It's Christmas day today, 2009. Merry Christmas, dear reader.
People usually have turkey today, roasted. Or chicken, when they think of doing something interesting sometime. They might taste good depending on whether you like the cranberry sauce or whether you hate turkey. But the truth is, turkey is served and eaten, disregarding whether it's cold or hot. And you know what? It gets really interesting when someone wants to see whether you have the moronic expression akin to having cold turkey if you are being treated like a chicken. Before you try to decipher the previous sentence, let me share a long joke, probably not without relevance, since it is 25th December.
Jesus and Satan have a discussion as to who is the better programmer. This goes on for a few hours until they come to an agreement to hold a contest, with God as the judge.
They sit themselves at their computers and begin. They type furiously, lines of code streaming up the screen, for several hours straight. Seconds before the end of the competition, a bolt of lightning strikes, taking out the electricity. Moments later, the power is restored, and God announces that the contest is over.
He asks Satan to show what he has come up with. Satan is visibly upset, and cries, "I have nothing. I lost it all when the power went out."
"Very well, then," says God, "let us see if Jesus fared any better."
Jesus enters a command, and the screen comes to life in vivid display, the voices of an angelic choir pour forth from the speakers. Satan is astonished.
He stutters, "B-b-but how? I lost everything, yet Jesus' program is intact. How did he do it?"
God smiled all-knowingly, "Jesus saves."
It's a real joke and generally not considered as a PJ. I wonder why this joke wasn't at all used, in "3 idiots" especially when the moviemakers were being resourceful of all the usual email forwards and jokes one could have encountered since the eternity of Internet. Aal; including the arab sheikh taking a photograph of 5 burqa-clad women. Yeah, it is that up-to-date with Aamir Khan, the protagonist, being the 80% Jesus and 20% Gandhi (coming from Rajkumar Hirani, you ought to expect the latter proportion part for sure). I'm also sure that while making this watershed movie in Indian cinema, where water is coming from a human penis with a hissing sound and helps people in being eletrocuted sometimes, Mr Hirani was as fearless as it could ever be possible for any filmmaker.
Well, when you have the courage to make a movie where flourmills are made out of bicycle, where finding and replacing "chamatkar" with "balatkar" in a word document doesn't really stay limited in paper (or word), where a young engineering male student is shown to strum his guitar in the heat of the night as he is depressed and sings "nya-nya-nya-nya-nya-nya.....jeene do jeene do" only to drown further into gloom and commit suicide out of his inability of completing a battery-operated aeroplane with a wireless surveillance camera within 24 hours, you should be expecting the messiah to appear and solve all your home, neighbourhood and toilet problems, chanting "aal izz well".
To quote from the movie, "Whatever the problem in life is... just always say to yourself 'Aal Izz Well'.. This won't solve your problems but it will give you the courage to face it.."
That tagline should explain it aal......including the photoshopped place curiously named as Ladakh where the messiah lives, ......after he turns a recluse and generously gives the world 400 patents and a kid's engineering school, preceded by delivering babies with the help of vacuum cleaners and curtains.
Only snag--the revelation behind choosing Christmas Day as the movie's release date was increasingly getting visible as time was flowing on. Of course, being a Bengali, helped; as always. "murgi kora" could always be invented and used in a different connotation by this meat-loving ethnic group, and I wonder whether and how Mr Hirani knew about this.
But what the heck. It has got the saviour of Indian Cinema in it, and it doesn't matter counting the number of idiots as long as movie-makers would be counting cash.
All's well that end's well, especially when you had problems. That's the take home message of the last 2009 bollywood blockbuster, apart from the abundant toilet humour; if you didn't like them, you have the only option of using the flash. Not the one in a camera.........the other one.
One of my respondents was telling me the other day, while talking about ties with a friend of hers--that they don't talk much, but that she reads the friend's blogs; and she puts in her comments sometimes. But it's not that they meet so much or talk so much. But my respondent said that she is always checking on the friend's blog, and they communicate that way.
And she wondered aloud the nagging, quintessential question--is it good or bad?
I have a couple of friends with who I might not exchange notes through email or scraps in orkut, but whose blogs I will always visit; some of them were quite good friends in college. Some are people I barely know. Sometimes I do put in my blahs on their imprints, and sometimes I don't.
