Unlike Javed Jaffery in the opening scene, War Chhod Na Yaar lays out its cards very early on in the film, declares its stand on war, peace and more importantly, what kind of movie it’s going to be. For the rich Delhi kids sitting next to me in the theatre, it was very helpful in deciding whether they should leave at the interval and go watch Gravity (they had to be rich Delhi kids; who else can afford to buy two tickets in a Delhi multiplex and choose which one they’d rather watch?). For better or for worse, you soon realise, India’s first ever war comedy is a clever, if over-the-top absurdist take on war, that will have the odd moment of insight punctuated by running gags that get old soon and jokes that, like Pakistan’s Chinese-made weapons in the film, work about half the time (because, you know, Chainese maal hai). But the ones that work could possibly be enough to make the film worth your time and money, depending on what your time and money are worth. It’s about the same realisation that you get in most Steve Martin movies.
Like most war comedies, there is little real malice throughout War Chhod Na Yaar; the villains are all fairly harmless buffoons, all of them played by Dalip Tahil (the Chinese premier has a translation machine, which converts his orders into Sidhuisms for the Punjabi-speaking Pakistani general and PM). The soldiers are peaceful folk, forced into war by their buffoonish superiors. War doesn’t mean death, glory and terribly written patriotic speeches. It’s mostly a neighbourhood game of hide and seek, with zero casualties. The only terribly written patriotic speech, thankfully, keeps getting interrupted.
The film starts with the subcontinent at two minutes to midnight; a nuclear war instigated by China and supported by the US military-industrial complex is imminent. Ace journalist Ruth Datta (Soha Ali Khan) — female journalists in films might as well come with the label “FEMALE LOVE INTEREST!” attached — is sent to the front to cover a photo-op for the defence minister, so that he can rally the troops from the border without having to go there once war has already been declared.
Once there, she finds out what things are really like on the front lines. The Indian and Pakistani soldiers, forced to spend their days in the middle of a desert with only each other for company, have built up a healthy camaraderie. The de-facto commanding officers, played by Jaffrey and Sharman Joshi, are friends for as long as orders permit, ensuring an atmosphere of mutual trust.
It is the breaking of this collegial atmosphere, not a nuclear holocaust, that is shown in the film as the major consequence of war. It extends the basic philosophy of Aman Ki Asha and other campaigns of its ilk — that we are the same people divided by outside forces — to the armed forces. This noble effort is aided in no small manner by Joshi and Jaffery’s great comedic chemistry. They are able to rib on each other like old friends, and it is their banter on the megaphone that is the high point of the film. At one point, Captain Qureishi (Jaffrey) sings Yamla Pagla Deewana to mock Captain Raj’s (Joshi) wooing of Ruth. An impromptu antakshari game ensues, which is ended when one Pakistani soldier, racking his brains under time pressure for a song that begins with ‘ya’, ends up singing Yeh Mera India.
The trouble is that the film runs out of jokes midway and starts recycling old ones. The eventual solution to the war is fine, I guess, but, like most of the rest of the film, is neither inventive enough or funny enough to live up to its promise.
Gravity defies the conventions of space survival movies with its visual brilliance
Trust Hollywood to include stereotypes even in a film with only two White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) characters. The Russians play true to their post-Cold War image as agents of chaos by quite literally breaking space, when the decommissioning of a spy satellite sets off a chain reaction that destroys, along with most satellites, both the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station. “Half of North America just lost their Facebook”, George Clooney drily remarks. The abandoned Chinese Space Station features two ping pong paddles floating in mid-air, presumably part of some secret communist plot to teach control to future Olympians. Clooney essays the role of Matt Kowalsky – the archetypal male American hero: cocky, yet calm under extreme odds, the charming extrovert who helps the nervous woman come to terms with the situation as well as all that ails her personal life.
But none of this, not even the awful writing at times for that matter, strikes as particularly offensive. True, there is little, pardon the pun, actual “gravity” to Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity when it comes to what it has to say about human nature. The plot weaves the familiar story of the triumph of the human will. But it’s a familiar story of the triumph of the human will set in space, which makes all the difference.
For Cuarón, aided by his frequent collaborator and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, has produced what may be one of the greatest cinematic experiences ever. To quote Clooney, it is “an actual argument for 3D”. By judiciously using the technology, Cuarón is able to transport the audience to outer space, to make it all look realistic, and make us feel as if we are watching from a space station of our own. It helps that there is very little use of the bells and whistles that most directors would normally employ to justify their enormous budgets.
