Tyrion or Littlefinger or that sharp-witted Raven?

Rafi saab, Zindabad!

I saw Akshay Kumar, live. Like 20 feet away. Beat that in an update post. 'Course it was disorienting as hell. I've almost never seen celebrities up close. Except Andrew Symonds who I saw prowling on the boundary line, while I sat at the topmost row, and probably because of the ambience and the distance, that didn't feel very weird. I never bump into celebrities in airports and shit, possibly because I hardly give them a chance to bump into me. But Akshay Kumar, and Ayushman Khurana, and Vishal-Shekhar, whose concert was just phenomenal. True to word, the Flipkart Fly High party was one for the ages. Flipkart's an amazing company. There's smart people, and lots of parties, and lots of perks, and Macbooks, and very smart people who're very passionate about the work they do. Man, if stupidity is contagious, then intelligence is inspiring. You're not restricted from doing anything in office, so you'll find people reading, sleeping, playing, goofing around, arguing, working intensely and brainstorming just for the kicks. Its refreshing to be among a bunch of people who like coming to work, if you can call it that, every morning. I love this place. I'm sure my IQ must've increased atleast by a couple of points since I came here.

Apart from that, Bengaluru's been fun. Sravani took me to a couple of Carnatic concerts, but in tradition of my adherence to Donkey-Perfume proverbs, I didn't even know what the hell was even going on. But we're going to a Karthik Iyer concert in a couple of weeks. I hope he plays a few Raja- Rahman covers, otherwise it's going to be another waste of seat space. I also take part in the film discussions between Sandeep and Shravan, who make Kannada short films. I ( almost ) wrote a satire script for a 4-5 minute movie with Sandeep in it, but again, never got around to actually finish it. Never share a flat with somebody who's very committed. He yells at me every couple of days for not seeing anything to the finish. But then again, like that popular Telugu adage Birth- Habit- Cemetery so subtly puts it, its hard to overcome inbuilt vices. Very.

Talking of vices, I'm still not finishing most books I start. A recent exception being The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which despite the unimaginative and fairly generic writing, packs a punch in that climax. It wasn't as big a voila moment as the Gone Girl revelation, but I have to admit it was a bit of a surprise. I also met Purnima Tammireddy , who I had been acquainted through Kinige Patrika and we spent a great two hours talking about Saramago, Kundera, Meheranna, Calvino, Telugu Bloggers, Mullapudi and urban writing in Telugu. A complaint both of us had was that there was hardly any good urban writing in Telugu since the 1980s. Sure, there was political writing and casteist writing, and preachy writing and a lot of phony writing masquerading as well-intentioned, but there was hardly any these-are-our-lives-and-this-is-how-we-live art, in both cinema and literature, based on which our children could know the lives we lived. And a couple of weeks later, she lent me Cosmicomics and Cardus on Cricket, two books I've been meaning to read for a long time but haven't gotten around. I have partly read both of them, and as much as Cardus is a pleasure, I'm still not getting very comfortable with Calvino. I've never been a big fan of smart writing, if you know what I mean. The kind that plays around too much with the form, that is very self-conscious of its existence, that revels in its own wit and intelligence. The bits of Infinite Jest that I've read, for instance. While I claim I appreciate highbrow art, I suppose my tastes are tuned to middlebrow. Eventually, for me all art should come down to this- a conversation with a fairly intelligent, interesting man as he narrates anecdote after anecdote in a voice grizzled with age and experience, with a twinkle in his eye. It probably is a very limited way to look at it and that's why I'm trying to broaden by spectrum.

My tryst with audiobooks so far has been incredible. Perfume, read by Sean Barrett. A Free Man, read by Vikas Adam. The Harry Potter series, read by Jim Dale. Ushasri Ramayanam, read by Ushari. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, read by Jonathan Oliver. And the book I'm having an amazing time now with is The Game of Thrones, read by Roy Dotrice. GRRM's writing is extraordinary. I don't know how he manages to flesh out real human characters in just a couple of lines. To give you a recent example, there is a portion of the book that I heard yesterday where Catelyn Stark must convince a cunning, mean old man called Walter Frey and in just a couple of paragraphs, you get an idea of what this man must've been like to live with. And almost every one of Tyrion's lines is a gem that'll make even Aaron Sorkin green with envy. And Dotrice takes this material and fuses the narrations of the characters with life and energy and emotion and identity. If the purpose of art is to transport you to another world, these two magicians are to be listed among its greatest practitioners. Outstanding. To pick my favourite voice acting among this extraordinary collection is a tough task but as much as I love Tyrion and the Old Bear's raven, the honours should go to Littlefinger. Dotrice's voice drips with mockery as he voices Littlefinger. Astounding. Next on my list of audiobooks is Robert Hardy's version of the abridged version of Aubrey- Maturin. For those of you who've not heard of them before, I can't recommend Peter Weir's Master and Commander enough. Bromance at its best.

Yet its not just all been good films ( loved Talvar and the visceral experience of The Walk ) and great books. I've also been doing a bit of Android Programming and I must admit its quite tough, more so because my Java has always been below par. But the OS part was fun, thanks to good old trusty Linux. But I got a lot of homework to do. That's that then. And oh, Vikranth recommended this fascinating course a couple of weeks ago and I'm just starting on it. Quite interesting.

And for now, that's all folks.

సోల్ మెట్

I wrote this story last October. For Kinige Smart Story Competition. Word limit of 750 words. I spent more than a month wiling away, searching for ideal topics. On the day of the deadline, I went to watch Karthikeya because Bujji mama wanted me to watch and let him know how the film was. I parked my bike outside the theatre to save ten bucks and left my helmet with the bike. And then, this happened. 

--

ఈరోజు నా హెల్మెట్ పోయింది. సినిమా థియెటర్ బయట పార్క్ చేస్తే ఎవరో కొట్టేసారు. నేను చీకట్లో నవ్వుతూ, బాధపడుతూ, భయపడుతూ సినిమాలో పూర్తిగా నిమగ్నమైనప్పుడు ఎవరో బయట దాన్ని దొంగలించారు. నా హెల్మెట్ - గీతలు పడ్డ వైజర్ తో, వెనక ఊడిపోతున్న స్టిక్కర్లతో, అన్ని వైపులా ఉన్న గాట్లతో, నాతో ఎల్లవేళలా ఉన్న హెల్మెట్ ఈరోజు పోయింది. గత మూడేళ్ళుగా నన్ను రక్షిస్తూనో, నాకు అపాయింటుమెంటు ఇచ్చిన వాళ్ళని కలవడానికి వెళ్ళినప్పుడు నా బాగ్ కి వేళాడుతూనో, లేక నేను తనని బైక్ కి తగిలించి గంటలు గంటలు మరిచిపోతే నాకోసం ఓపిగ్గా యెదురు చూస్తూనో ఉండేది. నేను బండి మీద వెళుతున్నప్పుడు పాటలు పాడుతున్నా, లేక పగటి కలలు కంటూ ఎన్నో గంటలు నాతో నేనే మాట్లాడుతున్నా విసుక్కోకుండా వినేది. నేను నా గర్ల్ ఫ్రెండ్ కోసం యెదురు చూస్తూ తన మీద డ్రమ్స్ వాయిస్తే నవ్వేది, అర్జెంటు పని ఉండి రోడ్డు మీద విపరీతమైన ట్రాఫిక్ లో ఇరుక్కు పోయి ఏం చేయాలో తెలియక, ఆ కోపాన్ని తన మీద చూపిస్తూ తనని కొడితే మౌనంగా భరించేది. 