And I wonder, is the above-mentioned process a farcical mode of communication in the sense that we actually don't communicate, but do it on a somewhat forced skewed direction by feeling the civility to say something when thoughts are written aloud? Is it akin to small talk on a blogger level? Is it page 3? (and me ain't Konkona) Is it stalking and saying "Hi" when you make eye contact with your person of interest (it's easy to see who visited your blog....)?
Is it preferable to anything or should it be nothing?
That reminds me: I have someone coming from Baton Rouge on a regular basis and I don't know who that is; I just know that this person first came to my blog following a link in orkut and now s/he just types the url from memory (thank you and bless you) and reads my blog. Silently, without communicating through comments.
With all due respect to Ms Dorothy Smith, it doesn't take long to realize that writing is a reflexive process and a two-way communication; you think of what you want to write, and you also think about the reader who is going to read that and while that defnitely shapes your writing, the reader also communicates with you while s/he is reading your lines on and interpreting them, understanding them, nodding (or smirking) or skipping or re-reading them.
Not that everything must have some utilitarian values per se, but does it actually create/maintain/strenghten any links? This kind of "communication?" Or is it, just there, as a product, to be tasted and/or tested according to availability of time and whims? Does it make others know or understand better?
Or, does it help to understand the mind of people with who you don't communicate as a matter-of-fact in the traditional sense, but which you might do, in a less tangible way, considering you read their blogs (and supposedly, a piece of their mind).
Is a traditional mode of communication a necessary condition to get to know a person? But then, the most basic questions, such as, "How are you?" have always got the most parochial of answers.
Why is it that when you have to say "Happy Birthday" to a person, you need to send a reminder note stating how good they are, how the bonding is (not "kaisa hain yeh bandhan" kind...) between the sender and the receiver and thanking them all for it? Why would personal praising or appreciation has to be so vested in trying to making one feel good on Birthdays? Can we be happy without being reminded what we did for the other person?
I was flooded with the above thoughts while browsing greeting cards for my father. All of them had thanking the progenitor before wishing them Happy Birthday or thereafter. I tried to sift through but it was a stressful decision to choose among the options: (a) the thank-you-and-now-happy-birthday notes and (b)-you-have-been-so-good-and-so-happy-birthday notes.
Whatever happened to "Happy Birthday and lots of love?" or "wish you have fun on your birthday?"
Can you really thank a lifetime?
I don't mean to say that when you cannot do a task, there's no point in attempting it. But delimiting some from others and thanking people for them, who mean the world to you is somewhat unsavory.
Especially when those "thanks" come on the occasion of birthdays.
I wonder whether I would have a single non-thankful card when I get older....20 years from now.
Warning: Entry of arguably offensive nature ahead, read at your own risk. Reader discretion is advised.
With only 2 days to Puja, I have been feeling predictably mellow. Like several last years. Not that I used to make a big war cry on the absolute necessity to see the Kolkata pujas when I was in Kolkata. But I miss the warmth, the new feeling, the being-happy-always kind of feeling among others....and just that generic sense of sweetness that incredibly prevails in those times, in spite of doubting the general aura of happiness like a a Yash Chopra movie, sans the sarsho ka khet but replete with lots of family and friends and unnecessary giggling.
We were just discussing last night, how much of it we have missed, and for how long; the last usual commonplace Kolkata puja was seen in 2001. 8 years have gone through and probably 2 more will go before we will be back to the soil.
Last year, being new in the city, we hardly had friends to go to the Pujas in Toronto. But still we did, as two friends came over and we decided not to miss the dada-boudi exhibition, the Helen-of-today-wearing-the-Mallika-Sherwat-Choli of today things, and such other sinful pleasures. So off we went. At least we have the right to be amused, if not anything else--we told ourselves.
That was one of the 4 big pujas held in Toronto--it was the one arranged by robust NRIs--the quintessentially named Probasi Club pujo. We had khichuri and bhog and etc, looked around, and came home by 3 pm. The whole thing, took 4 hours, including driving for 45 mins (one way) and waiting in queue for the watery khichuri. Somehow we had got tired of the whole thing just on reaching the venue. It was the same old sights, the same old glitz, the same old skins wearing make up, the same old hairs with haircolours.