“The thing is you are prepared to do your job, but you are not prepared for the view around you,” says Michael Massimino, one of several NASA astronauts the media has rounded up to comment on the scientific authenticity of the film. And their verdict: the film takes liberties, but again, nothing blatant or glaring enough to appear offensive or incredulous. Cuarón and Lubezki capture some stunning visuals, bringing you as close as you’re ever going to get to the real thing – unless you’re willing to shell out millions of dollars to let Richard Branson send you up there. It is this transplantation, this implication of the audience into the thick of the action, that 3D was meant to achieve before Hollywood decided to use it just as an amusement park ride and little else.
Once the audience begins to look at the film from its vantage point in the surreal environs of outer space, the stakes become all too real. The key here is the silence (I was lucky enough to watch the film without any cellphones going off.) The eerie silence reveals the nothingness in which mankind, in all its hubris, is trying to make its mark. The primary antagonist in the film is space debris, tiny pieces of junk travelling at almost 300,000 kilometres per hour; a single screw that came off some ancient satellite can puncture through the most advanced protection we’ve ever come up with, instantly killing the exposed astronaut. Matters are complicated even further by the fact that they are cut off completely from ground control as the debris takes down the communications systems. At least, that’s what the lead characters figure; for all we know, it could be because NASA was closed due to the government shutdown.
Against these odds, Matt and Ryan’s (Sandra Bullock) struggle to get back to Earth instantly assume heroic proportions. Which is just as well, because as people, the two aren’t exactly the most fascinating characters ever written. Both Clooney and Bullock deliver inspired performances – the latter, probably the best she’s ever been on screen – but there is little we actually find out about who they really are. The real human drama in the film is where Ryan considers what life is like on Earth and has doubts about whether she really wants to go back, but the reason the film gives is an unnecessary cloying backstory she tells Matt – they’re such professionals that even the most basic details of their personal lives never came up in conversation during months of training together. However convincing she might look as a scared novice trying to come to terms with her environment and survive, when Bullock starts talking about herself, she sounds like an actor playing a part. It’s clumsy storytelling, the annoying sort that reminds you that no, you’re not really in space, you’re watching a Hollywood movie.
There is, to be fair, little about Gravity that resembles a Hollywood movie. It is a marvel of engineering, a blockbuster stripped down to its bare bones, providing the transcendental experience of cinema without the needless bulk that is added to satisfy some formula – no product placement, either. But the stripping down makes the plot seem naked as well. How much it distracts you from the visual brilliance of the film will determine how much you enjoy Gravity. And judging by the reception it has received, for most people, it doesn’t one bit.
Mastertakes
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Ambika Beri on Art
In creating Playfully Yours, Nantu Behari Das draws a parallel between children and soft fur, a tongue-in-cheek reminder that all is not what it may seem. The sculpture creates the perfect illusion of tenderness, which compels you to reach out and touch the figure. But it is only an illusion, since the child is made of fibreglass and aluminium nails, material you’d never really associate with tenderness. Figurative and expressionist in character, it has the added dimension of humour exemplified by the child’s expression: his composed face is strikingly offset by his glaring eyes.
Beri is the owner of Sanskriti Gallery, Kolkata
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Kavita Panjabi on Books
Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo radically transformed the Latin American novel with its unique experimentation and worked as a powerful influence on Garcia Marquez, Borges and Fuentes. It is a must read for the sheer creative force of its narrative. In English, the translation by Lysander Kemp is the one to get.
Panjabi is an author & professor of Comparative Literature
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Himanshu Vaswani on Music
With their unique blend of Bollywood-influenced alt rock and pop music, The Ganesh Talkies have charmed audiences across India. Their performances feature an array of costumes and props. Suyasha’s powerful vocals accompanied by power-packed musicians will ensure that you jump through every bit of their energetic live performances.
Vaswani manages the Mumbai-based band, The Lightyears Explode
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Aanaahad Singh on Film
A friend suggested that I watch Peaceful Warrior a while back and I was stunned at the purity and brilliance of this film, directed by Victor Salva. The story of a locally famous gymnast, Den, who dreams of becoming a national champion is beautifully wrapped in the subject of ‘focus-consciousness’. Pearls of being and staying integrated are beautifully woven and presented through Den’s fascinating journey. It is a guide for everyone who is seeking peace outside (mistakenly) or inside themselves.
