultanat, Shaandaar, Mahasangram, Love 86, Ajooba, Vardi and the like.
These wonderful films had at least two sets of leading pairs, a leather-clad villain, at least one song in false rain, mechanical crocodiles, motorboat chases, jail-break from a place that looks not unlike Delhi Zoo, college functions starring 30-year old extras in skirts and item numbers in country liquor bars.
This kind of discussion always makes me nostalgic and it made me reminisce about one of my favourite films of that genre - Loha.

Dharmendra is a police officer, who gets suspended when he arrests a politician. Shatrughan Sinha is an ex-army officer who gambles for a living and is a part-time Robin Hood, who gives away his earnings to poor people needing to marry off their daughters. Karan Kapoor is a drug peddler, who is convinced that the drugs he peddles are 'harmless'. So when he sees a client drop dead because of an overdose, he kills his boss. Just the trio you need to escort a gang of death row convicts to freedom.
Why? Oh you bloody pedants - that's because dacoit Shera (Amrish Puri) has kidnapped a busload of tourists and is demanding the release of his arrested chums as ransom.
Of course, there are complications like Shatrughan's son (Jugal Hansraj) also getting kidnapped by Shera. A Police Commissioner's daughter being in the tourist bus. The government refusing to release the convicts so the trio doing a jailbreak. And of course, there is the matter of Shatrughan Sinha's name, which goes something like Nawab Qasim Ali Badruddin Ali Hassan Ali Jalaluddin Ahmed Jung Bahadur.

I liked this film because of many reasons.

* Firstly, the cast was loaded. Anybody who was registered under the Cine Artists' Association in late 80's was part of the film.
Apart from the three heroes, there were Mandakini, Madhavi, Amrish Puri, Jagdish Raaj, Raza Murad, Yunus Parvez and Kader Khan in speaking parts. In addition, almost each of the convicts was a known face - Macmohan, Tej Sapru, Joginder, Roopesh Kumar and Praveen Kumar (Bheem from the Mahabharat TV serial).

* The film was a mega-budget one by those day's standards. They actually went outdoors to shoot sequences in Shera's den and even one railway station where Karan was saved by Dharmendra and Shatru from the drug lord's henchmen.
The jail was however the same place where Shatru used some horses to save Raakhee in Shaan and Amitabh hijacked Amjad Khan's gold consignment in Kaalia.

* They used sex, violence and songs exactly the way they should be used - gratuitously.
When the depraved convicts are transferred from the jail to Shera's den, the heroines help out - by wearing hot pants and mini skirts. And when they are left all alone with the convicts, they divert their attention by singing and dancing.

* They made really absurd plot devices completely absorbing.
As part of his demand, Shera dictates that each one of his convict pals must reach him alive. So, when one of the convicts is shot in a crossfire, the three heroes desperately try to revive him - while Joginder is contorting his face (like only he can!) in the background. A kidnapped tourist is given a chance to escape by Amrish, but only because he wanted to check out the aim of his newly acquired telescopic-rifle and he shoots him as he goes beyond a certain distance.

* They had high-octane, super-charged action sequences.
In one scene, Shatru demolishes a gambling den to take his rightful winnings. In another, Dharmendra literally hammers a goon into the ground. Even the frail-and-firangi Karan Kapoor stuffs a packet of cocaine into a drug lord's mouth with such panache as if it was a doctor inserting a thermometer in a patient's mouth.

Nowadays - thanks to the astronomical star salaries - we have forgotten what multi-starrers look like. All the major films of the last few years have just about one lead pair and some assorted newcomers / character artistes. Of course, the other lament is that the concept of character artistes has evaporated.
Action directors are from Los Angeles. Locations are in Manila (for small budget films) and Miami (for big budget films). Choreographers are from Paris. Script sessions are in London. Stylists parade the 'look' of each film in Lakme Fashion Week. Even actresses are from Brazil.

Loha was shot almost entirely in Filmistan, occassionally venturing out to Madh Island and Lonavla.
It did not have a bound script but the director knew the story by heart and so did we. The dialogue writer (Kader Khan) had a role, so that he can write the lines on the sets.
Even the fight-masters acted as the villain's sidekicks.
The heroines wore clothes they couldn't have worn anywhere in civil society, but they were probably used in several other films - all thanks to the monopoly of Maganlal Dresswallah.
And it was funded by the underworld, for all I know...