This year, we have quite a lot of friends to accompany and co-ordinating them has been a little puzzle, towards the objective that we enjoy the puja with everybody albeit at various times, and nobody feels left out. The pujas do not mean anything to me any more, not here, definitely not with the people who arrange it and fill it up, but being with friends, does. So I was planning.
And my husband kept referring to the Probasi Club puja by a certain name, which I understood came from an incident last year that has truly, left a mark, and which to him, characterizes the people who frequent the puja. Whatever it is, with the usual authority vested in me by 7 years in a marriage, I tried to submerge the referral in that particular manner, as was done by him. This was way different than we are used to refer pujos--like the "bharer thakur" (Bosepukur Sarbojonin), or "rail accident thakur" (Santosh Mitra Square), or the Chowringhee Thakur in my mamabari (it is a small "mofoswol" town with a chowringhee no less); this particular name would be an interesting example of onomatopoeia. The incident was like this: S (my husband) went to the washroom. Saw that a kid of 8 years and his father were also relieving themselves. Incidentally, somebody started making some sounds, but of course, under closed doors. The kid started jumping up and down and cried in glee, and in perfect Bangladeshi Bangla, "Paadla saarse....paadla saarse paadla". And he kept repeating.
The father went on doing whatever he was doing without interrupting the kid who also carried on with his expression of happiness, with the word he was using and was allowed to use.
S was so disgusted that he refers to that pujo as "paadla pujo" now.With me trying to correct it and see the positive in everything.Either way, it still remains the P Pujo. Abbreviations, sometimes, are saviours. Truly.
No, it's not about the movie or any review whatsoever. I loved the movie by the way.
It's just me smoking a mental cigarette. Mental, because I don't smoke and could never take it up, ever as keen as I was to receive the feedback from smokers that it helps you to relax and practically dissipates the problem. My smoker friends would exhale through focussed and rounded lips, their eyes and nose all waiting to exhale and let go, and I'd almost feel the "relaxation" hitting me but would get the smoke instead which I hated. So I think it's a good analogy. I would exhale, believe in this huge logic system of relaxing, and the end product could be welcome or not depending on where or who they are hitting.
Problems. Nope I don't have problems but some incidents which keep gnawing and clawing even when you are drinking coffee and just gazing out. There are others who are not your friends or family and definitely not enemies to have that close thoughts on them. But they deserve one more casual glance in our upright and uptight busy schedules.
So one night, I heard sirens and we hear sirens now and then, in this street as ambulances and fire-engines speed across the city. But it was around 3:30 in the night that I heard them and I wished they would go away but they felt they had entered right into my room and they kept blaring. And then I heard some sounds of digging on the ground, of the concrete breaking and drilling. So I had to get up. Looked out of the window and saw some vehicles with flashing lights just right across the street, which unfortunately were unable to drive home the message as to what had happened exactly.
4 hours later, somebody knocked. It was the Toronto police and they were asking people if they have seen something. I just saw their cars and that's what I told them. "err....What happened?" The officer replied, "Nothing...we are currently investigating the incident in the Jamaican Consulate; something happened there".
And I didn't know that a consulate even existed in this neighbourhood.
What I found out later is that even though Google can't find your keys, it can definitely replace the need for a signboard and what you could find about people in your neighbourhood. Though I'm not sure whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. It's just better to gulp it down, like instant coffee, or forget it over like a case in a statistical dataset. Either way, they reflect a pattern.
And then there have been incidents when I wish we wouldn't think according to the pattern.
Like her who was filling in a form, sitting on a park bench. It was rather, a lawn bench so to speak.....it was just an adjacent children playground area in front of an apartment. She was filling in a form on sexual harassment which asked "What could you have done to avoid this incident?", as well as "Do you think this incident could have been avoided on a different time of the day?"
She was my colleague. And according to the work policy, if she couldn't work over there, some of us would have to continue working there; there = an apartment where we were interviewing people, and where the incident happened on an elevator.
Without going into the whole Victimology and Penology debate, the irrelevance of the whole procedure was quite comprehensible. My colleague was shaken up, and even after that, she continued to work. She drove home from work that day and also drove to work for the usual two hours the next day. As part of getting this job, we all were checked for any criminal records. Nobody bothered to do it on the other side of the fence.
Although the company policy and the high end people told her that she could go to the police, she did not. And although we knew the risks, nobody showed the panic. So much for risk society and creating moral panic, eh? [Is it there only in theory classes?]