Singh is an actor who starred in the national award-winning Lahore
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Bhavnish Marwah on Food
There are now diverse possibilities to dine out in Hauz Khas Village, but Gunpowder still remains one of my favourites. It is a very down-to-earth restaurant in this trendy, bustling Village, serving Kerala and coastal Andhra cuisine. I just loved the Kerala fish curry in coconut with Malabar paratha. The Andhra prawn masala and the kootu paratha (a local meal made of sliced parathas with egg/chicken/mutton and fresh tomatoes, onion and chillies) were great too. It’s always worth climbing the four floors for an excellent meal with a breathtaking view in the middle of this hectic city.
Marwah is general manager of Hao Shi Nian Niann in Delhi
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The African Holocaust
It’s a little disconcerting that the first thing I thought of while watching a serious documentary like Fire In The Blood was an episode of South Park. In Tonsil Trouble, Cartman contracts aids while having his tonsils removed. Cartman being Cartman, he tries to drum up sympathy for himself, only to find that people don’t care about aids any more; cancer is the new fad. Eventually, his search for a cure leads him to Magic Johnson, who contracted the disease over 20 years ago and still lives a full life. The cure, Johnson reveals, is money. The doctors inject $180,000 directly into his bloodstream, disintegrating the HIV.
Dylan Mohan Gray’s debut documentary, releasing in cinemas on October 11, shows there is more than a little truth in that episode’s ridiculousness. There is no cure for AIDS, true, but through an aggressive regimen of three anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, it can be managed and the patient can live an almost normal life for decades. The catch? The drugs cost over $12,000 a year, well beyond the reach of most AIDS patients, 95 percent of whom live in the developing world. The cure, or at least the closest thing to one, for AIDS is indeed money. That is, until Dr Yusuf Hamied came along.
On 6 February 2001, Hamied announced that his company, Cipla, would make Triomune, a cocktail of three ARVs, available for less than a dollar a day. At the time, only one in 2,000 patients in Africa could afford the costly drugs. This wasn’t because the three drugs were extraordinarily expensive to produce. Hamied calculated that manufacturing lamivudine cost 65 cents a dose, nevirapine 35 cents, while stavudine cost so little that he might as well give it for free. (Hamied waived all costs other than materials; even taking these into account, the drugs would’ve come to $800 a year.) All this without compromising on quality. The World Health Organisation (who) certified that Cipla’s drugs conformed to the highest standards and were safe.
The reason behind the high costs is a patent regime that has allowed the pharmaceutical sector to become the largest industry in the world. The law allows the holder of a patent, a monopoly over the drug for 20 years, during which time the company can charge pretty much what it wants. The rationale given is that the regime encourages research and development, that without the incentive of a monopoly, companies would have no reason to innovate.
Fire In The Blood, like many activists have over the years, blows massive holes into this reasoning. The idea that Big Pharma uses the massive profits on research, the film says, is a blatant lie. Only one percent of sales for most companies goes to research and development, a miniscule fraction of what they spend on marketing. It’s not even the case that all this research results in actual innovation; almost 84 percent of new drugs are developed at universities or through government funding. Companies buy these patents and use the privileges they grant to legitimate inventors to make windfall gains. Moreover, when those patents are about to expire, they make minor changes to the drug and register another patent, a process known as evergreening.
When hamied made his announcement, it was a direct challenge to this extortionate regime. The ARV treatment had been fully developed by 1996, and had led to the reversal of the AIDS epidemic in most of the developed world. However, patients who couldn’t afford the drugs — an overwhelming majority — continued to die. Despite repeated pleas by activists and governments, they refused to lower the price, or even to allow others to produce generic versions of the drugs. For instance, when South Africa began importing generic fluconazole — a drug that treats cryptococcal meningitis associated with AIDS, but more importantly, was a highly profitable antifungal for Pfizer — from Thailand, it was threatened with economic sanctions. Even after Hamied’s announcement, the industry, supported by the might of the US government, steadfastly refused to allow the drugs to be sold in Africa. It was only after national governments declared medical emergencies and ruled the patents should be broken, and when the idea of greater access to drugs got the approval of the United Nations and US President George W Bush, that these drugs were allowed in. Meanwhile, over 10 million people died of AIDS between 1996 and 2003. “The analogy that I make,” says Gray in an interview, “is there’s a kid drowning in a pool. You’re standing there with a lifesaver, but you do nothing. And when five other people come with lifesavers, you smash their heads. Is that a crime? I think so.”