తను నా నిరంతర సహచరిగా ఉండి, నా కోపాలనీ, సంతోషాలనీ నాతో పాటు అనుభవిస్తూ, నన్ను తన protective veil నుండి జీవితాన్ని చూడనిచ్చింది. అర్థ రాత్రులలో హఠాత్తుగా వచ్చే భయంకరమయిన లారీ హార్న్ లను వింటే నేను బెదురుతానని, వాటిని నా వరకు రానివ్వకుండా తాను ఇంకించుకునేది. నేను తనచే కల్పించబడిన సురక్షితమయిన స్థానం లో రంగు రంగుల కలలు కంటున్నప్పుడు, తను ఎండలో, వానలో తడుస్తూ నన్ను కాపాడేది. మేమిద్దరం కలిసి పాటలు వింటూ, తలాడిస్తూ ప్రయాణిస్తునప్పుడు నా earphones పోలీసులకు కనబడ కుండా దాచేసేది. మేము ట్రాఫిక్ సిగ్నల్ దగ్గర ఆగినప్పుడు, వెరైటి మనుషులని చూసి జోకులేసుకొని ముసి ముసి నవ్వులు నవ్వుకుంటే వాళ్ళు చూడకుండా నా చూపులనీ, నవ్వులనూ దాచేసేది. ఈ  విషయాలన్నీ నాకప్పుడు తెలీవు, తను నాకెప్పుడూ తెలియనివ్వలేదు. తను లేక ఇప్పుడు ఇంటికొస్తూంటే తెలిసొచ్చాయి. అన్నిటి కన్నా బాధాకరమైన విషయం ఏంటంటే ఇన్ని రోజుల్లో తనని ఒక్కసారి కూడా నేను ఆప్యాయంగా నిమిరి, ఎలా ఉన్నావు అని అడగలేదు; ప్రేమగా పలకరించలేదు.

గమ్మత్తయిన సంగతి ఏంటంటే ఇప్పుడు నేను తన స్పర్శని ఫీల్ అవ్వగలుగుతున్నాను. నా చెంపల మీద తన గట్టిబడి పోతున్న ఫోం, నా మెడ దెగ్గర ఊగిసలాడుతున్న తన స్ట్రాప్, నా ఊపిరి నిండా తన వాసన పరిమళిస్తోంది. ఇప్పుడు నేను చేయి జాపితే, తన వీపుమీదున్న సగం ఊడిన Studds స్టికర్ ని తాకగలుగుతాను. ఇప్పుడు తను నా కళ్ళెదురుగానే ఉంది, ఒంటి నిండా దెబ్బలతో మచ్చలతో, ఆ సగం విరిగిన వైజర్ ఎడమ స్క్రూతో. తన లాగ ఎన్నో వేల హెల్మెట్లు తయారై ఉండుంటాయి, ఒకప్పుడు అచ్చం తనలాంటివే. వాటన్నింటిలో నుండి తను నా జత అయ్యింది- యాదృచ్ఛికమేనా? మా ఈ మూడేళ్ళ కాపురంలో, మేము కలిసి గడిపిన యెన్నో వేల ఘడియల్లో తను నా సొంతమైంది. ఎన్నో సార్లు తను సర్దుకుపోతూ నన్ను perfect గా accomodate చేసింది. అప్పుడప్పుడూ అనిపించేది, తను నా ఆలోచనలను చదవగలిగేదేమోనని, నా అవసరాలను నాకన్నా ముందే పసిగట్టేదేమోనని. నేను వైజర్ పైకెత్తి బండి నడుపుతున్నప్పుడు, హఠాత్తుగా దుమ్మూ పొగ వస్తే, నేను వైజర్ దించుదాము అనుకునే లోపు, అప్పటి దాకా firm గా clamp అయ్యి ఉన్న వైజర్ ఠక్కున కిందికి జారేది.

తను ఎప్పుడూ నాతోనే ఉంది, ఎప్పుడూ తోడు వీడలేదు. కానీ ఈరోజు నేను నా నిర్లక్ష్యం వలన తనని పోగొట్టుకున్నాను. తను నా కోసం ఎదురు చూస్తునప్పుడు, నేను తన గురించి మరిచిపోయాను. నేను తనని థియెటర్ లోనికి తీసుకు వెళ్ళి ఉండవచ్చు కానీ తనొక భారం అనుకున్నాను. నేను తనని బండికి లాక్ చేసి ఉండవచ్చు కానీ తనని ఎవరు తీసుకెళతారులే అనుకున్నాను. పాతపడిన, నిండా గాట్లున్న హెల్మెట్టే కదా, ఎవడు పట్టుకుపోతాడులే అని నాకు నేను సర్దిచెప్పుకున్నాను. నా నిర్లక్ష్యం మా ఇద్దరినీ ఇంత బాధ పెడుతుంది అని నేను ఊహించలేదు. ఎవడో తనని బండి నుండి తీస్తునప్పుడు, తీసుకొని నడుస్తూ వెళ్ళిపోతునప్పుడు, తను నా కోసం పిలిచినప్పుడు నేను తన దగ్గరకు పరుగుతీయలేదు. ప్రమాణ పూర్తిగా చెబుతున్నాను, సినిమా చూస్తునప్పుడు, సెకండ్ హాఫ్ లో గుండె చివుక్కుమంది, నన్ను ఎవరో పిలుస్తున్నట్టు అనిపించింది. 

తను ఈరోజు దూరమవుతుందని ముందే తెలిసున్నాబాగుండేదేమో. తనకి బై చెప్పే అవకాశం కూడా దొరకలేదు- థాంక్యూ చెప్పుండే వాడిని, తనంటే నాకెంత ఇష్టమో చెప్పుండే వాడిని, తను నా జీవితంలో ఎంత ముఖ్యమో తెలియజేసే వాడిని. తను ఇప్పుడెక్కడున్నా నా గురించే ఆలోచిస్తూంటుంది, కొత్త వాళ్ళ నడుమ భయపడుతూంటుంది, నా రాక కోసం ఎదురు చూస్తూంటుంది. నాకు తెలుసు. 

నా ఈ ఆరాటం తనని చేరితే బాగుండు. ఎందుకంటే తనకి ఈ మాటలని విని అర్థం చేసుకొని, స్పందించే హృదయముంది. అదేంటో, ఇన్ని రోజులూ తనని ఏ పేరుతోనూ పిలవలేదు. ఆ అవసరం రాలేదు. మా ఇద్దరి సమక్షంలో నేను మాట్లాడిన మాటలన్నీ తనకేనని మా ఇద్దరికీ తెలుసుననేమో. 

నాకెంత బాధగా ఉందంటే తను రోజూ ఉండే స్టూల్ వంక కూడా చూడలేక పోతున్నాను. హెల్మెట్ పోయిందని ఏడుస్తున్నాను అంటే జనాలు నవ్వుతారని ఏడుపాపుకుంటున్నాను. అయినా పిచ్చి జనం, వాళ్ళకేం తెలుసు మా అనుబంధం. నువ్వు తొందర్లోనే దొరకాలని దేవుడికి మొక్కుకుంటాను. అప్పటి దాక, నన్ను గుర్తుంచుకుంటావు కదా సోల్ మెట్?

On picking a side and getting into the fight

Will Durant, in his The Case for India, writes that we must all choose a side, and get into the fight, because life cannot wait till the knowledge is complete. It is so much easier to say, "that's his opinion; he must have his reasons and what right have I to dissuade him"; or "his actions, however cruel, must be motivated because of events that must've made him what he is.  I don't have the authority to judge him because if I'd walked his path, I might've done the same"; or "there is no bad art. Different people have different tastes". All these statements arrive at the same conclusion. In a world which we're increasingly led to believe is subjective, it is almost impossible to measure and decide objectively what is good and what is bad. As much as one must make concessions for subjectivity and inherent biases, this seems like a cop out to me. Ofcourse, a cruel man must've become like that because of childhood traumas ( popular culture generates surface level sympathy in all of us and has turned us into a society of Stockholm Syndrome afflicted patients ) but that doesn't mean there's no threshold a society can create to ensure others don't have to suffer because of one man's maladies. And yes, there is bad art. No, Marcel Duchamp's Fountain is not art. It is a political statement. As are 'Atharintiki Daaredi is a shit film' and 'Yakub Memon shouldn't have been hanged' ( No, by no means am I placing those statements on the same status but just making a case in point for everything being equally political ). Politics, and particularly Political Philosophy, is a Social Science where newer principles and ideologies go mainstream way more frequently than other fields of thought. Everything ought to be respected, but nothing is sacred. Religion is political, Art is political. All of us must pick our allegiances, fight for our beliefs. About things as trivial (?) as Federer vs Nadal, or if sharing TV Series spoilers on Social media is ethical, to if anachronistic Government Censoring bodies should be allowed to exist in a world that's becoming more and more complex and fragmented, or if it was all Lalit Modi/ N Srinivasan's fault or we're equally responsible as passive consumerist bystanders? These are important questions and I'm sure they will lead to fantastic, mind expanding discussions but we don't have them, atleast not in public consciousness, because we're either intimidated by the mobs or we're too soft on each others opinions.