It is ironic that when these films were made, we used to crib that there is hardly any variety in Bollywood. Now, I am complaining of execssive variety!
Sigh... it has been such a long time since I saw a film with Sound Recording by Hitendra Ghosh (Rajkamal Kalamandir).

The Unbearable Politeness of Being Indian

(With apologies to Milan Kundera for the bastardisation of his brainchild)

(Published in Zeitgeist, The New Indian Express, dated 18th October 2008)

"Could you kill the sharky for me, please?" my two year-old cousin from Birmingham looked up at me with an appealing face, and added, by way of justification for her murderous streak, "he is going to eat up akku and me. Could you save us, please?"

It was possibly the politeness of the request that got a hardcore animal rights activist to pierce the photograph of a shark ride at Disney World, and therefore save the two little girls grinning inside its mouth. As my cousin smiled and said, "thank you!" and trotted off to tell her parents the shark had been killed (and the photograph mutilated), I remembered a friend's dire warning, just before I had left for London.

"Never say 'yeah'," she had said, with all the drama of passing down a secret family recipe, "always say 'yes, please'." It turned out Londoners didn't care too much one way or the other, but apparently it was a big deal in the rest of the U.K., and somehow, I got into the habit of saying "please", "thank you" and "sorry".

I hadn't quite kicked the habit a few weeks after I landed back home, fresh from my year-and-a-half long stint, and so it happened that once, I asked my mother, "ma, could you bring me my coffee, please?"

"What's wrong with you? Why're you shouting? You just asked for it now, no?" my mother snapped.

And that's when I realised I had completely forgotten the rules of Indian etiquette. We only say "please", "thank you", "sorry" and "excuse me" when we are annoyed with something.

"Can you please do this, if it isn't too much to ask?!"

"No, no, thank you very much, I'll do it myself!"

"Okay, okay, everything I do is wrong! Sorry!!!! Happy?!"

"Excuse me!!! What do you think you're doing?!"

Having thought it out, I didn't quite blame my mother.

I tried to explain with, "no, I wasn't trying to shout. I was just requesting..."

"That's enough sarcasm!"

"No, ma, really..."And then my mother looked at me closely, and the familiar look of anxiety that accompanies the announcement of a cold or some equally serious ailment crossed her face.

"Are you all right?" she asked, in a milder tone than I had heard so far that morning.

Of course, we're quite justified in construing those four expletives as sarcastic, given we dismiss any attempt at politeness with "don't be so formal!" What is it about us Indians that makes us so resistant to politeness of any kind? We're known worldwide for our hospitality, but why do we reserve that for the expat population? The Iranians called it "tarof" and we call it "pehle aap, pehle aap." But surely, there is something that makes for a pleasant atmosphere all round when one addresses another with the respectful plural before being asked to switch to the informal singular, and when one asks before reaching out for a sandwich on another's plate!

The most annoying manifestation of sacrificing politeness for this all-important "informality" is this habit people have of stretching out their hands for a book you happen to be reading intently. You pretend not to see them, and then they, at best, snap their fingers in front of your eyes and go, "hello!!!" or, at worst, spare you the trouble and snatch the book out of your fingers. Then they look at the blurb, flip over to the back, read out three sentences, which, in keeping with Murphy's Law, will break the suspense that's kept you reading the book and finally flip their oily hands through the pages, leaving a couple of dog ears, before asking you, with this bright-eyed intellectual alertness, "how's the book?"

Having been victimised in this manner for more than a decade, I once replied with, "oh, I don't like showing books to people...I think of them as personal", to which my interlocutor responded with a grin, and the riposte, "then what do you like showing people?" I believe the problem where he was concerned was solved when I replied, "one particular finger."

Time waits for no one. True love waits forever.