He calls it the crime of the century, a Holocaust. He appreciates the gravity of the charge, but holds firm. “It certainly wasn’t, as it is generally portrayed to be, a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances where people didn’t realise what was happening, or didn’t react quickly enough. The medicine was available; it was affordable. It was ready to go, and people stopped it from getting there.” The motive, Gray alleges, was that if Africans were given access to low-cost drugs, pretty soon Americans, who account for 50 percent of pharmaceutical sales (Africa gets all of 3 percent) would follow suit.
But Fire In The Blood is not just a crime story. It is also about those who fought back. About Hamied and the Indian pharma industry, which provided low-cost generic drugs to become the pharmacy of the developing world. About Zackie Achmat, a South African HIV-positive activist who refused to take ARVs until they were available to all patients. About Peter Mugyenyi, the Ugandan doctor who was the first to import generics from India (and was arrested at Entebbe airport for his troubles). About New York Times journalist Donald McNeil Jr, who was the first to ask how much such a drug would actually cost to produce, and got only silence from the US government, the who and the pharma industry. Gray realised that their struggle hadn’t been documented outside of newspaper reports. “Not only was this going to be forgotten, the groundwork was being done to repeat this on a greater scale.”
That groundwork took the form of The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which made patent laws universal. Introduced in 2005, TRIPS killed off India’s generics industry, which relied on the country’s laws that deemed a patent could only be granted for a process, not a product. In the years since, our government has shown extraordinary timidity, buckling under international pressure and issuing only one licence for a new generic drug. There is a silver lining, though, as the judiciary has come down hard on frivolous patents. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court refused to allow Novartis to patent Glivec, an anti-leukemia drug it had made minor modifications to and tried to get another patent for. The patent wars of the future, Gray believes, will be fought in India. “If India stands its ground, there is hope,” he says. “If it doesn’t, there will be a catastrophe.”
ajachi@tehelka.com
‘Delhi is more fashionable and image conscious than New York’
You have been a writer and a journalist in the US; why set your novels in India?
I grew up in Chicago, but visited India often. My parents left India in the 1980s and they talked of a different India. When I visited the metropolitan cities here, I was stunned at the acceleration of growth and the amount of money injected into the Indian market by global entities. No one was talking about it in the US. Rather, Indians are still identified through stereotypes in the West, which is oblivious to the fact that Delhi is more fashionable and image conscious than New York. I wanted to project this to a larger audience.
Could you draw a parallel between the Indian and the Western film and fashion industries?
Both are world-class industries, where revenue is the bottom line. The major difference in fashion lies in how the Western industry is mature while the Indian scene is rapidly growing. As for cinema, Bollywood just celebrated its centenary and is way ahead of Hollywood, even in terms of fan base.
How did you research these industries for your novels?
My objective was not to write solely about film and fashion but reflect this generation; how it deals with ambition, drugs, homosexuality and a million other issues. I interacted with a lot of young people, attended fashion shows and closely saw backstage goings-on. I talked to the likes of Prakash Jha and Tarun Tahiliani.
How true are the stereotypes associated with glamour?
Where there’s smoke there’s fire. Clichés do amount to some truth. But I’m not making a blanket statement. Although the casting couch does happen, it’s not as if the entire industry is into orgies. People choose to behave in a certain manner. You might find some who live up to the stereotypes that are associated with the industry but you will also find the ones who don’t.
Who or what inspired your protagonist Lila?
I made a mistake that every first time writer makes — I wrote my book as a very autobiographical account. But I realised that I wasn’t touching the very relevant subjects of anorexia, drug abuse and racism by writing about my life. I had to dig deeper. All these elements cumulated to give shape to Lila.
‘Every artist is an exaggerator, and I also do it in my writing’
Photo: Prarthna Singh
What pushed you to make music?
