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Fellini’s Ghost, Save Me!

I’m a movie fiend. When I watch a movie, I very thirstily & feverishly deconstruct its building blocks - Casting, Screen Play, Background Score, Dialog Delivery, Costumes et al. I’m passionately in love with movies. When I was a kid, I yearned to make movies. I used to stand before a mirror & emote, observing what angles worked & what didn’t. I would sit behind the clump of Frangipani trees in the yard & clinically dissect passers-by. Their body language, diction, their clothes. In retrospect, I must have unnerved & freaked people out with my pitiless ogling.

I never entered Show Business. Instead, I became a Software Engineer. I’m not exactly heart-broken, because I’m a philanderer: Film Making is only 1 of my many loves. In turn, I’ve desperately wanted to be an Architect. Cryptographer. Musician. Physicist. Writer. Chef. Astronaut. And curiously enough, Fighter Pilot. In my first year in the Engineering school, I fell inexorably in love with Computers - it had me from “Hello World”.

Those who can’t make movies, watch them. I sate myself by reading about the craft & by devouring truckloads of movies. A good movie is a story on an acid trip - Vivid images hitherto unseen carve themselves on the brains of the viewers, like a hallucination. A bad movie is like a wet dog - it stinks, its messy, it can be shaken off easily & it never makes a lasting impression. I’m very particular about the kind of movies I watch - After all, you devote 2 to 3 hours of your time to watch a movie. Its an immersive medium, where you have to stay interested. I only watch movies that I think are good, whose Rotten Tomatoes rating is high or whose story-line I think will hit the high notes. The rest are simply not worth my time.

I used to watch TCM (Turner Classic Movies) & AMC (American Movie Classics) regularly when we lived in the US. In India though, good movie channels that carry Subtitles are rare. We rent videos from Cinema Paradiso, a store that has an eclectic collection. I hit the mother-lode this weekend - I laid my hands on a Sinhala movie - Pavuru Valalu, with English subtitles.

Now, About Pavuru Valalu

Loosely translated, “The Walls Within” - is set in the 1960s Galle in Sri Lanka. It has a simple story-line - Lovers separated during WW-II meet after a gap of 25 years. The lady is married, has 2 daughters & her husband has abandoned her. When the movie unwinds, the director’s sympathy for the lead pair’s predicament comes thru with lyrical perfection. Without being judgmental, the movie poignantly captures the society recoiling in horror at this state of affairs.

The protagonists Victor & Violet are essayed admirably al dente by Tony Ranasinghe & Nita Fernando. None of the actors spout reams of dialog - their silences, little gestures & eyes convey much more than mere words could. Luckily for us, the Casting Director gave Miss Sri Lankas & Mister Colombos a pass. Instead, actors have been chosen primarily for their prowess & their suitability for the role. The young women in the movie have wide hips or big butts. Young men don’t flash six-pack Abs. Instead of fixating on their physique, the actors have focused on effectively conveying their turmoil thru nuanced expressions & dialog delivery. It is sheer poetry in celluloid.

The movie will haunt me - because it is so raw, so natural. The entire movie is shot in a typical middle class dwelling, with peeling plaster & green algae in the outer walls. Actors wear rumpled clothes when they are at home - not designer threads. And the women are not painted like street-walkers waiting for their Johns. Not a single actor resorts to histrionic pyro-techniques - for they know that over-acting & bad-acting are synonyms.

Pavuru Valalu is a great movie - an outstanding achievement by director Prasanna Vithanage & his team.

My SOS to Fellini

I asked for Fellini’s ghost, but Ingmar Bergman’s or Akira Kurosawa’s ghosts would do equally fine.

For after watching the movie, a paroxysm of rage hit me. A small country, Sri Lanka, with a population of 20 Million people is able to make a neat movie on a shoe-string budget. It makes a handful of mainstream, yet critically acclaimed movies that receive rave reviews from all corners of the world. We are a nation of 1.2 Billion yokels & counting. Yet, the number of decent movies we make every year won’t run into double digits.