The cheesy-for-some-romantic-for-most title line is actually a tagline for a Mel Gibson film, Forever Young. In the film, young Mel is in undying love with a girl, who has a 'fatal' accident. Heartbroken Mel gives himself up for a science project which has virtually no chances of success. Crazy bugger! For the project, he is cryogenically frozen and forgotten immediately afterwards. When he is accidentally revived some twenty years later, he is still a chirpy mid-twenty guy. And he comes across his old girlfriend, who had survived after all and is now married, dowdy and aghast at Mel's youthfulness.
There is no reason really for telling this story but then, there is no reason for most of the things on this blog... For example, why do I keep Udayan on the blogroll when he has not posted for the last millennium?

This post is an attempt to collate some wonderful, some arbitrary, some crappy taglines from movies. Some of them are obvious. Some of them are high philosophy. And some of them are simply better than the movies themselves!
I have a green diary from my college days, that is literally falling apart. Most of these quotes are from that vintage and I needed to preserve them before the diary disintegrated totally.
Readers are urged to add taglines from newer movies.

So, here are some of the better ones. Which incorporate a significant element of the plot and inject as much curiosity as possible! 

Robinhood: Prince of Thieves - For the love of all men. And one woman. He fought to uphold justice. By breaking the law. 

Psycho - Please don't give away the ending. It's the only one we have. 

Mississippi Masala - Love is colour blind. 

Cape Fear - There's nothing in the dark that isn't in the light. Except fear. 

Mrs Doubtfire - She does floors. She cooks dinner. She reads bedtime stories. She is a blessing in disguise. 

Pulp Fiction - You will never know the facts until you know the fiction. 

Alien - In space, no one can hear you scream. 

Anaconda - When you can't breath, you can't scream. 

Sommersby (starring Jodie Foster and Richard Gere in a film about the latter returning home after being given up for dead and Jodie does not find him at all like the husband she knew) - She knew his face. His voice. His touch. She knew everything about him. Except the truth. 

Bollywood has been quite unimaginative in coining taglines. The best example of that is the line for Main Khiladi Tu Anari (starring Akshay Kumar and Saif) - The Brave and The Brat!

Otherwise, it is either hyperbole (The Most Powerful Film Ever Made - Parinda and A Love Story of Epic Dimensions - 1942 A Love Story, both Vidhu Vinod Chopra!), literal translation (Paths of Fire - Agneepath) or plain & simple un-imagination (A Violent Love Story - Tezaab and Darr. 

Very rarely do we have a simple line which sums up the film without giving away the plot. Dil Hain Ke Manta Nahin had one such - A Journey into a Woman's Heart. Considering that they did not have spend any time thinking of a story, they obviously spent time thinking of the tagline! 

And my favourite? Jugal Hansraj's adult debut with his Masoom co-star, Urmila, was a film called Aa Gale Lag Ja. It advertised itself by saying - Never before a Love Story with 7 Songs and 11 Murders... 

How can you not want to see a movie like this? 

Gladiators in the Arena

Pointless post, propagating violence, bad language and boorish behaviour. Only JU students, past and present, may be able to relate.

My alma-mater had three faculties - Arts, Science and Engineering.
Arts had beautiful girls (is there any other kind?), effeminate boys and the collective sighing of the frustrated Engineering guys (again, is there any other kind?) ensured a constant storm blew across the faculty.
Science was bit of an unknown quantity - of which I wouldn't even have aware of if my good friends Anirban & Sujata had not been students.
Engineering was the hotbed (pun not intended) of activity, being the home base of a few thousand technically-inclined, hormonally-charged, muscular people. Most of them were totally unable to comprehend how girls fell for wimps who recited Pablo Neruda and had no time for macho men who thought nothing of hammering a cast iron flange for three hours straight.

Our professors came from an even sterner stock and considered AC offices to be a sure sign of pansy occupants. Anybody who has not installed a cooling tower in peak summer at a Jamnagar construction site is obviously not fit to live, they thought. As I write these lines, I get a feeling that people must be wondering if Engineers are a modern version of Spartans.
For those of you who have, let me hasten to add that this is completely inaccurate. Only Mechanical Engineers fall in that haloed category.