Studying hotel management in Bhopal, I realised that I didn’t want to go into this field. I had been playing music in school and by college I was singing in a restaurant. It was a naive thought — I’ll make music because I don’t know anything else. My family was supportive, though it took them a long time to understand what I was doing, because it took me a long time to understand what I was doing.
Roorkee, Bhopal, Mumbai, Delhi; what role have cities played in your life?
I am a story junkie. I collect stories of people in whatever city I am in. These merge in my songs and my writing. I’ll place a character from one city in another’s situation. Every artist is a bit of an exaggerator and I exaggerated these stories while writing my songs and my scripts. It’s like buying vegetables and then experimenting with the dish you want to cook.
What’s your musical style?
I am a minimalist, lyric-based musician, because for long I couldn’t afford an electric guitar. Even if I could, an amp would have been useless in Delhi’s power cuts. I stuck to acoustic guitars. Words had to be interesting to catch attention. My music, by default, became about words.
Why were music labels slow to accept you?
Labels are about mass production and profits. They follow trends. Then, the trend was remixes. I never made that music as I never understood why anyone would crowd their tracks with so many beats.
How did your band The Ghalat Family come about?
After my album release, I told my drummer Sidd Coutto that I wanted to play live with guys with good humour. You hear these horror stories of band members hating each other. Our name is a take on ghalat faimi. We write open-ended songs. People draw multiple meanings, which leads to a misunderstanding of what we meant to say.
Will you get creative freedom directing for Yashraj Films, a mainstream company?
Yes. They approached me for my stories. They’re trying to do something different. In fact, on reading my first draft, producers Aditya Chopra and Ashish Patil told me to not play it safe and put more of me in the script.
Malice in Blunderland
At one point in Shovon Chowdhury’s hilarious debut novel, The Competent Authority, the protagonist — a 12-year-old slum dweller called Pintoo — asks his headmaster to name one thing he would change about the country if he could go back in time. “Find Indira true love,” is the reply. “Maybe if someone had been by her side, giving her hugs from time to time, her heart would have been softer. Then perhaps she would not have hated us so, and turned us all into her servants, and gifted us the culture of chamchagiri, and made us an aristocracy of idiots, and allowed every manner of corruption to thrive, so long as the corrupt bowed deeply as she walked by.” (Pintoo, who can actually send people back in time, dismisses the idea since “engineering romance sounded like a tricky business”.)
There’s much speculative thinking like this in the book. It is a novel set in the immediate future that sends three of its characters to the past to undo three key events in Indian history. But what The Competent Authority is really concerned with is the present. The India of the book is ostensibly different from real life. After a particularly hawkish prime minister refused to apologise to the Chinese for feeding a Tibetan baby (the next Dalai Lama) a piece of dhokla, Delhi and Mumbai have been obliterated by Chinese nukes (the US, targeting Islamabad in retaliation, managed to bomb Punjab). Bengal has seceded and become a Chinese protectorate. After the war, the newly formed Bureau of Reconstruction has consolidated most political power and the country is effectively run by a shadowy bureaucrat known as The Competent Authority. Bananas are purple; some people have extra limbs.
But there is so much about this India that mirrors reality. The destruction of New Delhi has sent real estate prices skyrocketing; only the rich live in New New Delhi, while the poor who survived live in a ghetto. The rule of law is virtually non-existent, and the police carry rate cards for convenience. Slavery is legal, but it’s not just the poor who are enslaved. Professionals — doctors, engineers and plumbers alike — sell their skills to the wealthy, conditions not entirely dissimilar to the terms of contract employment. It’s a sobering thought, how little a leap of reason is required in order to accept the dystopian setting Chowdhury creates.
That sobering moment is what the best of satire seeks to create. Dr Strangelove works precisely because you end the film with the thought that nuclear armageddon is barely one crazy Colonel away. Like his influences — Mark Twain, Anthony Burgess, Sukumar Ray, Philip K Dick, Manoj Mitra; “an odd mix of some science fiction guys and some funny people” — Chowdhury brings great insight to his social commentary. Pintoo’s quest to find the correct moments to undo provides some of the best bits (Tarunda, a communist who helps in Pintoo’s education, feels that BR Chopra’s Ramayana is the root cause of communalism). But even in the events of the future, in the cynical moves of the rich and powerful, there are gems to be found. The Bank of Bodies, which takes body parts from poor “donors” to sell to its rich “beneficiaries”, decides to diversify its customer base by branching into the “low-margin, high-volume” religion business. “In religion, all that the customer gains is hope, and the possibility of return at some point in the undefined future”, after all.