We are defined more by what we choose to oppose than what we accept. All our friends fall somewhere within the acceptance spheres of our likes and principles but it is our who enemies give us personalities, make us draw territories and stand guard on what we believe is right. All the Hippie World Peace- No Borders shit is fine but real life is about opinions and allegiances, acceptance thresholds and intense beliefs, objective principles and conscious drawing of lines. I respect your opinion that you like Tendulkar but I can argue hard to convince you that Dravid was better. We might not be able to budge each other off our pedestals but I hope we can make the other person see from a different point of view and empathise. Cultured debate is the cornerstone of any progressive, liberal society ( After the Charlie Hebdo killings, Devdutt Pattanaik made a fantastic case for violence as a form of counter-argument against intellectual imperialism. I highly recommend it ). Harthals and mob actions are, very validly, forms of dissent and disapproval, and there is no need to look down upon them, but the consequences of their actions are final ( killings and physical mutilations ). So though sometimes justifiable, they are also barbaric and ill-tempered. ( Now, actually, that's a topic for a fantastic discussion )

I have been watching quite some standup comedy of late, and I love what these guys are doing. Consciously, or otherwise, they are raising questions that we, as a society, ought to answer. Questions about Freedom of Speech, role and responsibility of Public Figures, about habits and practices that are so deeply imbibed that we don't questions their fidelity anymore. True, they stereotype, and not all of them are political in the strictest sense, but they pick our most commonplace opinions and actions, and question them. They are, the very good ones, public intellectuals. George Carlin questions censorship and war, Bill Hicks questions authority of state, Nitin Gupta talks about such political things that no one in India wants to talk about ( except ofcourse Anurag Kashyap ), Danny Fernandes uses powerful irony to make us feel ashamed of so many of our head turns and blind spots. The others ( EIC, AIB, TVF ) stick mostly to films but they're acting as our questioning consciouses ( They ask the questions that we have deep inside us like "Why are we taking these shit films?", "Is this even art?", "Is the average Indian filmgoer so crass and unsophisticated and unlearned?" ) and they're doing a brilliant job of articulating. They might not be always right, like they ought not to be, but it is important to keep asking questions to move forward as a society. I believe the primary responsibility of an artist is to deal with his inner demons but by creating the art they do, they question the audience and the society they're talking to- Is this acceptable in a society you want to live in ( eg: Female Objectification, Simple Moralizing ), Does art have to be so uninvigorating to be popular, Do you want to be passive consumers or active participants, Should news channels with foulmouthed idiotic anchors be patronized or not ( I try and avoid watching an Arnab Goswami or a Sampoornesh Babu clip, even to laugh, because that too is one form of engagement and encouragement. I don't want the scourge to know it is capable of grabbing my attention ). And I think we should respond to those questions, get into those arguments, complete those discussions, talk and write about it in all forums, big or small. What, and how, we choose to answer will either make our world a little better or not.


"Time and again, I’ve said this. I can’t change the world. And a book can’t change the world. But you bet I can try. I have no business to be around if I don’t try." -Kiran Nagarkar

you are the work you leave behind

I like talking to Dheeraj. For one, I talk more than I listen and since చెప్పేవాడికి వినేవాడు లోకువ, I guess, I talk a lot of stuff that doesn't make any sense and still expect to have an audience. And two, I feel deeply about advising him because he's a few years younger and I want him to walk the path I wish I had back then. I'm not sure about the first but the second reason is an exercise in futility. Somewhere in the back of my head I know he needn't and won't listen to me, just like I didn't when others told me at that age. It is the old who are deluded, the young are fiery with righteousness. Yet, I suppose, I like talking to him just as I like talking to others because my own words, when directed at others, take different shapes and come back to me through different routes and force me to scrutinize them.

Today we spoke about MAP. I told him that if he has to choose between a job he likes and a workplace with smarter/ interesting people, he should choose the latter. I told him that all formal training modes are humbug and the only way to learn is to pick up jobs and get them done. And I guess we concurred together that every idea that comes out of our head is not art and that shaping it in a certain way is the key ingredient. We also spoke about Rahman, genius and how newer educational methods are messing up with our kids' heads by telling them that all are talented and special, when they fuckin' aren't. True Genius, or just Genius, since that's the only kind there is, is truly beyond the comprehension of mortals and beyond the grasp of training. It is special and rare. He raved about Meheranna's blog and we gushed over జానకితో జనాంతికం. He spoke about Mulaaqat and Nanga, and I advocated Screenwriting Principles picked up from the lectures of Aaron Sorkin and Charlie Kaufman. We also wished we had the talent of Anurag Kashyap but looked like Imtiaz Ali.

And then I told him what I thought I'd never tell anyone. I told him to take life seriously. That words are nothing but air, just like fart; And that no matter what you say, it is the work you do that will eventually matter, ever. I told him about Malcolm Gladwell's theory about Quality being a Probabilistic Function of Quantity and that he should stop looking back at what he'd done or wanted to do and look forward to what he ought and wants to do. I told him to take up a job and that the best way of knowing yourself is to be at the receiving end of a spiteful, demeaning talk from your boss which will make you feel like an idiot and a fool. And an ignoramus. ( Idiot and Fool are most probably wrong but Ignorant is not ). And that humility is the trait of a confident person and it is fear that makes us self-conceited. I also told him to keep reading, to keep expanding, to keep evolving, to stop doing things he didn't really care about and to take up things that he'd give his 100% to. And that the only reason we don't like something is because of our ineptitude at doing it ourselves. ( స్నేహితులు నీకున్న ఇష్టాలే, శత్రువులు నీలోని లోపాలే ).

Thank you Dheeraj for making me say what I had to hear. The work we do is what we have and that's the only thing that can lead us to Moksha. Everything else is just fantasy. This is my life and it's ending one wishful daydream at a time.

abstraction of the tactile

About a fortnight ago, I discovered this beautiful essay in a wonderful book called Curious. In the essay, Georges Perec talks about the infraordinary ( objects that are the opposite of extraordinary: the everyday, the common, the mundane ) which I thought was not just profound, but also beautifully articulated. A part of that credit must go the translator, those thankless artists to who we owe a large part of our artistic pleasures, and I felt right at home in Perec's sensibilities. Here was a writer who was telling us that as much as the bizarre and the surreal help us look at our lives through different spectrums, if we only paid a little attention to what was in right front of us, the world contained multitudes of intellectual, sensual, emotional and spiritual pleasures. This feeling was accentuated when I went to the mechanic to get my bike repaired, and as he removed layer after layer of the bike, I was stunned by the secrets it held and to which I hadn't given the slightest thought to despite spending hours on it. Though it could also be argued that the world has grown way too complex for one man to truly understand all of it, like demonstrated skillfully in this essay and this talk, I couldn't help but feel a pang of nostalgia for the time when regular guys, fathers and uncles, could more or less repair everything that had to be in their houses and offices.