For these modern-day Spartans to flex their sporting muscles, there was an aptly named tournament called Arena.
For outsiders, it was a cricket tournament. For the Electronics department, it was a time to hide. For Chemical, it was time to show off that they had the maximum girls in the department. For Electrical, it was time to show off that they had really good cricketers. And for Mechanical, it was a time to pulverise the rest of the Engineering faculty into dust, swallow them with a gulp of Thums Up and pee it out in the centre of the pitch.
And in the four years I was there, Mechanical Engineering never lost a match in Arena.
Before anybody tries to protest at what seems like an exaggeration, let me add that we never let anybody finish a match we had the remotest chance of losing.

Mechanical and Electrical were the two largest departments on campus - with about 100 students in each year, making it about 400 in all. Apart from the obvious advantage of having the largest talent pools, Mechanical had an advantage over Electrical and everyone else.
We had the most skewed gender ratio in the entire University. At any point during my four years of college, there were never more than four women in our department - and that included the two librarians!
So, when it came to a scrape or a shout, Mechanical males swamped the Electrical by about 3:2. And in terms of expletive-shouting males, we swamped them about 10:1 because any Electrical boy nurturing even the slightest hopes of having a girlfriend in the department would die before uttering anything that questions somebody else's parentage.

So, every single Arena followed a predictable path for Mechanical.

First Match: vs Electronics. Mech scores 150 odd in 20 overs, which was quite monumental in those pre-T20 days. Bundles out Elec for 70 in about 15 overs. Match watched by about 350 Mechs and 20 (including the team) Electronics junta. Mech thoroughly demotivated by this unequal match.

Second Match: vs Metallurgy (or some other insignificant department). Mech batting mainstay attends class. Champion pacer drops out for reasons unknown. Umpire from Metallurgy. Match attended by 20 Mechs. Metallurgy squeezes through. Team captain known for his stupendously bad cricket and stupendously good luck at tosses blames lack of support and blatant cheating by umpire. Organising committee forced to take note of the latter. Department takes note of the former.

Third Match: Must win vs Physical Education. (This was the department which turns avid sportsmen of Bengal into certified Physical Education teachers - and they were known for their exceptionally good sporting skills and terribly bad tempers.) Phy Ed bats first and scores 120 odd and complains of a few dodgy LBW decisions. Mech needs to score the runs in 15 overs to qualify on run rate. Star batsman starts off explosively with Mech reaching 90 odd in 10 overs. Phy Ed complains of nasty barracking by Mech supporters (of approx 500, including sympathetic neutrals). Mini collapse of Mech leads to 110/5 in 14 overs. Phy Ed long-on fielder makes obscene gesture at crowd and is pelted with pebbles. Fisticuffs breaks out. Match awarded to Mech on Duckworth-Lewis.

Semi-Final: vs Chemical. Match attended by 700 Mechanical sympathisers, including him (must-read description of Mech prowess). Great attendance from Chemical as well, nearly 250 (which is about their entire department). Rumours of Chem's tearaway fast bowler chucking in last match. Mech audience vows to replace cricket ball with similarly shaped parts of the bowler's anatomy. Vow lustily communicated to Chem audience, which depletes to 200 almost immediately. Mech bats first and Chem pacer called for chucking thrice in very first over. Whispers of partisan umpiring from Chem side, lost in full-throated Mech cheering. Pacer loses rhythm and is soundly thrashed. Mech scores 140 odd in 20 overs. Chem audience now reduced to about 75. Chem starts to bat. Loses one wicket and 15 members of the audience every 10 minutes. Match ends with Mech procession around entire campus, with slogans clearly explaining how Chem (and other departments) have certain orifices in their body that are larger than they should be.