Again, like in the best of satire, there is plenty of vitriol. In an interview in the offices of the advertising agency he works at in Delhi (having studied at Jadavpur University and IIM Kolkata), I ask Chowdhury if he wrote the book from a place of anger. “Elements of it were therapeutic. You can chuck shoes at the television set, or if you’re more of a hero, at actual people. But beyond a point, what’s that going to achieve? And obviously, being a Bengali, one way would have been to drink in the evening with buddies and do adda for hours on end. It seemed a little… yeah, I was really angry.”
The idea for the book came as he watched the Gujarat riots play out on television. “It really struck me how cheap human life is in this country. The basic thought process was, what if you had a country where life had no value at all. What kind of a country would it be if you corporatised that notion? I don’t think the Bank of Bodies is that different from Dr Kumar’s Clinic. The only difference is that Dr Kumar was too cheap to put in carpets.” It took him 11 years to write, made up of whatever free time he got at home and office (he isn’t particularly picky). “The thing is, when you’re trying to write a book about the near future, you need to be much faster. So I kept having to revise it.”
The accumulated labour shows in the scale of the book, which, at over 450 pages, is a shade too long. He’s still not done; there’s another book in the works that tells the story from the vantage point of the Bengal protectorate — “not a sequel, but an equal” — where he intends to tie up the few loose ends. In his review of the book, Indrajit Hazra has said that he’d rather it was “a collection of shorter stories set under the thrall of The Competent Authority”. It’s a fair point; the sheer bulk of the plot can overwhelm, and Chowdhury overuses the easy crutch of giving characters defining tics and mining it for gold. He redeems himself by being genuinely funny, papering over the weak spots by making his characters seem like absolute nutjobs, but absolute nutjobs you want to hear more about.
The Competent Authority is great satire, but immediately raises the question why there isn’t more satire, great or otherwise, in Indian writing in English. “That’s a very easy one,” he says. “It’s 5,000 years of history, which has made us inclined to be worshipful. In the Indian cricket team, a junior player will call Sachin Tendulkar, ‘Sachin sir’. If you’re acting in a movie together, one minute Sonakshi Sinha is smooching Akshay Kumar, but then on a television, she will say ‘Akshay sir is a great inspiration to me’. Satire, at some level, always demands that you make fun of somebody.” It’s changing, though, he says, with a new generation of comic writers, mostly bloggers, unafraid to get past their “inherent worshipfulness” and take potshots at those in power. (It doesn’t bode well, though, that the most successful satirists are essentially replicating The Onion. There are few truly original voices yet.)
Chowdhury holds the darkening national mood responsible for the nascent growth of satire, likening it to the genesis of Jewish comedy or even Pakistan’s mainstream acceptance of satire. He believes that only when things get really bad does a population grow a sense of humour. “You’ve really got to start worrying when funny guys start coming out of the woodwork.”
ajachi@tehelka.com
Mastertakes
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Chittrovanu Mazumdar on Art
René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images is an image of a pipe, below which it reads “This is not a pipe” in French. The painting uses language as a spoken word with an objective of denying what seems evident and stands as a complete contradiction to the art history that we have been used to. This intellectually challenging work of art by the Belgian surrealist artist makes an attempt to refer to the pipe in primary sense but the object escapes. Magritte beautifully subverts the conceived notions of acceptance, jolting the viewer out of the complacency of knowing what is real and what is not.
Mazumdar is a Kolkata-based artist
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Anita Roy on Books
In A Little History of Philosophy, Nigel Warburton devotes three or four pages each to 40 thinkers who have shaped our understanding of the universe, each other, god and ourselves. Rarely has anyone distilled such complex ideas into such lucid prose. He manages to give us neither too much nor too little, making not just the ideas understandable, but the people who had them charmingly real.
Roy is a Delhi-based writer and editor
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Shivang Raina on Music
Carl Orff, a legendary 20th century music composer, developed a unique teaching methodology known as Schulwerk, a reciprocal interpretation of music education which enriches children’s lives through the development of their inherent musicality. “Orff instruments”, as they are often called, include a variety of melodic and percussive instruments such as glockenspiels, metallophones and xylophones, timpani, hand drums, recorders and simple stringed instruments.