Talking of nostalgia for mostly imaginary worlds re-created from books and films, Meheranna's fantastic posts articulate the feeling I have about escaping to a simpler world ( in my case, Hyderabad in late 80s and early 90s ). Wishful thinking, a part of my brain tells me; You will never be able to re-create lost worlds, like ( I've been told ) Proust discovered. But I don't want to re-create them as much as preserve them somewhere deep inside, where I will be able to visit them in moments of pronounced loneliness. Coming to think of it, isn't everything just wishful thinking. Like some of us are dreaming of recreating the past, aren't many trying to create a future devoid of the 'problems' of the past. Aren't we trying to 'learn' from our 'mistakes' and create more 'efficient' systems? Aren't we all trying to find and adapt to patterns all the time? If there is indeed Nirvana/ Enlightenment/ Realization, isn't it either finding the biggest pattern of them all ( the Grand Unified Theory ) or admitting that everything is random/ coincidental ( Quantum Mechanics )? Or am I just being foolhardy because I'm trying to fit the unknown future into already existing patterns. The upcoming Black Swan event might not just show that all swans are not black but that the birds we've been assuming are swans, aren't swans at all. And no, this isn't about language fallacy.

This brings me to the idea of following patterns in the creation of art too. What is avant-garde for one generation, either dies off as fad or gets subsumed into another school of thought or creates another school of thought i.e., it becomes a part of a pattern. As an example, when you pick up a screenwriting manual, what you see, at the core of the narrative is either the vindication of the underdog, or the enlightenment of the ignorant. We like those stories, either because we grew up in a culture that celebrates them or something deeply human in us responds to it. Similarly, all stories more of less follow structures of parallelism or symbolism or some of the other Pudovkin's montage techniques. We like leitmotifs because it brings the comfort of similarity. And we like symbolism because pure randomness is not only frightening, but also too complex for us to hold on to the narrative strands. People have tried other things, as we always do, and Beckett's Waiting for Godot or Camus' The Stranger come to mind, but ironically, they too created patterns for randomness and indifference. We don't seem to care if the universe is indeed beyond our grasp as long as we're able to grasp atleast that idea. Nothingness, like the reason for suffering or the quest for knowledge, becomes harder to understand the more we grope around it.

To paraphrase Taleb, the modest man is, in reality, the most arrogant because he thinks he knows better than to come off as arrogant. It's a funny universe, where both claiming you know or accepting that you don't will only prove you wrong. In such a world, the only thing we can do is question our teaspoons.

on the guilty pleasure of reading middlebrow

What makes great art great? Who's claim elevates a book or a movie to the status of a Classic? And is being called a classic always a good thing? Most artists would agree that they would want atleast a part if their oeuvres to end up as classics and be studied long after they're gone. But its also most likely that they were hooked to their artforms not because they were astonished by the genius of a classic but because they were captivated and engrossed by the sheer spectacle of highbrow's lower cousin, the middlebrow art piece. Again, these terms are just for the sake of convenience. All labels are just useful contrivances. I had been watching films since I was a child. I enjoyed watching cartoons and the occasional movie in the television. I must admit that going to a theatre had less to do with the merits of the movie and the good time I was going to have there in the presence of friends or family. Understanding and critiquing, judging and pondering over the art was still a long way away. But then one day Amma took me watch Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring with a large bunch of her animation acquaintances. They were going to the film because they wanted to look at the technical aspects of such hyped special effects. I was probably 11 and still remember the look of  shocked faces of her friends who saw that I was deeply sleeping while sitting on the bike between them. Those days, I could doze off in seconds on any automobile; It just had to be moving. Anyway, I didn't move out of my seat as the film ended, enthralled by the visual spectacle and as the end credits rolled, I, who had wanted to be a diver, astronaut, soldier, mountaineer, scientist among a whole bunch of other things till then, for the first time ever, wanted to be a film director. I didn't know what a director did or if I had it in me to be one. I had seen something magical, something that engrossed and engaged me so deeply for the duration of its running time, that for the first time, I was awakened to the possibilities and powers of the art form. All movies till then had kept me firmly in the state I was in. I was never thrust out of the sphere of my immediate consciousness.  This movie, however, had shown me glitz and colour of the world outside. That, for me, is middlebrow. It's that spectacular car chase, that totally unexpected twist in the tale, that captivating bit of original orchestration. Its engaging, entertaining and enthralling. It removes the burden of our self-conscious, even if only for a few moments, and frees us up by its breathtaking audacity. It unshackles our dreams and fantasies, helps us see the world in an entirely new light, takes us to the fantasyland full of interesting people and surprising events. It relieves boredom. Lowbrow, atleast for the scope of this essay, is not smart enough for us to invest in it as much as we'd like to. These thresholds, obviously, change from person and person and their respective moods, but nevertheless, lowbrow is what we feel like when forced to play with children in their annoying games. "What the fuck am I doing here?", is the unanswered question looping in our brains. Middlebrow is like that fantastic puzzle that's neither too easy nor too hard. Just hard enough to tantalize us but eventually conceding the upper hand so that we can feel better and smarter about ourselves when its over. Figuring it out isn't too hard.

Harry Potter was that watershed moment for me in literature. I grew up on a steady supplement of Tinkles and illustrated, bold-font fairy tales. Harry Potter, likewise, opened the trapdoor that was curtailing my imagination. It gave direction to my reveries. The instant I realized you were allowed to think like that, I started adapting and supplementing it as per the requirement of my daydreams. Life doesn't have to mean boring realism where you followed morals. It can mean magic, adventure, becoming a hero and having great friends. This was followed by Enid Blyton, who though I hear is forbidden to be read in England, has given us Indians a great place to escape to where we could walk the moors, swim in lakes, eat bacon and eggs, and the like. Now, as I write this, I'm beginning to wonder why fantasy is such a popular genre with teenagers. When you're too young, either you're not equipped to grasp what its trying to say or life is more or less fairly easy and comfortable. As you step into twenties, you become your own man and reality seems to offer more possibilities than any fantasy. But your teenage years are the years where you want an escape route from the oppressive tyranny of normalcy and the unpredictable behaviour of your immediate society. You can neither adjust nor escape in real-life. Fantasy offers an alternative universe.

Admittedly, all art is escapism. Whatever your reasons are- there are times when you want to escape the incessant talking of the annoying git in your head or he's become so silent in grief that you want to reignite his passion. Art's, apologies for the choice of the word, the fuel. The elixir. But, I'm digressing. I was talking about how middlebrow introduces us to the world outside. After that phase comes a period in time where stuff starts happening to us. Love, grief, responsibility, questions on morality and mortality, on the purpose of life. You know, the grown-up stuff. Sherlock Holmes will seem childish then, Shantaram cinematic. Finding Neverland too kitschy, Dil Chahta Hai too unreal. This is the time when the world within takes priority over the world outside. The silence between the words seems to contain multitudes than the non-stop chatter. For me, this phase was brought about by three books- The Catcher in the Rye, The Fountainhead and One Hundred Days of Solitude. They might not be in the same league as Ulysses and Anna Karenina. Or Dostoevsky or Dickens. But for me, at that stage in life, these books were revelations. They led me away from vain spectacle to the profound everyday. From the artificial propulsions of plot to the altering rhythms of reality. They were not offering me escape routes, though, looking back now, I'm afraid I can't say the same about Ayn Rand, but were asking me to confront the reality of my being, my nature, my existence. I was becoming a grownup.

I lived like that for a while. Trying to get my hands on masterpieces, in literature, music and cinema. I imitated the lofty air of a connoisseur, dismissing anything approachable as unworthy, entertaining as a sellout, understandable as dishonourable. It was during these days that I shivered at the thought of ever having enjoyed reading Five Point Someone, The Alchemist and City of Joy. I was letting literati get the better of me; Mimic others' opinions as my own, unable to understand that that'd make me a trained monkey and not an independent thinker. I wanted to be separate from the majority, even if it meant cheating myself in the process. I championed avant-garde and bad craft, without really being able to differentiate between the both. Hopefully, I've grown out of this phase too.