Final: vs Electrical. As much a battle of equals as it could have possibly got. Mech audience of 700, slightly daunted by 3 sports quota players in Electrical team. But not apparently as banners, whistles, masks, bamboo sticks with vests as pennants cover the entire arena. Electrical makes steady start as no attention is paid to cricket. Verbal duels (soon to be part of University folklore) take centre-stage. Silently, Electrical compiles a competent 120 odd. Match declared as a cakewalk by Mech supporters. Mech star batsman again starts explosively as cheering reaches crescendo. At 70 in 7 overs, he falls to a close stumping decision. Deathly silence as Electrical seems too scared to cheer. As Mech considers brushing it off, Third Year student (who just came down from the second floor of the Mech building) claims to have seen the bat grounded. Murmurs of discontent starts. Mech loses second wicket. Out bowled but bowler's arm angle clearly doubtful. Very soon it is 90/6 and it is discovered that the organising committee Secretary is from Electrical. Mech decides to protest against this partisan behaviour. Millions of Mechanical supporters swamp the ground, uproot stumps and almost succeed in rolling back the matting wicket. Indeed, 'Mat gutiye shesh kor' is still used by JU Mech alumni as a call to end farcical situations. Intervention of Dean ensures half-hearted resumption. At the fall of the 7th wicket, Mech captain throws up his hands and claims continuation of rampant cheating. Mech supporters swarm field, slap umpires, apologise to Electrical players, roll back the matting wicket and take out procession to celebrate unbeaten record. Electrical handed trophy in secret, behind the toilets.

After the infamous 1996 World Cup semi-final at the Eden Gardens, Calcutta was ashamed at the spectator behaviour. JU students were only surprised that there were so many Mechanical alumni at the stadium that day...

Postscript: I wish I could reproduce some of the slogans. But I am told, all my cousins (even the sub-18 ones) read this blog nowadays.

Sue Kar Mere Man Ko

Sue has asked me to name six unspectacular quirks of mine. And pass on the onerous task to 6 more unsuspecting souls. And finally, tell these innocent souls to bare their souls. Whatay fun!

The first task is easy enough and Sue touched my heart (and hence the title!) by asking me to give it a filmy twist. I first thought she wanted me to explain Republicans and Democrats in filmy terms (which is easy - Sunny Deol and Saif Ali Khan respectively!) but then it transpired that it is the tag which must allude to my Bolly quirks!
So here goes...

1. I just love musical medleys and spoofs in films.
The clutch of Laxmikan-Pyarelal songs in Mr India, with which Sridevi and the kids sparred over a football. The antakshari in Maine Pyar Kiya which was actually an elaborate charade to make Bhagyashree say 'I love you' to Salman in public. The show in Hum Saath Saath Hain which is put up by Saif and Karishma to introduce the family. And of course, the Naseer Hussain college music competitions with a flurry of song-lets (Hum Kissi Se Kum Nahin and Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar, for example). I love them all. In fact, I am addicted to them.

2. Various Bollywoody questions and possibilities suddenly hit me and I spend days worrying about them.
Will Amitabh and Madhuri ever act opposite each other? Which was the first time a product placement happened in a Bollywood film? Who counted the number of films in which Jagdish Raj acted as a police officer? Who enters the data for Bollywood films on IMDB? Will Ramgopal Verma ever appear on Koffee With Karan?

3. I have liked several 'lesser films' more than I liked 'classics'.
I liked Dharam Veer more than Mughal-e-Azam, Chalti Ka Naam Gadi more than Pyaasa, Jewel Thief more than Guide and Don more than Abhimaan. Consequently, I cannot understand people going ga-ga over certain 'classical' moments. Every list of erotic moments in Bollywood routinely contains the Mughal-e-Azam scene in which Dilip Kumar 'tickles' Madhubala with a feather. I found that scene completely passion-less and boring.

4. I have a fetish for collecting souvenirs.
In school, I had a scrapbook of Amitabh Bachchan pictures, which I still have. I have retained ticket stubs of some of the more memorable movies I have seen. The last one I collected was the first time I went for a movie with my son (Lage Raho Munnabhai) but unfortunately, the print on the tickets nowadays fade with time. Also, I have cuttings of newspapers and magazines from twenty years back featuring my favourite stars.

5. Usually, I like the musical oddballs more than the acrredited hits.
The Aaashiqui number from Rock On. Amitabh's rendition of Neela Aasmaan. Anup Ghoshal's rendition of Tujhse Naraaz. Shashi Kapoor version of the Do Aur Do Paanch title song. In Abhimaan, there are snatches of Tere mere milan ki yeh raina all through the film before it comes on as a full-blown performance in the finale. I liked all those humming-jamming pieces better than the song!

6. I don't buy pirated music or films. I don't download music from the 'net. Actually, I only download music of which I own an original album. I only wish Bollywood would be impressed by my honesty and reduce the prices of original CDs!