When was the last time you saw an Indian movie, where the lead pair is 50 & 45 years old? We are fixated with youth. I don’t understand why. At least 50% of the people in India are 30+. Oh for movies where the theme isn’t romance, revenge, family feuds or a mix-up between 2 people who look alike. Didn’t Shakespeare do that in The Comedy of Errors Circa 1589 already?

Our movies revolve around love, love & more love. Unfortunately, love-making in Indian movies involves booty shaking, heaving bosoms & shirtless men panting like dogs at their women. When Violet’s daughter Lily sees her beau Ranjith - her face glows softly. We can imagine her adrenaline rush easily - Incidentally, we are not idiots & we appreciate subtlety. A fact lost on most Indian film makers.  They just can’t resist a song & dance sequence to show-case “tender” love at this juncture. They would have Lily & Ranjith cavorting in Switzerland or New Zealand, writhing like snakes in heat.

When will we stop making movies with people dancing around the trees? For that matter, when will we make movies without songs? Must every single movie made in India be an escapist fantasy? Is reality so cumbersome, that we want to edit it out of our art? I’m not saying we don’t make good movies ever. We make too few good movies amid a zillion very bad ones.

We don’t have to make ponderous, pretentious movies where we try to show the world how bright we are. I once watched a movie by Israeli director Amos Gitai. Nuh-uh. Not my cup of tea. I was dazed, confused & totally disinterested after 30 minutes. The movie opens with a guy walking from 1 end of the street to another - and they show this for 10 yawn-worthy minutes. Maybe I’m just a dummy that doesn’t understand Gitai’s art, but sproing! - the next scene has 2 nude people making violent love on a canvas full of wet paint.You call it art, I call it boooooring

Bollywood AKA National Shame. Bollywood, my ass. Where there is more money than talent. Where an over-emoting Shah Rukh Khan thinks he can step into the large shoes of the talented Amitabh Bachchan. Where the much feted Aishwarya Rai - the most visible face of Indian cinema - is one of its worst actors ever. To my utter misery, she gets plum assignments that were once done with elan by the scintillating Meena Kumari & the effervescent Savitri Ganesan. I lose my appetite every time that happens.

And the film-makers in India send 1 clunker after another for the Academy Awards & wait with bated breath for an Oscar. Good grief. For all their shameless plagiarism of Hollywood, their knowledge of World Cinema is very poor.

In the meantime, I wait for the release of the Malayalam epic Pazhassi Raja later this year, from Director Hariharan. With screenplay by M.T.Vasudevan Nair, Music by Ilayaraja and with veteran actors Mammooty, Sarath Kumar, Manoj K Jayan & Thilakan, it can only be good.

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Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

The world exists to annoy me. I’ve noticed to my chagrin some people signing-off their email with pithy aphorisms.”War is the science of destruction” or “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of”. As if I care. What happened? Are Bumper Stickers not haute enough this season? When I send an email oozing with professional urgency, I’m totally unprepared for mawkish “Philosophy for Dummies” lessons. I didn’t sign-up to read some dead guy’s anodyne to life’s ills. Hey, if they are so brainy, how come they are all dead? Mwahaha!!

Here’s my gnarly adage - “Stop lying dog, or I’ll sock it to ya!”. An obstinate person might construe that my cerebral department didn’t exactly work overtime to coin that. But what else do you expect from a woman that collects screw drivers? The Theory of Everything??

Now seriously. I hardly ever lie. Not because of my impending sainthood, but because I’m bone-lazy. It takes too much effort to lie - but, all it takes is a feeble brain to blurt out the truth. I mean, some lies are so complex & convoluted that you need a story-board to keep the facts straight. What can the inept do? Truth is the only recourse, their only succor.

Lying is a difficult terrain to navigate. Added to that is our moral Sturm und Drang. So, most of us emit unconscious signals thru our tone, body language & choice of words that shriek “I’m a frigging LIAR!”. When we lie, our eye-balls drift to the right - the creative part of our brain - which is furiously cranking out a fib. Or so I heard from no less authority than Samuel L Jackson in “The Negotiator” Since I’m too asinine to lie, I’m not cool when others are successful at it. So cut a sister some slack & stick to the truth.

