Justice For SSR

Sushant Singh Rajput is unlikely to get justice. Why, you ask? Simple: Because the same factor that set the "Justice For SSR" ball rolling will derail the movement. And that factor is Us.

Sushant Singh Rajput

Have you ever wondered why the Palghar Sadhu Lynching incident didn't kickstart a mass movement of protest but the death of a 34-year-old actor did? Again, simple: It had nothing to do with "Oh Hindu Sadhus therefore ignored" (though that was definitely there), but the heinous, cold-blooded, long-in-the-making and utterly, absolutely ruthless manner in which a celebrity with a boy-next-door image was surrounded by a group of rich and powerful and pushed to a dark corner from which there was no escape except a long last fall over the edge into oblivion, and subsequently the media-police-politician-bollywood-underworld nexus that worked like a scarily well-oiled machinery to hush up the case, which reminded the country about the Dec 2012 atrocity in Delhi and roused the nation's collective conscience. It was, simply put, a question: "If such a terrible thing can happen to Sushant, then what hope do we commonfolk have?" It was a repeat act of the question that the country had asked itself at the time of Nirbhaya. This time, it was Sushant.

A major, major clean-up of the viper's den that bollywood has become has been overdue. Anyone not conforming to the rules is given a gentle push over the edge, a figurative hand in the back, and the rest is taken care of police investigations that find nothing suspicious, politicians who orchestrate their cadres in the guise of supportive fans, and media stooges who already have shiny, spanking-new clean chits out and waving in the air, pouring the milk of "child in a man's body" and "so much humanitarian work" and "weeps when he hears a 'lori' song and has to be consoled by his mum" on the blood of innocents dripping from the hands of the khans, the bhatts, the kapoors and the johars. Divya Bharti and Sridevi were drunk, Jiah Khan and Sushant and Parveen Babi were depressed... Same screenplay, different victims.

And this is where the secret of their escape route lies: the ability to orchestrate a whitewashing-and-hoodwinking campaign that has us eating out of their hands time and time again. We will forget all about Sushant the moment the next bachchan / srk / salman / ranbir kapoor film hits the theaters because to us, celebrating the glory of our stars who care two hoots about us matters more than innocent lives nipped in the bud in the most monstrous manner possible and justice and punishment...until the next dead body appears, hanging from the ceiling or drowned in a bathtub.

But remember one thing: the next guy or girl who falls victim to these hungry predators coming out of the scummy cesspool of unlimited power could be someone you love. I hope your breathless anticipation of the next bachchan / srk / salman / ranbir / deepika movie remains the same at that moment of utter despair.

P.S.: Here are some snaps of bollywood's A-listers with brothers Annel Mussarat and Nabeel Mussarat, two of pakistan's richest and most powerful businessmen, who often act as go-betweens between pakistan's ISI and the rich and the famous, esp of the Indian variety.
"Nothing wrong in being clicked with some businessmen, even if they're from pakistan," you say? Well, do remember that that is exactly how dawood ibrahim had dug his tentacles deep inside bollywood in the 1980s.

In Pictures below: Pakistani Businessmen Brothers Annel Mussarat and Nabeel Mussarat with various bollywood stars

'Moving On' in Hindi Cinema

 Considering the populist, across-the-floor and appeal-to-the-lowest-common-denominator pan-Indian (in name only; in actuality, Hindi Cinema has always a very pronounced North India-centric and Mumbai-centric tilt) format in which Hindi Cinema treats its narratives, the concept of 'moving on' from a relationship that is not working is not a common, or even remotely popular one. Here. at the end of the customary two and a a half hours, the hero and the heroine must unite, or (at least one of them) must die "to unite in the Afterlife". This is a concept that's more in keeping with Cinema of South India.

No wonder then that the best examples of 'moving on' I've come across in the highly unrealistic and often immature domain of commercial Hindi Cinema, the only two memorable instances, in fact, appear in two little-known Hindi translations of two South Indian films. Coincidentally, both Hindi films released within a few months of each other in the early years of this millennium and in the final years of the pre-multiplex era.

The first is Tusshar Kapoor's debut film 'Mujhe Kucch Kehna Hai' (2001), a remake of the Telugu film 'Tholi Prema' (1998). In the film, the hero is an immature and just a tad spoiled young man, who falls in love with a girl, the daughter of a family friend, who comes to live with his family. He's smitten and tries hard to get her, but keeps failing as she has her eyes set on higher studies and a career and doesn't want to lose focus of her goals. Ultimately he realizes that in order to get the girl of his dreams, he must grow up and make a man of himself, so he lets her go in the hope that when she is ready, she'll come back to him. The film ends on an open-ended but hopeful note. Most importantly, the hero harbours no bitterness, because by now he has figured out what he needs to do with his life.

The next one came a year later, in early 2002, and starred Aftab Shivdasani and Ameesha Patel. 'Kya Yehi Pyaar Hai' was the remake of the Tamil film 'Love Today' (1997). It is somewhat similar in terms of plot premise to MKKH, but different in that at the end, after the hero has lost his elder brother who was a friend philosopher and guide to him, he realizes that there's more to life than romantic love, and that more often we are in love with the idea of being in love. So he decides to make something substantial of his life as a tribute to his late elder brother, and although by now the heroine has fallen for him, he rejects her, though not spitefully or sadly, and goes off to chart out his own life path.