I think Udayan and Nilendu should continue this tag to revive their blogs. Cannot think of anybody else who has six unspectacular quirks...

The Horror of Living Among the "We" Species

(Published in Zeitgeist, The New Indian Express, dated 4th October 2008)

When one runs into someone who occupies the friend-acquaintance border, after a really long time, and both parties have feigned delight at seeing each other, and hidden the dismay of not knowing how to start a conversation, given one has forgotten whether the other is married, has siblings, is employed etc., the safest question to ask is, "So, what have you been upto?" Which is exactly what I did. I wasn't quite prepared, though, for the answer.

"Oh, we went to ma's place first thing, then we went shopping, and we had lunch…oh, you should check out this new place on Chamiers Road! We simply loooove Italian food, so it was awesome! And then we've come here to do some more shopping! Puja time, na?"

You would empathise with my apprehensions if you had lived in the room next to the one occupied by a woman who suffered from schizophrenia. That individual, who had three personalities, had once threatened me with a knife, only for an alter ego to take over and ask me why I looked so nervous, and then a third to invite me to chop vegetables with her. Two years and four thousand miles down the line, I was confronted in my own hometown, by someone I had known well enough, I thought, who obviously suffered from the same ailment.

It was with a mixture of relief and horror that I realised this was not the case, as a man laden with shopping bags and smelling of takeout food, which I attributed to the plastic bag he was carrying, materialised next to the friend-acquaintance-border-occupant. This, clearly, was the other half of the "we".

"Arindam, meet Nandini," the occupant pronounced.

The horror had come because this was confirmation that the "We" species had taken over the world. They're everywhere, and the numbers are increasing. Popularly known as the "we" species, the Wecallourselvesweites refer to a brand of scary individuals of the suborder Couples, order Human, typically having an exaggerated sense of their own selves and their importance to the rest of the Human order, two pairs of arms, two pairs of legs, four eyes, two noses, two mouths, four ears and therefore twice the number of body parts an Individual of the order Human does. They also have a propensity to know each other's email and other passwords, have access to each other's mobile phones, and often trade levels of intimacy with each other's friends. That is to say, the Female of the Couple might well infiltrate the Male's circle of friends to the extent the Male's circle would find itself more loyal to the Female, in the course of time, and vice versa. They also tend to email everyone of their faintest acquaintance links to their Picasa web albums, showcasing romantic getaways, along with apologies for not sending them earlier.

To someone who has a live-in relationship with her laptop, television, DVD player and shruthi box, and whose roommates are books and slippers, which keep mostly to themselves, there can be no graver cause for near-suffocation than meeting a member of the Wecallourselvesweite species. Indeed, some have known to have reacted in much the same way as Casanova would have had he bumped into an enthusiastic girlfriend toga-shopping for him with his mother. The immediate symptoms of such we-induced-attacks are a spell of constrained breathing, barely disguised choking, a severe ache in the antisocial recesses of one's brain and a complete loss for words. Long-term effects include severing of ties with the Couple.

Some former friends have scared me by saying "we're talking to a friend of ours, so we'll call later", "we're not well, so we won't be able to make it" and "we're checking our email", but one particular incident has scarred my memory forever. The Female of a Couple once whined to me, "they've been asking us to get pregnant, but we really don't know if that's a good idea." My response that a doctor in Bangkok would be very interested in trying the case out, and had in fact advertised for Male volunteers for the experiment, ensured that was the last time I spoke to Them.

US Presidential Elections for JU Students

Entirely speculative. Slightly pointless post. Purposeful people to please avoid.

With the elections for the Most Powerful Person on Earth due soon, there has been a lot of ill-informed speculation on who/what the two sides - Democrats and Republicans - stand for.
For students (past, present and future) of Jadavpur University, here is a quick primer (culled from the chat transcripts of two ex-students):

American politics is like JU Engineering.
Democrat is Chemical Engineering - full of youthful pansies.
Republican is Mechanical. You are always looking for a scrape. No matter how much you screw up, you are proud of yourself. And of course, if there is a good-looking woman standing for election, you vote for her. Period.