I’ve reached that point of time in my life where I ruminate long & hard over the question - What shall I bequeath to this world? What will be my legacy? What would be my piece de resistance? The answer hit me like a ton of bricks. I’ll put together a Compendium of Liars! Why didn’t this occur to me earlier?

Many years back, I took my aunt to a snooty & scandalously expensive restaurant in Chennai. The ambience was good, the food was mediocre, service was par-excellence, there was live troop playing soporific music, the room was full of snobs and the bill gave me a thrombosis. You know - the typical five-star hotel mise en scene. My aunt was agog with excitement & she had on her string of pearls for that grand occasion.

On our way back, she told me conspiratorially - “If anyone asks me where I went, I’ll tell them we went to the New Woodlands restaurant”. I was totally at sea - Why would she lie? We had been to a wickedly conceited place, 10 times as expensive as “New Woodlands”. What’s the matter, she couldn’t see the brag value? “To ward off the Evil Eye!” she nodded her head knowingly. Most people she spoke to called her long distance over the phone, for crying out loud. “You think the Evil Eye tele-commutes over the phone lines?” I asked mercilessly. No one can accuse me of clemency. She smiled sweetly, but stuck to her guns. So, that’s the 1st kind for you - the Exorcists. They are forever sparring with evil eyes & other malfeasance.

Next up are the Myth Makers - They can’t leave well enough alone. They keep embellishing an event, that after a while you’ll be hard put to separate fact from fiction. Once, my aunt misplaced her expensive emerald ear-rings. I was asked to find it. With my psychotic levels of patience & neurotic adherence to method, I usually find what I’m hunting for.  I inspected my aunt’s steel armoire. Since she had moved to a new house recently, I thought the jewels might have fallen into the crevices. And that’s exactly where I found the ear-rings - along with a powder compact & 3 picture post-cards of the Miami beach that my cousins had stolen from me. It was a shocking discovery for all concerned.

My grandma cottoned on to this - and started narrating my “prowess”. With bells & whistles added to her palaver, of course. “She saw something glittering” - she said to her wide-eyed audience. “What the…I never saw anything, you old coot!” I interjected. But no one paid me any attention. Subsequent versions had me using a Sniffer Dog & a Magnifying glass a la Sherlock Holmes. And pouncing on the “miscreant”. I hope to be canonized soon. Priya Raju, the Matron Saint of Lost Items.

Some people feel obligated to lie. Truth is so blah. We need colorful, artful, decorative lies - or the planet might kick the bucket out of sheer boredom. The trouble with them is, they don’t know where to stop. Their imagination fires up & they just get carried away. “I was late because I was stopped. By an armored vehicle. Er, make that a UFO. And out popped little green men”. Or, they contradict themselves, trip over the mess they’ve created & fall face-down with a “Splat”. The “Elvis Presley, Entertainer” liars - No one takes them seriously, not even themselves.

And then there’s the kind that’s allergic to the truth. Take my baby-sitter (please - take her). She abhors truth. “Why do you need 5 days off?” “Because Madam, I have to attend my sister’s wedding”. “But, you don’t have a sister!”. At which point, she’ll start sulking & the atmosphere becomes inimical to a conversation.

Some lies are not lies at all. For e.g, the Brazil nuts that you bump into on the “E” train who insist that they are St John the Baptist in flesh. Technically, they are not lying - poor things, they firmly believe what they say. They are probably waiting for Salome, as we speak. “Necessary” lies don’t count either. After a couple of brewskis, a guy I knew once asked me - “So how much money do you have in the bank? Huh? Scads of cash?”. “I have none, my dear. I go around with a begging bowl” I told him with a straight face.

Have you encountered other types of liars? Be a pal & tell me - And help me finish my Magnum Opus. Take some leeway to be offensive, I say. We need our entertainment.

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What is patriotism?