I believe it's because of the fact that both the films had their genesis in South Indian Cinema, we get to see a rare brand of maturity that's always been missing in the populist overindulgence of Hindi films.

For Your Eyes Only: When Moore Went Fleming-Level Classic

For most/many of us who were born in the 70s and grew up in the 80s and 90s, Roger Moore (and later, Pierce Brosnan) defined 007, but the truth is, Moore and Brosnan together took the film series away from the Fleming universe of gritty realism and in an absurdly campy direction with outlandish plots of world domination, cookie-cutter villains, and the overuse of downright farcical gadgets, until Craig rescued the films...and us.

A close analysis of the films tells us that beginning with The Spy Who Loved Me up to Die Another Day, every film was a subtle remake of one of the classic Bonds of Connery and Lazenby from the 60s (to illustrate: TSWLM, Moonraker, and Tomorrow Never Dies were all remakes of You Only Live Twice, The Living Daylights was From Russia With Love, Octopussy was Goldfinger, and A View To A Kill was Thunderball). By the mid-80s, a sense of ennui had crept in and it had everything to do with the OTT-ness that Broccoli and Saltzman were subjecting the films to, Moore's portrayal of a deadly Spy in the manner of a popular and elderly uncle more likely to crack a risque joke than kill someone in cold blood, and his advancing age. But the realistic and unassuming For Your Eyes Only more than makes up for the big, slightly bloated, money-churning megaliths that TSWLM and Moonraker are.

[Image courtesy: Google Images]

The story is a punch of two Fleming short stories, 'Risico' and 'For Your Eyes Only' (yes, it's not a full-fledged novel). Tidbits from other novels are thrown in, and the final product is very much like the highly underrated classic, On Her Majesty's Secret Service: Bond siding with a 'good' criminal to take on a 'bad' criminal (Drako/Blofeld in OHMSS vs. Columbo/Kristatos in FYEO). But after two drolly asinine outings to the depths of the oceans and the outer space, FYEO comes as a shot in the arm for Bond purists who love the classic touches of Fleming, whose Secret Agent was more of a cold-blooded killer than a wining, dining, smooth-talking Casanova, and the best examples of this in all of Moore's films come in FYEO, when (a) Bond goes to his late wife Teresa's grave to pay his respects and later (b) he kicks Locque's car from the top of a hill and sends it crashing. There's a latent sense of danger running through the narrative and the story is more localised and, knowing 007's history, more personal w/o being outside the purview of governmental action, something that a solo-flying Intelligence Agent would find himself entangled in rather than trying to stop cartoonish villains from taking over the world. As M would say, "Well done, 007."

In Support Of The Lockdown: A Guest Column

I have been noting the condemnation of the decision to impose a nationwide lockdown in response to the Corona virus pandemic on various fora. I felt compelled to share my reasoning as to why I think such condemnations are premature and irresponsible, and therefore warrant a strong rebuttal.

It is always easy to use hindsight to dissect the shortcomings of a decision. I do not believe that the decision taken at the time that it was, could have used the benefit of sufficient analysis and planning. The PM was facing an impossible choice: “Damned if he acts, damned if he doesn’t.” When the decision was taken based on recommendations from WHO and ICMR, most states had already declared lockdowns, or were in the process of doing so. In a sense therefore, it was the least bad time to decide. The decision was unprecedented in its ramifications, and in my opinion was not amenable to the usual prerequisites of an executive decision such as trade-off analysis and risk assessment. It was akin to a split-second decision to be taken on a battlefield.

Consider the realities of our situation as a country: we have a fund-starved healthcare system whose ability to deliver is stifled by reservation and an insensitive bureaucracy. A significant proportion of our labour force, which earns it livelihood through daily wages, does not have proper housing and sanitation facilities. We have the world’s highest proportion of voluntarily internally displaced population. Most of our systems function, not because of institutional capabilities, but because of a few people’s dedication. We are a nation of 1.3 billion people where it is computationally impossible to model the complexity of social interactions preventing any solution from being scaled up. We are not a particularly disciplined people. Planning and strategic depth in thinking is an anathema to our way of operating as a nation. We need to be realistic in our criticisms. The way the situation is turning out is anybody’s guess in that it’s too early to predict how it will unfold. I think the PM has had the conviction and courage to not succumb to political expediency and to invest the substantial goodwill he enjoys and his political capital despite the certainty that his leadership would be strongly challenged. This is laudatory and deserves our collective commendation. He has also had the humility to acknowledge the undesirable albeit unavoidable collateral consequences of his decision and seek forgiveness. I think it we owe it to ourselves and our fellow citizenry to refrain from comments about what could have been done differently and lend support by any means possible to navigate through this crisis. Dissemination of such comments now undermines our capability to marshal the collective efforts and respond effectively.