Raina is a Delhi-based musician
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Mohan Maharishi on Film
Bimal Roy’s Bandini is a timeless classic. Nutan delivers one of the finest performances of her career as Kalyani; her poetic acting lends a compelling touch to melodramatic scenes. The climax is beautifully wrapped in Bandini’s dilemma of having to choose between Bikash and Dewan. The character played by Nutan takes a leap from that of a prisoner of destiny to one who defines her own freedom. Each and every one of SD Burman’s compositions leaves a lasting impact. As a whole, it’s a poignant experience for the viewer.
Maharishi is an award winning theatre director and playwright .
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Kishi arora on Food
Located in The Manor in a peaceful part of New Delhi, Indian Accent often surpasses expectations. The ambience sets the stage for a magnificent culinary journey with two gigantic silver diya trees of life, contemporary décor, marigold and frangipani flowers as omnipresent leitmotifs. The culinary offerings combine home-style nostalgic tastes with unusual ingredients from around the world. Pumpkin kulcha, bharwa mirchi and the khandvi ravioli are my personal favourites. The staff is superbly trained and have a fair understanding of the menu which offers something for every palate.
Arora is a Delhi-based pastry chef/food consultant
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Rishi-Neetu give Besharam its only comical and emotional moments
Besharam begins with Bheem Singh Chandel (Javed Jaffrey), money launderer extraordinare, lecturing a novice politician on the ways of money laundering. “You put the money here,” he says, putting out his hand, pausing for effect. Hanging in the balance is the audience’s first impression of Abhinav Kashyap’s follow-up to the force of nature that was Dabangg. You almost expect drumroll before the pithy gem of dialogue that establishes him as the badass the scene is desperately trying to make him look like. “…and the money reaches Switzerland.”
That first moment falling flat sets the tone for much of Besharam. Kashyap’s basic approach in Dabangg — ’70s-inspired sensibilities and plenty of references to popular Bollywood tropes — continues in the film, but neither the writing nor Ranbir Kapoor’s performance take the film to anything resembling the heights that film reached, or for that matter, anything that is extraordinary in any way. Kashyap is quite adept at setting up great moments, but rarely follows through with anything of either style or substance.
It’s not as if the film is downright unwatchable. Compared to many of the other imitations the success of Dabangg has spawned, Besharam is sterling stuff. It has a few smart moments — Rishi Kapoor’s Gadar imitation, for example — that film buffs will enjoy, but only if they are willing to wade through reams of inanities and a plot that is about as unconvincing as a plot can get, even in Bollywood.
Babli (Ranbir Kapoor) is a master car thief. He is, as the title suggests, utterly shameless, defined by his shamelessness. It is worth looking once at the definition of shame: “a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behaviour”. However much the film keeps saying that shame is overrated, it’s a vital mechanism of self-regulation that keeps us from being complete jerks. It’s that little voice inside our head that would tell us that stalking a woman while making lewd gestures is not so much macho romance as sexual harassment. That even if the woman, like Tara (Pallavi Sharda) in the film, does not pull out the pepper spray or press criminal charges, it is inherently wrong.
But concepts of right and wrong are lost on Babli, explained away in a single atrociously-delivered soliloquy about having to grow up hard. Instead, he unabashedly continues his courtship of Tara, professing his love for her at her home, in her office, in a song-and-dance sequence on the streets. But his love for her is seemingly only manifested in words; never does he actually do anything nice for her. (All his niceties, his gifts, are reserved for her mother, a popular Bollywood device that would enormously interest Freud.) Nor does he have one of those actual romantic moments that Bollywood usually throws in when the leading man is as inept in getting the girl. But then, he steals her car by mistake. (He doesn’t realise it’s hers, but she was driving it when he first saw her, and it isn’t like the parking lot — of her office — he picks it up from is full of A-Class Mercs. Are we really to expect that an ace car thief doesn’t know the car the woman he stalks drives?) Once he finds out it’s hers, he offers to take Tara to Chandigarh and retrieve it from Chandel, who he sold the car to. It is on that road trip, during what is presumably a long, unnecessary detour through rural Punjab, that Tara, an independent working woman, for no discernible reason beyond the fact that Babli is doing her a favour for the first time, falls truly, madly, deeply in love with him.