And then, people got busy once again. Everybody comes to work, works and then goes back home. We all work hard and party harder. Or try to. "That's the way it is". The surveillance society keeps on working hard as we look around, see people, identify and relate to some of them and yet, we do nothing. Our backs take up all our power of surveillance, thank you.
The perpetrator in my colleague's case would most likely go on in his daily gleeful living, and some of us would probably even meet and shake hands with this guy, sit beside him in the TTC or hold the door for him. With whatever information we have right now, like the building and apartment number, we could still identify the person as well as talk to his wife, which we believe would do little than shaming the perpetrator. This man might not be a psychopath as some colleagues suggested, but someone who "grabbed an opportunity in a situation", opportunity coming in the shape of a female body.
But instead of drawing on personal characteristics, like easy-breezy psychopathy for example, we would always characterize a person based on their ascriptive qualities. It helps to pigeon-hole them, I suppose; draw upon their characters, based on some deductive, ethno-cultural logic. Like almost every good paid cook is supposed to be Oriya in West Bengal, good non-Bengali businessman must be Marwari and taxi drivers must always be Sikhs or Biharis if the first option doesn't work out. Stereotypes are easy comfort cushions to fall back on and pin-hole our frustrations and/or manifold "instincts" when we can't make sense of the booming, buzzing confusion called reality.
My colleague is only human. She also did the same. She said the person had Arabic writings in his home, that probably he is from the Middle-east, and that she also saw a green flag. She mentioned these details when she was still shaken up, before she even filled in that form.
Talking about psychopaths, I was watching this documentary in CBC. Turned out really interesting, as according to the criteria of psychopaths, I happen to know one, though I'm so glad that I'm not in touch with him anymore. And I rather wish that I hadn't met him as a friend. Diagnosing a psychopath who is otherwise quite successful and appears to be normal, the documentary said that a psychopath is someone who has too much of narcissism to start with; he believes in the ultimate supremacy of his talent (if he has one, that is...) and has a grand sense of self-worth. Quite far from prison cells, he could be much closer than you think. Experts believe their number to be as high as one in a hundred. Most of them function incognito in high-powered professions...all the way to the very top. They are found to be very likeable, charming, intelligent, alert, confidence inspiring and a great success with the ladies. They appear to have a self-destructive streak, which is often used to as a tool to gain sympathy from others. They are unable to feel prolonged grief and do not have a sense of responsibility. They lack remorse, guilt, and empathy and need continuous stimulation to counter boredom. They also need consistent and high doses of ego-boosts for successful relationship with others. They always rationalize hurting or mistreating others.
Anyway, as I was saying, that perpetrator of the crime was not known to be a psychopath. And the little conversation and interaction my colleague had with that man, is not enough to characterize him as a psychopath. But it was enough to characterize him as a sexual offender, if nothing else.
But it would always be the "East Indian" landlord, the "Black" woman in the bank, the "European" (meaning non-English speaking have-nots) neighbour.
The other. And demonizing the other.
And saying it as "Hell is other people". When the lens is so twisted, when our mental capacities are this limited to contain our perspectives, "other" people have no other category than be vitriolic.
Really, the poet had asked it too profound. We Ph.D researchers, fret about it when thinking about our project titles, as it should be representative in just a single line of all of the laborious years of toil. Parents think about the name of their babies months before they were born. The name, should represent who the parents are, who the baby should be, as well as be in line with the contemporary generation. I've often felt that rather than tossing away the importance of a name, the question as mentioned in the beginning should be said more with the exasperated wonder--what IS? what should BE? How much can you put in there, albeit speaking less of it?
All in all, names are banners; it flags your attention, holds it, directs it to further significant issues and then....makes you remember them; at least, strives to makes you remember them. It's just not a name, it's an entire story that should be spoken in those few words. Stories that remain in line with your expectation, that sail with the times, yet stretch somewhat to have a space in tomorrow and arch enough to leave their chiseled dust over your head as you walk on and move away from them.
Like films do.
For example, if you would expect that films often represent the society for which they are made, and have this uncanny democratic characteristic in them, in that they rise from people's expectations as well as mould people's choice to build forth a market, you would end up with a partially proven hypotheses. Like I did.