I also find it noteworthy and a testament to our resilience as a nation that by and large order has prevailed, and no regions of the country have descended into anarchy despite the tough situation. Hopefully this state of affairs will sustain, and there will come a time when we will have the luxury to perform a pragmatic and responsible post-mortem to identify gaps and reform our systems to ensure a better response to future crises.

Jai Hind.

Aniket Bhattacharya

[Aniket Bhattacharya is the first guest columnist to feature on this blog. He loves all things related to Embedded Systems, his family, fast-paced novels, and self-composed songs with completely incomprehensible lyrics, though not necessarily in that order.]

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Dark, Hard, Uncomfortable, Disturbing...Why?

Question:

Why is Joker (2019) a "dark and disturbing" film?

Answer:

In life, you're either a perpetrator or a victim: of bullying, of cheating, of adultery, of beatings; in short, anything that can be categorized under Physical or Psychological Violence that has caused major emotional scarring and trauma. Either way, you wouldn't want to see your real face, the one you keep hidden away from everyone around you, the one that's either filled with hate and cruelty or the one that has helpless, agonized tears streaming down the cheeks, blown up and projected before the entire world to see. (Ever wondered why people who cheat on their partners feel uncomfortable while watching movies or TV shows based on the theme of adultery and the ensuing problems? Yes, same reason.)

Disclaimer:

The above assessment may not fully apply to the real hardcore perpetrators. It may be noted that the higher your level of psychosis/sadism, the greater is your resistance to any discomfort caused by a representational depiction (of your action or anything similar) unfolding before you. This simply means that someone with an advanced case of psychosis/sadism would probably be at best only partially troubled while watching such stuff, and that too on all likelihood if she (or he) was watching it in the company of one of her (or his) victims. But by and large the assessment holds true.

Which is why Joker is a dark, hard, uncomfortable watch—because it is a stark reminder of who, or what, we are: either the monster that broke a helpless soul and turned it into a hate-filled nightshade, or the Crying Freeman that another monster has caused us to become.

[Image courtesy: Google Images]

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An Ode To Kumar Sanu

There is something inherently simple and sweet, yet indescribably poignant, about the early melodies of Kumar Sanu, the ones that turned him into an overnight phenomenon 29 years ago, and by a few light years at least, the most influential (playback) singer of India after Kishore Kumar. It is interesting to note that, like Rajesh Khanna and SRK, it is the first 5-6 years of his career in the 90s (he had made his debut with Yeh Desh in 1984, but we can disregard the years leading up to Aashiqui in 1990) that really made Sanu who he was, who he is, and who he shall remain forever: the voice that came the closest to Kishore Kumar's throne, beating all other legends and gods in the race to musical immortality through sheer dominance on public memory.

[Image courtesy: Google Images]

Personal favourite: the achingly heart-touching "Bas ek sanam chaahiye Aashiqui ke liye" (Aashiqui, 1990), with its will-o'-the-wisp-like hint of anticipated romance. There is hardly another song in all of the 90s that encapsulates the unbearable lightness of being that the free-est, happiest of virginal young souls experience in the carefree moments when they are on the verge of starting their journey on the perilous path of Love as-yet-unexperienced, without a worry on their brows. Masterly, delectable, piquant.

There have been so many absolutely marvelous Durga Puja songs/albums (i.e. released during the festive season) over the years, but I still keep associating Puja music primarily with Kumar Sanu and Aashiqui (the original one, of course, not the snivel-fest from a few years ago).

[Image courtesy: Google Images]

Happy 62nd, Sanu da. You made the 1990s almost singlehandedly super-memorable.

Legend. King. God.

Every actor worth his salt plays a particular type of character really well; so well, in fact, that it becomes nigh on impossible to think of anyone else in such roles. His performances in these roles become the index on which others are judged...and more often than not, failed.

Examples are aplenty. Rajesh Khanna made the intense, emotionally-torn-between-love-and-duty character entirely his own (and make no mistake, it still remains his, despite the best efforts of Mannatian pretenders); Amitabh Bachchan shall remain the last word when it comes to portraying the volcanic, superhot rebel with a greater social justice in mind till kingdom come; and hardly anyone can beat Mannatians when it comes to snatching other people's girlfriends and fiancees (Rolls Royces and Tata Nanos don't mix too well, but you get the drift...and hopefully the sarcasm too).

But when it comes to portraying the elder brother who holds together the mainmast of a middle-class family sailing through troubled waters - and here, an interview of Soumitra Chatterjee comes to mind - even god bows before Uttam Kumar. As Chatterjee had astutely observed, the character came so naturally to UK because he *was* that man in real life.

[Image courtesy: Google Images]

Even in an otherwise none-too-sparkling film like 'Dui Prithibi' (The Two Worlds, 1980), UK is the living, breathing embodiment of the eldest son/elder brother who stands tall amid the ruined moralities of his rapidly-disintegrating-in-values family that has tasted the sweet taste of money after several years of hardships and won't let go. The pregnant pauses, the sad headshakes, the silent, shadowed eyes...really, there's hardly anything more worthwhile than watching The Greatest Master of All going about wielding his craft even on an ordinary day in the field.