Recently read an excellent article on Time about what patriotism means in America - both from Republican and Liberal point of view.

As per the author, for the conservatives, patriotism is not a choice and it is like love for your family - you inherit it and do not question it. Conservatives talk a lot about America’s past and its greatness. For them, you wear it both figuratively and literally. Irrespective of the sins of its past, America is still above any other nation. And here lies the risk of degenerating patriotism into jingoism.

For liberals, it is not about the past, but more about the present and future. It is about working to make America a great nation - continue to strive to bridge the gap between the existing reality and the ideals that is the foundation for this great nation. And the author states - ” Liberals may love America in part because it aspires to certain ideals, but if they love it only because it aspires to those ideals, then what they really love is the ideals, not America.” And hence the conundrum - if liberals love America for its ideals, why would they not have the same love for other countries that is founded on similar principles? And what should one do when these ideals collide with America’s interest?

The author also discusses what patriotism means to immigrants given that it does not gel with conservative point that patriotism is inherited. Conservatives, expect the immigrants to imbibe the ideals of the nation as well as past traditions. Spurning the culture of the adopted nation is construed as being disloyal to the adopted country.

What truly impressed me were the final few paragraphs of the article and the author’s conclusions on what it means to be patriotic and how to reconcile the differences between these differing views held by liberals and conservatives.

I could not help but strongly agree with the following statements by the author -

“Patriotism should be proud but not blind, critical yet loving“.

“To some degree, patriotism must mean loving your country for the same reason you love your family: simply because it is yours.”

And these apply to a country like India and Indians too. I am tired of folks talking about how great a country India is because of its past and continuing to be blind to its current problems. At the same time, I am also aghast at folks who forget India’s past and only talk about its present day problems. We can be proud of our past, critical of the mistakes we have made, learn from it and strive to make it a great country for us and our children. And we still love it just because it is ours!!.

Ganesh

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Celebrating 4 years of blogging!

Updated July 10, 2008 : This post has been Desipundited. Thanks a lot Patrix.

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Prolog

I generally avoid milestone posts, but i could not resist this one. Last week, on June 27, 2008, we completed 4 years on this blog. During that time, we have written  497 posts and received 2,851 comments.  Just 3 posts away from the 500 post milestone!

Unbelievable Journey

It is a journey that started 4 years ago as a humble experiment amongst a bunch of people struggling to keep in touch with each other.  What a fun-filled, emotion-laden journey it has turned out to be - i have made so many friends,  blogging has become a cornerstone of my career completely unexpectedly, learnt an order of magnitude more than all that i had learnt prior to blogging.  More than all that,  as most members would agree, the SAST Wingees of today is a thriving community that exchanges wisdom of a kind that is quite unique in the blogosphere.

Learnings

Caveat emptor: most of these learnings may not be applicable if you are trying to build an A-list blog

1.  In the initial days of blogging, i used to frequently check the visitor stats - where the visits are coming from etc.   The traffic was nothing much to write home about.  It was a complete waste of time not to speak of the depressing feeling i had. But then, as luck would have it,  around that time, i realized that i was not writing for traffic or comments but for my own pleasure. I stopped looking at the stats and i have never looked back.

2. I would react to some post written by the A-list bloggers and then email them to let them know in the foolish hope that they would link to our blog, which as i realized painfully, the same thing a zillion other z-list bloggers like me did :)  Over time, i realized that i should build my own voice on the Internet and that is when i found the true joy of blogging.

3. Once i was off the chasing-the-a-list treadmill, the biggest joy for me has been to read lesser-known bloggers, exchange comments/ideas with them.  By switching to techmeme.com, i have mostly eliminated the a-list from my feed reader except for a few that i really like.  That has freed up a lot of time for me to read these lesser known bloggers and i should say, i have learnt so much more in this process. I got the sense of community, only after taking this step.

4. Most people talk about blogging as a conversation. In my view, blogs are a community.  I have always believed that a single author blogging strategy would make it harder to build a community. This blog has vindicated that with the kind of community that it has managed to pull together.