Now, I like my Jeffrey Archer as much as I like my VS Naipaul, middlebrow magazines as much as JM Coetzee. And yet, even now, I feel guilty while reading an airport paperback. I know I have limited time and I want to experience art at its richest. Great art, as per my understanding, is something that pushes the limits of the form itself. It takes shapes that no one before could've envisioned. But after a point in time, it becomes the norm, it doesn't seem as earth-shattering anymore. Like TH Huxley once said, all new truths begin as heresies and end as superstitions. The Seventh Seal doesn't invigorate me because it seems too slow, too cliched, too predictable. It suited the lifestyles and rhythms and philosophical investigations of a specific time and place. It might have been groundbreaking then, but is just an old, boring film now. Crime and Punishment might have raised some very important questions in Czarist Russia, but I can only see good intentions and bad writing. Accepted, the fault may lie within me for not being able to appreciate the genius of the work and when the right time comes, it might lead me to salvation but the time's not now. Great piece of art, by definition, should be able to transcend time and space and be universal but it sometimes can happen that a neglected, ridiculed piece of art in its time might be praised and lauded years later. The fate of an art work and the legacy of an artist is as much a chance of luck and randomness as anything else in life. There might be unheralded, unknown symphonies by a now forgotten 18th century Venetian artist, which might be rediscovered and reinterpreted a 100 years from now to greater acclaim than a Mozart.

I'm digressing, yet again. My point of starting this post was to ask whether impenetrability is the mark of a great piece of art. Modernism and Post-modernism have certainly lead us to believe the same. Infinite Jests, Waiting for Godots, Ulyssesss among a whole lot of other 20th century classics are bought and preserved but seldom read. I have the entire set of Viswanatha Satyanaraya's Ramayana Kaplavriksham in my Thatha's library but its reputation scares me to the point where I have been waiting for the right time to approach it. As much as its my stupidity and lack of erudition, I sometimes can't help but feel if being called a Classic, or Profound, or Staggering affect the artwork adversely. Art, after all, should be approachable. It should help us question our prejudices, alter our opinions, ignite dormant passions, create new interests and help us lead better lives. For that, they have to be watched, read, listened with love and an open mind over and over until we develop a relationship with them. Until we complement and complete them. I recently read a wonderful quote in Telugu that roughly translates into, "A book is rewritten everytime a reader starts reading it". I'd rather love a piece of art than admire it respectfully from a distance. I'd rather live messily with it than protect it in a showcase as an adornment. And I wish more writers would read all sorts of stuff and write books that are, both, approachable and profound. With the insouciance of lowbrow, craft of middlebrow, and the art of highbrow. 

art will save the world

The biggest upside of coming to Bangalore has been the chance to have long, freewheeling conversations with Sravani and Hareesh. We talk about a lot of things, some statements reaffirming my opinions and others forcing me to come out of my shell and try and look at the issue at hand from a totally unexpected point of view. About relationships, about marriage, about urban living, about the lives we'll live ahead, about Indian mythology, and the bloated narcissism of theme weddings. And one very intense argument with Ram on the topic of Science as a torch towards knowledge and if it was causing any betterment to the human civilization.  Yeah, the same old stuff. I guess no matter where you take me, I'll carry my deep seated insecurities and judgements, thoughts and viewpoints with me. And then, without fail, at the end of every discussion, I go meta and question the validity and potency of my version of thoughts and wonder if I'm just blabbering fancy terms or for once know what the fuck I'm talking about. Its very humbling, that voice which asks if I'm just an ignorant asshole overestimating the significance of my thoughts and I'm hoping it'll help me stay grounded and open-minded.

Anyway, before I forget, in In the light of what we know, Rahman makes what I think is a very acute observation. ( Since this piece is like an interior monologue anyway, should I mention I think explicitly since everything on this blog is more or less an outpouring of my thoughts? ) Talking about the relationship between thought and expression, he says as much as we use language to express the thoughts inside our head, we also sometimes use language as a crutch to grope at the thoughts we're not able to define clearly yet. And this led me to thinking if this is what the elders mean when they speak about when they forbid us from using 'negative' words. In the moment that we choose a phrase to express a thought, aren't we also creating the thought or moulding it in a way to suit out purposes? Also, of late, I came up with a pet theory which I kind of think explains how our brains use analogies to find patterns in all the data we ingest. In our minds, every bit of information, is its own meta-information. Every word/ thought/ image/ sound stands not only as a representation of something in the real world, but also as a symbol for itself.

One of the topics that we contested was on the notion of personal space in a relationship. While they argued that it is imperative for every person in a relationship to still have some time off, I argued that this whole concept of personal space was a very western outlook. Since the self changes every moment, to begin to group all these infinite selves rigidly as one person was not a very clever approach. What I am at this moment is a culmination of surrounding environment, the thoughts running in my head, my mood, the attentiveness of my senses, my history leading upto this moment among a host of other things. And thus the self is a very fluidic concept and there should be no hard and fast rules binding a person to a commitment that they must've made under very difference circumstances. But as I even said this, I found that I was contradicting myself, by using my Midhunam analogy, which I always do when talking about relationships. How is it that Appadasu and Buchilakshmi stayed in love till the end. I'm sure they must've fought, disagreed, hated the other, cribbed, bickered and resented staying together as much as they must've had a great, great time living together. What exactly does love mean then?

Another interesting discussion that we verged on was the irrationality of human beings. Gods are gods because they're predictable- they're compassionate and just, they follow dharma. For all their crimes and misdemeanours, they're still on the right side of following the rules they've set. Humans, on the other hand, are far more interesting because they act in ways that aren't commonsensical. We display kindness, anger, hatred and curiosity when we'd probably be better off without them. A god might not go out of his way to ease someone else's discomfort but humans mostly do. And I feel good about it. That we can be all proper and systematic if we want to, but we choose serendipity and whim over pure cold reason. The world, for all its shortcomings, still survives because of it.

Nature is Brighter than the Sun, but Culture is Brighter Still.
  

the thing about living

The trouble with great acting is that its an oxymoron. Just like great cinematography. If, when looking at a particularly great composition, I become aware of its greatness, and am pulled out of the context of the film, it's not a great shot anymore. And acting is the same for me. When I'm watching an exquisite actor like, say, Kamal Hassan or Philip Seymour Hoffman, I am so taken away with the intensity of their adherence to the craft that I become more enamored with the actor rather than feel the emotions of the character. I don't know if its my fault, because of late I have been thinking more and more about the artificiality of the artistic medium, or if many people feel the same way, but I'd rather watch a good actor in medium shot going about his thing than a great actor in close up, his face all contorted in pain and potency. When I first read about Bresson's use of 'models' instead of 'actors' to convey an emotion, I didn't really get it. I grew up on a steady diet of fantastically talented classical actors who shouted and cried and roared and laughed on the screen with no inhibitions whatsoever that it was a pleasure watching them. What I didn't realize was that what I was watching was not the film medium but recorded theatre. The difference is subtle but crucial. Theatre, atleast till 19th century, had been associated with mythology and superhuman characters. The literature that fed it was that of epic poems and heroic narratives. I am no more than a novice in matters of the evolution of various art forms, but from what little I've read and understood, cinema, though starting off with the same aspirations, soon realized that it could be more. Two factors shaped 60s and 70s World Cinema, widely considered to be the Golden era of film, where cinema moved from being a low art to high art, thanks to contributions of powerful artists like Bergman, Antonioni, Kubrick, Tarkovsky, Bresson, Scorsese among a host of others. One was the realization that unlike Drama, Cinema didn't have to thunder along to involve the last spectator in the audience. Its power lay in the silence, in the everyday, in the minute, in the serendipitous. All this, thanks to the camera, which allowed filmmakers to show what exactly they wanted. The other major realization came thanks to Kuleshov Effect which showed that the power of cinema lay in its montage. By being able to control the tone and tempo of the narrative, filmmakers seduced the audience slowly into the world they were creating. And thus the central artist of the film was not the actor anymore but the director. Welcome to Auteur Theory.