Considering bollywood, I thought it would be a safe bet to presuppose that 1950s would be more enthused with freedom and freedom fighting as tuned with the newly independent Indian society, 1960s would be more akin to coming to terms with the good things in life--the "pyar, mohabbat and ishq", 1970s being characterised by the coming of age what the 1960s started--the Shammi Kapoor and Zeenat and Dev Anand --romancing and solving mysteries and then 1980s being the era of angry young man, 1990s being Aashiqui and Kumar Sanu and the Khans all the way, and 2000s belonging to a motley of star sons and daughters. The dominant paradigm of each decade could be derived from the keywords, which are easily extracted from the names of these movies, that targets the audience in giving out a bird's eye view of what each film is presupposed to showcase. Although, I heard that many senior citizens were fooled and enraged in particularly two occasions in history--when they went to watch "Satyam Shivam Sundaram" and "Ram Teri Ganga Maili" with a particular expectation in mind.
I don't think it could have helped even if the release dates of these movies were in April.
Some days back, I was searching for a particular song online. And I chanced upon something that ignited my urge to procrastinate even further and do this little research. Even though connecting procrastination with research might sound somewhat like a oxymoron, let me clarify. I'm talking about blogger research. I was surprised to find something and then went to do some more searching and re-searching with some generic keywords such as "raat", "insaan", "desh", "pyaar", "Zindagi", "Kahani", and so on to see whether these keywords had any pattern as far as decades were concerned. Preliminary findings with the keyword "raat" gave me this:
Though I've no idea why the use of "raat" or stories about "raat" diminished from 1960s onwards; or why it was in high usage in the first place. Probably the convenience and cost of shootings indoor had much to do it?
Anyway, based on my working hypotheses described in a paragraph above, here's what I found, with running an analysis with keywords. The header of each decade represents the punchline.
Pre-1950s and 1950s: Jawani Ki Hawa
Doesn't gel. Does it?
Whenever I used to think of 1950s, I was more of the impression that it would have some love movies, with sacrifize, azaadi and desh and jawans taking the lead. And of course, Mother India. I think this movie was instrumental in thinking about the 1950s in this manner...we achieved independence in 1947, and therefore, there should be some sacrifice movies and some movies to remind of the bygone sufferings of pre-independent India. That's what I thought. So I searched with certain keywords.
And I found that expectantly, there were a few movies dwelling on life in general, some on Azaadi, and some on patriotic feelings, such as
Desh Deepak (1930),
Desh dasi (1930)
Azad (1940)
Desh Bhakta (1940)
Chhin Li Azaadi (1948)
Desh Sewa (1948)
Apna Desh (1949)
Swarg se Sundar Desh Hamara (1945 and 1959)
Pardesi, (1953 and 1958),
but what got my eyebrows up were the whopping number of movies dealing with "jawani" in the 1950s as well as in the pre-1950s, as compared to the later decades. I think they deserve a representation. The titles of these movies are illustrative, covered quite a range as observed below and of course, needs little description.
Young India, young blood, and hot jawani. Understandably, with our jawans getting the first taste of success, can jawani be far behind?
1960s: Pyar ka Mausam With jawani ka josh being subsided, people flocked to see Pyar, and speak of Ishq and Mohabbat. I'm not sure if people would have loved "Mohabbatein" if it were released in the 1960s and my hunch would be more in the negative, still, 1960s were indeed of Pyaar. No other generic keywords had 1960s so much represented as Pyar, Prem, Ishq and Mohabbat. Well, Pyaar was always there and will always be there, each decade, jawani foregone or not. Prem also had the 1930s brimming with it. If romantic movies had a golden era, among other kind of movies that the 60s are still so famous for, it would definitely be the 60s. This goes with quantity, as well as....arguably, quality.
1970s: Dum Maro Dum
Everybody knows that 70s had it all. It introduced the teenage romance, it had taut thriller movies that kept you on the edge, it had patriotic movies, ...in fact....the 70s turned copious results with each generic keyword. It was difficult to contain it in a category. You name a subject, and the 70s had it. You search with any keyword and the 70s had it. Entertainment was pumped up!
Clearly, the 70s tried to deal with an "all-round perspective" as far as an issue was concerned. Wholesome entertainment was its motto and Hindi cinema, up till then, had really come of age. This would be more evidenced, in the end. Stay put.