5. Another thing, that most pro bloggers advise is to write a blog around focused topics. While that may be a good way to build an A-list blog, i felt that, it didn’t really match the personality of our community. We have wide-ranging interests and the blog should be a reflection of that. Also, topic blogs tend to run out of steam after sometime or the author starts getting bored with the topic - how long can one keep writing on the same topics day after day, year after year?

6. Blogging is a true meritocracy. Many people talk about this, but to experience it is truly humbling. There are no big shots, your standing in the industry or your position in the company is not relevant. Your post or comment is as good as any one else’s.  If you believe that power corrupts and want to avoid that trap, blogging can put some serious humility into you.

7. The biggest secret of blogging is commenting on other blogs. If you discover this secret, you will have a successful blog.

Thank You

It is a momentous occasion for this blog and we would not be here without the contributions of several people: First on the list is Ganesh, he has been on the journey from day one, encouraged me every step of the way, and continues to be a key contributor;  Priya Raju, my wife, who has encouraged me at every instance and is now a regular contributor of this blog;  Sujatha Manivasagam, NK Sreedhar, Sibu Kutty and Sridhar Iyer, who have written several posts on this blog.

Our regular commenters - the indefatigable Senthil, my friend Archana Raghuram, PK Karthik, Subba Muthurangan, Vamsi Poondla,  Saraswathi, Jaskirat, Ananth, April Holladay and many others.

Patrix and the Desipundit team for recognizing and linking to some important posts over the years.

John Keegan, one of the best customer service professionals i have ever come across. He runs Pressharbor which hosts our blog today.

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Democracy In India - Part 2

The world is abuzz with the gross human rights violations in Zimbabwe. Free & fair elections are well neigh impossible. Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, is incarcerated whenever Robert Mugabe feels paranoid. The media is in shackles. Many people are homeless because of the mass evictions by the government. The police beat up anyone committing treason - as in, anyone not wearing “Mugabe” T-shirts or scarves. Zimbabwe is a shattered country. Its ruler is determined to cling on to power - if that means unleashing violence on his people, so be it.

Yet, when he was young, Mugabe was a kind, benevolent, decent man who sincerely wanted to liberate the black people in Rhodesia. And this same man became a Mad Dog & a Monster - who plunged the once serene, beautiful, relatively-affluent Zimbabwe into chaos. What happened is simple: Power Corrupts. And Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. While we can’t blame Mugabe for all the ills of Zimbabwe, he did play a lead role in its descent. And the Zimbabweans are largely responsible - for not questioning him. For not voicing their concerns vociferously, when he was still a human being.

The glass is half full and half empty. It is preposterous - and naive - to assume that people are innately good & all wickedness seeps in later thru mysterious channels. Good behavior - or at least, an absence of bad behavior - should be reinforced thru checks & balances. Assuming that a nation’s Law & Order machinery is well-oiled & can govern itself - is galactic stupidity. In a democracy - by that I mean any form of government founded on Liberty, Equality & Fraternity - the onus of providing feedback to the leaders rests with the people.

Look around us. Sycophants have erected banners deifying various political leaders wherever you turn. “I Lay Myself at Thine Lotus Feet”. “My Lord - You Are India’s Answer to Kennedy!”. “First Buddha! Next, Jesus! Then Gandhi! Now, You!!”. “You Rise Amidst Failures Like a Phoenix! Oh, Indestructible One!”. Posters of leaders garbed as Mother Mary & Lord Shiva are immensely popular. All this is enough to turn anybody’s head. Surrounded by fawning butt-kissers, they over-estimate their power & achievements.  Very soon, they are cut off from the very people they wanted to serve. No leader - even well-meaning ones - will know their limits unless we dig our heels in & say “NO!”.

While India can’t be compared with the abyss that is now Zimbabwe, to a lesser degree, “The Quiet Indian” is responsible for its plight. I believe we can convert ourselves to “Argumentative Indians” by speaking up on less threatening situations. Enter the Free Market.