I started reading Zia Haider Rahman's In the light of what we know, my interest piqued mostly due to James Wood's loving review, and for all that's nice about the book so far, not least its immense erudition and immersive voice, I can't help but flinch at the portions where the author walks out of the story to point to the readers his act of creating the story. I suppose a few years ago, this was vogue. The recurring images of film crew in A Taste of Cherry come to mind and how Kiarostami used them to point to the viewer the artificiality of it all. Initially, I was in awe of this brilliant conceit, like when I came across Calvino's If on a winter's night a lonely traveler where the writer literally guides the reader, but now it only irritates me. I know, I made a short film with friends about friends talking about making a short film with friends, but I'll be the first to admit it's no great idea. If anything, its overused, cliched and lazy. I don't know when this sort of literature caught on, that of writing about a writer's inability to write, but I think its time for us to move on.

The first and foremost requirement of all art is the suspension of disbelief from the audience. We know this isn't probably real, that this was rehearsed and fine tuned and that all emotions that we feel during the course of a film is the director manipulating us into feeling it. And yet we latch on because if only for a few fleeting moments, we want to escape from the prison of our heads and try understanding what it feels to be someone else. Well, it could be argued that even if we were to know what it feels to be in someone's else's shoes, it would still be Us Thinking Like Someone Else. That is what my rational mind tells me, that I can't escape the tyranny of being stuck in my own head. To paraphrase Nietzsche,  it's the unbearable burden of being. But yet, the romantic within me refuses to subscribe to that thought completely. Ebert called cinema a machine that generates empathy. I am a believer in the psychotherapy theory that says that we don't see things for what they are but we project our feeling onto them and see only a reflection of our moods and prejudices ( Rorschach Test ); Which again is what Advaita Philosophy seems to suggest.

I have assumed for sometime now that all art is just a fantasy to provide meaning and narrative to randomness and complexity. I am a fan of well written artist profiles, especially those of filmmakers', and I frequently compare my childhood and growing years to theirs, searching for similarities and attuning myself to the things they did differently so that someday I can be a filmmaker myself. But even while reading it, and though it satiates me at a very surface level, I can't come to believe that their lives could be so neatly divided into episodes. Dreamy childhood, troubled adolescence, young adult age plagued with doubt and existential queries, and finally a decisive moment that makes them realize their destiny and act in way of fulfilling it. When I read that Linklater watched 600 films a year at one point in time, or that Wes Anderson started directing shorts since the age of 8 or that Tarantino watched every film in his video library and writes like a possessed man, I think that's all I have to do be the next big thing. Yet, once I get to emulating them, I'm tormented with all sorts of doubts popping into my head, my mind wavering while watching a film, my laziness while facing an empty page. It is easier to dream of myself as the next big thing than it is to dive deep into myself and understand the basis of my thoughts, ideas, dreams and actions. For all my liking of learning and my curiosity in a lot of eclectic things, I sometimes question myself if I really have enough love for the art/craft to pursue it at the cost of everything else, like a possessed man. Like a true artist.

I often wonder what my are motivations for doing what I do. I like telling myself and others that the end of an action should be the process of doing the action itself. I don't know how that philosophy came into my head, I suppose from a collection of sources ranging from Bhagvad Gita to Sufi Philosophy, and Camus' The Stranger to Zen Buddhism, but I don't know if I believe in it all the time. Well, to begin with, as much as I had a great time making Based on a True Story or while writing 90s Blues, the fact that I started doing it in the first place was because of the romantic notion of the artist in my head. And the fact that I had to let a few thoughts out of my head to make space for more, newer ones. The process of creating in itself is more relieving than exhilarating. The writing just flows at times, but more often than not it is a labour of love, including procrastinations, frustrations and every artists's perpetual companion- self-doubt. For everything I've written or made, I have been plagued by thoughts of audience's reactions and the worth of the piece itself. And it is probably because of these things, that a subconscious switch went off in my head, and I tell myself even if no one likes it, I can always use it as a historical document to see what I was like at that point in time.

Now back to where we started off. What is art and why do we pursue it? Taking that question up another level, what's life for after all? Some tell me I'm here to attain realization and become one with the creator. But what sort of a creator would create me and then see me struggle and fight and ultimately realize that all this is Maya and I should transcend it. Sometimes I feel burdened with the prospect of living and growing into a grumpy middle-aged family man, a life full of compromises and unfulfilled promises, only to see it all go away as I enter the dusk of life. And yet at other times I feel I'm going ahead of myself, that for all my plans and expectations, life's going to happen the way its going to happen in real-life while I'm busy doodling and day-dreaming. The point of it all is still unclear. There's a certain artificiality to real-life as well. Like when you go meta and look at your life through the prism of art and narrative fiction. Both, the most methodical of directors like Kubrick and Anderson, and the free-flowing directors like Linklater and Jarmusch, consciously control as much as they can without strangling the inspiration but no matter how hard they try, they can't point to the source that bids them into doing what they do. The illusion of control is as real as it can get.

Like I said earlier, I detest it when an author talks like a character in a piece. And yet I do probably it because I'm an egocentric git and would like to bring it to your notice that I wrote this piece. But did I? Am I not just a scribe? The original title of this piece was 'the thing about acting' but now after all this meandering, I'm changing it. Because living is acting itself, in the strictest sense of the word. Wasn't it Shakespeare who said, "All the world's a stage, and all men and women merely players"? That man was onto something. And yet the bizarre thing about life is that even when we realize that all this might be a puppeteer's play, we can't decide if that's the real emotion of the actor or an actor playing a character who's supposed to think that.

Before Cartoon Network became CN

I had a great time growing up in urban India in the nineties and the early oughties, both in Delhi and Hyderabad. We didn't have internet invading our homes, no cell phones to keep us hooked; And thankfully no iPads to play Angry Birds on even before we got potty trained. What we had, instead, was freedom to stay out all day during summer holidays and evenings on schooldays; without fussing parents, lot of leisure time and not enough money to splurge. We visited friends' houses, rode bicycles, played cricket anywhere we saw an empty place, and played hide-and-seek whenever there was a powercut. In Delhi, Vikas Puri especially, because we lived in a housing complex, there were a lot of kids who hung around everyday till it was dinner time. It was great fun. Schools closed out early, studies weren't intensive enough to have us prepare for IIT-JEE from grade 3 and overall, there was a lot of space for ideas and conversations.

Maybe I'm just getting nostalgic, maybe everyone looks back at their childhood with rose-tinted glasses or maybe that period was truly a wonderful time to grow up. And I was in an impressionable age- An age when I wanted to be a Cricketer, Astronaut, Diver, Archaeologist, Filmmaker, Wild-life photographer among a lot of other things. Wanting to go to Hogwarts was one of them. It might seem perverted now but at 12, I was already fantasizing about live-in relationships. I strutted around wearing badminton rackets as batsman's pads when I was probably 6. No, I don't think amma took me to see a doctor. She probably thought it was normal for a shy boy, with some imagination, to put pencils in sharpers and throw them in a bucketful of water and make a underwater sci-fi movie inside his head- With voiceover commentary. Or for him to clamp headphones over his head, and hide under the bed with a gun in his hand, and imagine himself as the leader of a guerrilla operation set out to save a kidnapped girl. I have to admit Prahaar had a lot to so with that period of abnormal fascination with the army- R.M.E as I used to write on the army trucks and tanks I drew obsessively. And then there was a phase in Ammamma-Thatha's Hanuman Nagar house when, sitting the opposite way in foldable iron-chairs, I raced cars with the owners' grandson.