1980s: Paap ko Jalakar Raakh kar Doonga
80s really takes the limelight to a new intensity. With the society and films maturing and covering all, suddenly everything gets a nosedive to almost an adolescent intensity; something is found to be inherently wrong, and 80 is almost all about foaming anger, destructive fire, the kanoon being non-existent or malfunctioning and the dushmans being ubiquitious. Consider the following list, and this is a list in comparison to all the other decades, with just the keyword "Kanoon".
And, strangely, 1980s was also the leading decade of Kasam-s; the level of generalized trust onto others, was clearly quite low, and therefore the secure fastening of kasam was squarely put into place with almost everything. Take a look:
Chambal ki Kasam (1980)
Khuda Kasam (1981)
Sanam Teri Kasam (1982)
Kasam Durga Ki (1982)
Teri Kasam (1982)
Kasam Paida Karne Wale ki (1984)
Maa Kasam (1985)
Mujhe Kasam Hai (1985)
Yaadon ki Kasam (1985)
Yaar Kasam (1985)
Mohabbat ki Kasam (1986)
Kasam Suhaag Ki (1989)
Kasam Vardi ki (1989)
Let's move to 1990s now. I hypothesized that with the Khans, Nadeem-Shravan and Kumar Sanu, it would be mushy, maudlin and mellow. Ha!
1990s: Aag se Khelenge
Notice the verb in the above header. It clearly promises to continue to do something. So even with Pyar, pyar and pyar...and Aamir Khan, inexplicably, 1990s has the maximum movies dealing with "Aag", compared with all the other decades. Probably the fire ignited in the 1980s didn't die, even with all the love songs. Thus, though 90s were a decade of getting back to love, it was equally met with aagmark fire on the other front as well.
The aag movies:
Aag ka Dariya (1990)
Aag ka Gola (1990)
Apman ki Aag (1990)
Aag laga do sawan Ko (1991)
Yeh Aag kab Bujhegi (1991)
Aag ka Toofan (1993)
Aag Andhi aur Toofan (1994)
Aag aur Chingari (1994)
Mohabbat ki Aag (1997)
Phool aur Aag (1999)
Aag hi Aag (1999)
2000s: Popcorn Khao mast ho Jao
The 2000s had the butter while it made sure you couldn't smell it. Putting aside the pervasive movies based on love and vendetta, the 2000s is marked by nice bods, star children and of course movie names that wouldn't just give it away. As well as movies with names such as "Let's enjoy", "aloo chat", and "popcorn khao mast ho jao" where the bottomline promised was obviously fultoo entertainment, movies such as "Rock on!!" "Ek Chalis ki last local", "Being Cyrus" wouldn't tell a story in the title. Entertainment IS the keyword in this decade, and variety has no bounds as far movie titles and subjects are concerned. Movies are made on teenager, on gigolo, specifically on NRIs, EMI, as well as on how fake doctors could be good hearts.
The loss of linguistic puritanism is also evident in this decade as you see commonplace hindi words, as represented in erstwhile movie titles like Jab jab phool Khile, Angrakhshak, Hatya, Ghatak, give on to titles like Jab we met, Dil maange more, The Killer, Rules: Pyar ka Superhit formula, Murder, Fool N Final, Raaz: The Mystery Continues, Life in a Metro, No Smoking, Gangster, Girlfriend,Shakalaka Boom Boom, Luck By Chance, as compared to a handful of English titled movies of yesteryears (e.g. Evening in Paris, Around the World, Jewel Thief (1967)
"Company" did not speak of commercial business or the corporate world, but the commercial purpose behind the underworld. "Lagaan" spoke of something to do with "tax" but spoke a very different story than what could have been probably expected before the first day, first show. The 2000s didn't only want that the movie-goer should watch the movie in dark cinema halls with popcorn in hand; the decade focussed its attention on how in the age of trailers and incessant music channels, it could keep the audience in the dark as to the nomenclature of the movies, the theme of the movie, as well as its predictability.
Therefore, came the item songs performed not by one who is specially skilled to do so (like Helen of yesteryears) but regular movie heroines or other curveceous models/VJ. It kept the interest burning, kept in contained and kept them guessing.
When it comes to guessing, I would have to mention this. As far as covering all ground were concerned, the 1970s truly covered all ground. Or, else, claimed to.