I recently stopped at “Vivek & Co” - a leading Household Appliances store in Chennai - to buy a blender. I selected a piece - before presenting me with a bill, the sales assistant said - “Inspect the piece now, Madam. No returns for any reason”. What the F*@#? I told her - “Do you realize you are breaking the law? As a consumer, I have every right to return a piece that is defective”. She looked taken aback - and recited her tag-line, “But that’s our company policy, Madam”. I was now mildly curious about her thought process - “You firmly believe that - in the hallowed grounds of your shop, your company policy supersedes this nation’s laws. Lady, I can sue you for that”. She looked hurt & miserable and said - “Shoddy products are the responsibility of the manufacturer”. I threw the blender at her - “Then, I’ll take my business to a store that’s responsible. Respect the laws of this land first”.

Not giving my business to Vivek & Co will not reduce them to penury. But, I can choose to have a pleasant shopping experience. I can assert my rights as a consumer. For which, Indians must know - make it “learn by heart” - their rights first. We have the right to return goods. No shop can charge us above the MRP price listed in the carton. Goods should function as advertised: Quality is an entitlement, not a privilege.

Few months back, I unwrapped a cake of “Lux” soap - and found a few hairs sticking on the surface. This was an unbearable breach of basic hygiene. l wrote a stinker to “Hindustan Unilever Limited” (HUL): “Is HUL in the habit of selling used soaps? Kindly send your team to inspect these hairs. Assuage my curiosity. Are they armpit or pubic hairs?”. I got a response within a few days - They were terribly sorry & would I consider meeting their PR Manager? After swapping more emails & phone calls to ascertain what happened, a PR Manager turned up - laden with “Lux” soaps as gifts. He was profusely apologetic & thanked me for bringing this problem to their attention - and giving them an opportunity to analyze & correct their assembly line. I remain a loyal customer of HUL to this day.

Mistakes are inevitable. It is a company’s reaction to them that separates the also-rans from the truly great. Not all companies will react to complaints favorably. But, I’m glad to say that most companies & businesses respond positively. A vast majority of them resolve the complaint to the customer’s satisfaction. The trick is knowing how to voice the protest & where. If all else fails, one can at least spread their sob-story about the company. Even if you influence & convert 1% of your audience to savvy consumers, you’ve done your bit for Capitalism.

My uncle clicked his tongue deprecatingly. “What will you do about the misdeeds of politicians? Whenever a VIP with Zee category security whizzes by, all traffic is stopped for 15 minutes. You can’t stop corruption in the government offices, can you?”. People always imagine the worst possible circumstance to make their inaction credible. Our inability to handle problems larger than ourselves - doesn’t absolve us from solving smaller ones. What is the probability of us running afoul of a kinky MP or an acquisitive thug? How often do we deal with corrupt bureaucrats?

Now, picture this. People break the queue before you in super markets - All the time. New apartment complexes spring up in our neighborhoods & the builders flout the laws on Noise Pollution - All the time. The school in your zone parks its buses & vans on both sides of the road, blocking traffic - All the time. The hospital you go to prescribes needless tests to jack up the bill - All the time. Can’t we at least try to solve these? If we think every single problem is beyond our control, we are less than human, a blight on humanity.

In a high PDI culture like India, people are afraid of voicing their opinion. I believe that such small but fair protests will inculcate the habit of asserting onself. Small successes as a consumer in the Free Market will embolden them. In due course of time, people will become more confident - confident people are seldom subservient. Sooner or later, their rulers will get the message.

My neighbor wistfully tells me that every city needs 10 activists. 10?? Every single one of us should uphold our rights! Many Indians speak longingly of the need for a “Benevolent Dictator”. That’s an oxymoron. “We need to impose Martial Law” they say. Or, “Japan should take over & beat us to shape”. Ain’t gonna happen! Is there any frigging use of hoping that others will solve our mess? So, let’s stop moaning & start asserting ourselves. Yes, many things are broken. And no, you can’t change the world. Let’s acknowledge our limits and choose our battles wisely - battles that can be won. Believe me, it will make a cumulative difference.