Anyway, all these memories have been popping in my head since a couple of days because I've been listening to Harry Potter audiobooks ( Jim Dale's version is highly recommended to those who want to revisit the books ) and been having CartoonNetwork-of-the-90s-was-awesome conversations. I always wanted to do a "You'll understand this if you grew up in the 90s" like posts but didn't know how to get started. And though this might not exactly qualify under that category, this is the closest I'll ever come to something like it. I'm just going to walk-through the list of cartoons I loved watching as a kid

1. Sky Commanders- I was obsessed with this when we were in Delhi. I distinctly remember rushing into the house from the rickshaw so as not to miss even the titles. I have to admit I'm kinda embarrassed with it now, but to hell, what's a childhood if not an occasional indulgence in kitsch.

2. Centurions- Loved, loved the three guys who set out to save the world with those amazing body suits. I so wanted to be the Yellow Suit-Land Specialist guy and though he seemed the coolest, there's no denying he sucked at his job. He had to be rescued more often than he was of any help.

3. Swat Kats- Bade miyaan, Chotte miyaan. I've never seen Swat Kats in English all my life, and it wasn't until recently when Anirudh told me, I didn't know their names were T-bone and Razor. I remember crafting my own version of those wristwatch-esque guns with paper and glue.

4. Flinstones- Pure genius. Yabba Dabba Doo will always be my warcry.

5. Laff-a-lympics- I have no clue why so many people haven't heard of this but it was a riot. All those looney cartoon characters in one place.

6. Tom and Jerry- Both this, and Tom and Jerry Kids, were fantastic slapstick. I always had a soft corner for Nibbles ( I didn't know his name until I googled it now ) despite his sometimes irritating cuteness. And there was this aweosme dog-duo, father and son, I think were called droopy dog and dripple. My induction to deadpan long before I became aware of that word.

7. Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner- Acme products zindabad!

8. The Addams Family- Whoever created that walking hand, hats-off man.

9. Scooby Doo, Where are you? - The mysteries seem quite clever, now when I think about it. And Shaggy's beard was a stroke of genius.

10. Dexter's Laboratory- This again, I remember seeing only in Hindi. "DeeDee, kitni baar kaha hai tumhe- aaaaargh!!!"

11. Johnny Quest- The closest I've come to falling in love with Sci-Fi. And that title song was truly epic.

12. The Mask- I don't remember the dog's name but the hero was called Sachin and the title song was something like "Main hoon nakaab".

13. Captain Planet- The stupidest bloke you could come across as a kid. I have no clue why the kids called upon his help because they inevitably had to get him out of trouble every single time. It was like a ploy to teach kids, "Stay away from these superheroes. They suck."

14. Popeye- Remember the music that blared when Popeye finally ingested his beloved Spinach?

15. The Mummy- The Animated Series- I suppose I've always been obsessed with realism. Otherwise, how do you explain an extensive disinterest in Sci-Fi since childhood. And this I think shaped my tastes. A mad, half-dead mummy dealt using antique guns- awesome. A bunch of pocket monsters that developed powers and fought each other- what shit!

16. X-Men Evolution- I suppose it is like this for all kids but I especially identified with fictional characters that were my age and resembled me in some way. Dreamy, shy cartoon characters attracted me more than the attention-grabbing, rising-to-the-occasion type ones. And I was pretty anti-violent too. Which explains why my favourite X-Men character was Speed. He couldn't harm you for shit. Of all the cool fellas out there, I couldn't get beyond Speed. Fuck, this is embarrassing.

( I'm planning to do a similar piece on the Harry Potter series pretty soon, but lest I forget, my favourite Harry Potter character was, again, Sirius Black. Favourite is probably the wrong word; Let's say the character I most identified with. I'll also do a Tinkle characters retrospective.)

17. Chip & Dale, Alladin, TaleSpin- I think these cartoons used to be telecast on Sony. Not a regular watcher of these shows but used to tune into them once in a while.

18. Tiny TV- This was so much fun. I think I watched Tiny TV even till I was 15 or so. That too in Hindi. Noddy was pretty cool- Blyton is such a master of creating wonderful escapist worlds. Bob the Builder was sweet with all that bonding. Kipper was wistful. Pingu was brutally funny. And Oswald, lets just say, is the world's greatest stoner comedy. A blue octopus, an orange dog that looks like a walking hot dog, a flower that rides a unicycle and an extremely irritable penguin. What were they thinking. And despite all these quirks, I must admit, I miss that world.

For all those cartoons I loved seeing, I didn't watch some of the most popular ones- Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Pokemon etc.

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I had fun writing this post, revisiting all those cartoons. If you grew up during the same period and watched a lot of Cartoon Network, comment below and let me convince you into accepting that Yogi Bear was the original Dude.

I review

Written on request.

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Shankar’s I has been one of the most anticipated films over the last two years. Apart from the promise of Shankar’s usual high-stakes drama, and the gargantuan budget, another primary reason for such high expectations from the cinema-loving crowd was the brilliant Aparichitudu, which garnered so much praise that it took Shankar and Vikram’s career to stratospheric heights. Though it’s another matter that Vikram wasn’t able to capitalize on the acclaim garnered by his three different performances in the film.

After the first look of the film was released, with Vikram made up as the disfigured hunchback, and news of his extreme physical transformations came to the fore, people started expecting Shankar’s return to form after his disastrous remake of 3 Idiots, Snehitudu. Both Shankar and Vikram needed a big hit to re-achieve their lost glory. And the buzz generated by the film before the release indicated a film that was world-class in every way- Music by AR Rahman, Cinematography by PC Sreeram, Make-up and special effects by Weta Workshop and add all that to Shankar’s reputation as the Indian James Cameron.

But eventually, it has to be said, the film ended up being a big disappointment. The great film critic Roger Ebert, talking about epic films, said that “the word ‘epic ‘ refers not to the cost of the elaborate production, but to the size of ideas and vision”. And big ideas is what I does not have. It is a reworking of the Beauty and the Beast tale, where if a woman who’s fallen in love with a handsome young man will still love him after his extreme disfigurement. And since that idea alone cannot be used to expand into a three-hour, patience draining film, Shankar decides to throw in a romantic track in China that is unimaginatively flat, a comedy sequence with a transgender that is handled with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, a sweet-talking pedophilic doctor and a bunch of villains who’s characterizations are so clichéd and their motivations so stupid that the director himself didn’t try to make them convincing. And for all of Vikram’s public announcements of the weight loss and other physical duress, his performance leaves one with nothing- Not pity, not admiration, not anger. For all the dedication an actor brings to a role, the pay-off has to be within the film, add an extra dimension of believability to the character. When Christian Bale lost all that weight for The Machinist, he didn’t do it just so that people could talk about his dedication as a Method actor, but because it was so central to his role as the insomniac. For a lot of actors now, going through that physical transformation is to gain admiration and some added publicity for the film. Sadly for Vikram, if his director had taken half that effort to shape out an interesting character in a better story, his efforts wouldn’t have had to go in vain- Point in case, Aparichitudu.

But still, despite the clichéd story, the first half with its non-linear screenplay keeps the viewer engaged in the hope of a better second half. But it is evident from the beginning of the second half that Shankar has nowhere to go. He’s exhausted of ideas, so he chooses to make us squirm with his overtly graphic portrayals of villains who’ve been grotesquely defaced by the hero’s ploys. If there was method to this madness, it might still have been palatable, but Shankar seems to take a perverse enjoyment in making the audience flinch. The gimmicks are an end in itself. Which is what makes the film so worthy of contempt. It is not a film that failed while reaching for great heights. It is a film so lacking in imagination and purpose that it wears its incompetence proudly.

The saving grace of the film is Amy Jackson’s revelatory performance which, though by no means nuanced, is surprisingly heartfelt. AR Rahman seems to have had a ball composing music and PC Sreeram framed some glorious shots. I can be recommended for those who find pleasure in watching gore but for everyone else, it’s better avoided. I is not a bad film as much as a film made in poor taste.