What little rootedness the film does achieve comes from the performances of Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh. Their love, at least, is relatable, and as a married police couple — Inspector Chulbul Chautala and Head Constable Bulbul Chautala — they provide the film both its comical as well as its truly emotional moments. Chulbul having to awkwardly ask Tara for a bribe at his wife’s insistence, for instance, is both comical and truly emotional. It’s enough to wish that instead of this sterile, hackneyed exercise, Kashyap had made the film about their relationship. I’d watch Rishi Kapoor play a Basil Fawlty-like cop, being henpecked daily by his wife to think of their retirement.
“Sirf Chulbul naam rakh dene se koi dabangg nahin ban jaata,” Ranbir tells his father at one point. It is advice Ranbir himself, and Kashyap, would do well to keep in mind.
Face of a Nation
Nearly 300 years ago, Indian artists in princely courts were besieged by an influx of European artists seeking their fortunes in India. Lured by the prospect of painting the fabled maharajas and nawabs, these artists — mostly flocking from Britain, France and Portugal — brought along European styles of art. Suddenly the traditional watercolour miniature, a form most Indian artists preferred to worked in, was rendered obsolete by the luscious oil-on-canvas. Thus Indian artists turned to portrait painting.
Having researched extensively on the subject and digging around several important sites in the country, the Delhi Art Gallery (DAG) has now put together a show of portraits spanning 250 years. Indian Portraits: The Face of a People is as much an anthropological exercise as it is an art show. For the DAG, though, it is part of a larger mission to research, archive and document the history of Indian art and restore what curator Kishore Singh calls “a continuity we lost with our art traditions under the British”.
Here, under one roof, is a period of tumultuous change in art styles. The growing demand for portraits produced many greats such as Raja Ravi Varma. Their subjects, though, were no longer men, but also women, who increasingly began to come out of their purdah — first the courtesans, then the elites and the royals. The Parsis, the most Westernised of Indians, were the first to commission portraits of women. Some of the finest works came from the Bombay Presidency artists, with NR Sardesai producing magnificent portraits. Looking at Sardesai’s painting of his sister, Singh points out, “This could be a Rembrandt.”
When the modernists took the reins, they broke away from the realist template to paint more psychological portraits, a phenomenon that began with Rabindranath Tagore and gained greatest momentum in the hands of FN Souza. No longer was the physical likeness that Varma’s school perfected important. The lines were now distorted. Tagore’s androgynous painting of Kadambari Devi and Sunil Das’ haunting Pushpa are fine examples: the face is no longer as significant as the artist’s impression of it. Tagore’s works, though, are more ambiguous. “You cannot exactly call his work portraits in the academic sense. It’s often his own fantasy being painted on canvas,” says art critic Ella Datta. The same goes for the Kolkata-based artist Rabin Mondal, who, Singh says, showed “the venal quality of mankind”.
He points out that the previous artists did not have the luxury to experiment. “They worked largely for commissions and had to paint what their subjects liked,” he says. The most coveted commissions were, of course, those of the Indian royals, but more often than not they turned out to be tricky. Singh offers several anecdotes his team unearthed during their research. To begin with, the lure of painting the Nawabs of Arcot and Awadh brought European artists in droves from Madras and Calcutta. But such personages were neither used to posing for hours nor to listening to white men. Even Raja Ravi Varma was once denied a sitting by the Nawab of Hyderabad. On the other hand, the Indian artists keen to pick up the trade would make basic mistakes like painting a child out of proportion or a poor-quality horizon.
The advent of photography was another game changer. Studio photographers often employed painters to paint over the photographs, giving them imaginary backgrounds that the subjects picked. Additionally, “It was no longer the elites who could record themselves; now even the masses could get their pictures taken,” says Datta. With an increasing number of people getting photographed or painted, more ways of looking at genders, communities and classes emerged. “What are the patterns of clothing in different places, why is one maharaja dressed like this and not another, what is a family’s background, we can look at these images from different points of view,” says Singh.
The exhibition brings together a multitude of tales. Tales of people, places, societies and traditions. As a viewer makes his way from one lushly painted canvas to another, surrounded by the stately royals, artists’ self-portraits endowed with heroism, and even a bold caricature of Jawaharlal Nehru, it becomes the most captivating walk through history.
The exhibition is on display till 26 October at Delhi Art Gallery
aradhna@tehelka.com