Might just qualify as a proper post

Quite sometime since I published anything here. Not that many are waiting. Also, no update really because nothing much's really happened to update here. I'm still going to work, I'm still scribbling ideas, I'm still confused and irritated and happy and depressed. Been reading some interesting articles, books. Discovered some really good music ( All the Little Lights, Jag Changa, Loma Vista ). Anyway, I was going through J Somers' blog the other day ( after reading his article on Hofstadter ) and I came across a post that had a list of all the books he'd read since college with little write-ups describing his feelings towards them. I liked the idea. So I thought I'd do a little post similar to it detailing if not all, atleast the 25 or so books I've started reading in the last few months. Mind you, I haven't finished most of them, probably because I have an Attention Deficit Disorder, but also because there's this high when picking up a new book that slowly dissolves as you make progress through it and it requires discipline and perseverance to stick through till the end. Two qualities, I'd like to add, I'm not really known for. Anyway, here's the list.

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1. Disgrace- Coetzee is such a powerful writer. His writing has been described as sparse, obtusely political, humanitarian, prosaic. It also is extremely vigorous. It is, if I could call it that, pure literature. Its to-the-point, angry and polemical. Having read his The Life and Times of Michael K too, I couldn't help but find similarities with Milan Kundera, whose The Unbearable Lightness of Being I found quite unsettling.

2. A Matter of Rats- A fast read, thankfully. I really liked Amitava Kumar's pieces online and so I bought the book. It's probably aimed to be a primer of the Dark Indian Heartland for the uninitiated, but for those of us here, it's not much.

3. The Wes Anderson Collection- I should probably dedicate a large post to Wes Anderson for his quirky humour, his genius for evoking nostalgia and the extraordinary usage of film form. I am a fan of his work and I read the book with fetish as soon as Bujji mama brought it. The book's a great advocate for the print medium, for the lush illustrations are astonishing, but I didn't really enjoy reading the interviews all that much. Sometimes, it's better not to look behind the curtains; Especially if you love the show too much.

4. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd- I have always wanted to read Agatha Christie. This book's held up not because its not good but because I'm neck deep in other commitments already.

5. The Last Mughal- It's funny; As much as I love Dalrymple's Nine Lives, I've had a tough time negotiating his other books. I couldn't get past the first half of City of Djinns because I found it too dreary and now I can't get past the first couple of chapters of this book. Dalrymple is an invigorating speaker ( I was enthralled by his performance in The Hindu Lit for Life 2014 talk ) but I guess his historical ventures aren't really working for me yet.

6. Shallows- I loved reading Carr's The Atlantic essay, Is Google making us stupid? I connected with it deeply because it was within the latitudes of my acceptance. And so I started reading Shallows but my interest soon drifted away when I realised it was only a more elaborate explanation of what he'd said in his seminal essay. I like it that he's elaborating on his argument. It's just that I don't need much of it because I was able to grasp the idea intuitively. Reading the book would help me understand better, I know, but I have more interesting books waiting in the queue right now.

7. The Pig that wants to be Eaten- This book's on my phone and I pull up one of its tiny chapters when I'm bored at work. It's the perfect book to be read in byte sized doses because it poses a philosophical problem, and argues for and against it in the space of a couple of pages. Takes less time to read but leaves you with a lot of thinking to do.

8. The King of Torts- I like reading Grisham. They're more of escapist fantasies than books that force you to pay attention but don't let that hide the skill it takes to pull one of them off. The story of a poor lawyer, who makes a lot of money, then loses it all only to finally get what he most wants. Vintage Grisham territory, yes, but still not a bad read. The man does something right that most of us don't. Evidence- he still reigns the bestseller lists while his umpteen clones struggle to break even.

9. The Romantics- I don't even know why I read Pankaj Mishra. His essay are a drag, his reviews swagger around tut-tutting and he gives off too much the air of an intellectual to be taken seriously. And yet I was enamored by his interview and how closely he resembled the editor/writer that I once wanted to be. The Romantics has been lazing around in my bag for sometime now and I hope to finish it soon.

10. Does he know a mother's heart- I heard of this book when it was out. I basically bought it because Amma adores Arun Shourie and I thought I'd find it interesting because it deals with topics very close to my heart. I finished the autobiographical part but the intellectual arguments required more time and mental space than bedtime reading and so I should probably read it in the mornings.

11. Red Earth and Pouring Rain- Ambitious. Vast. Meandering. Just quarter way into the book and with my undisciplined reading, I couldn't get on with the story because everytime I opened the book, I had to re-read atleast the previous ten pages to get a hold on the proceedings. Everytime. I think it was written with an intention to emulate the storytelling patters of Indian grandmothers but it demands attention. Chandra's writing is lyrical, his imagination wild and his control absolute. I want to sit down with it over a weekend and read it from start to finish.

12. The Complete Yes Minister- For years now, I've been seeing the monstrously thick book, with its fading yellow cover, in the book rack. I'd been hearing from Amma that Manju mama and Moni mama loved it, I'd read that it was classic British humor and I wanted to really understand the British comic touch. The book was funny, wryly so, but I had to abandon it soon because the pages were coming loose at the turn of every page. I didn't want to ruin the book. It'll stay on the shelf until I devise a way to read it without ruining it.

13. Accidental Empires- During my Steve Jobs mania phase, I discovered Cringely's fantastic documentary on the original geeks. I loved it and I'd been searching for the book it was based on since then. Recently, I found it on a torrent and because I know almost the entire story, I read a part of the book whenever I want to relive those memories.

14. The Annotated Godfather- The opening shot of The Godfather, with Bonasera and the slow zoom out, is one of the greatest milestones in Cinema history. The economy with which Coppola sets up the entire scene, and subsequently the movie, is a directorial masterclass. For a few years now, I've wanted to watch the film while reading the screenplay. Then I discovered this book. A great read for the fan. I haven't finished it, but what's the hurry? You don't want to rush through an exquisite seven-course meal. You savour every bite.

15. Philosophical Investigations- I don't even remember how I discovered Wittgenstein. But that image in Wikipedia, with that look in his eyes amidst the disheveled surroundings, refuses to go away from my head. This is like my Godel, Escher, Bach Part 2. I keep saying I'm reading it but the energy required to finish it is something I can't summon just yet.

16. Mrinal Sen: Sixty years in Search of Cinema- I've never seen a Mrinal Sen film. I took it from Vikranth because he said he was a filmmaker I should watch. Didn't get past the introduction.

17. Logicomix- A book pretty similar to Feynman: The Graphic Novel in both writing and artwork. Like Feynman tried to explain Feynman's work through the prism of his personality and interests, this book tries to do something similar for Logic as a Science and Bertrand Russell's part in it. Not really satisfactory.

18. Collected Stories: Gabriel Garcia Marquez- I picked this book up a long time after I'd read the master. I don't know if I've outgrown the Gabo phase, or if these stories are some of his weakest or if I didn't give them enough time, but I had to struggle to get through the first couple of stories.

19. India in Slow Motion- I was expecting so much from the book because of Tully's reputation that the experience of reading it had to be a bad one. I know he's a journalist and his pieces are constrained by time and space but I did not expect writing this ordinary, insights this commonplace. Agreed all of us are not the most poetic of writers but a little enthusiasm on the writer's part would've probably helped. Tully is a diligent reporter but one of the best writers about this exotic land, I'm afraid he's not.

20. The Algorithm Design Manual- This book is an easier read than CLRS because Skiena is more practical in his approach but it gets incrementally tougher as one proceeds though the book. It helps that his tutorials are really interesting. I still have a lot of syllabus to get through.

21. Cracking the Coding interview- The book provides some interesting perspectives of how candidates are selected after technical interviews but let's face it, despite the inside help, the questions are unbelievably tough.

22. Gone Girl- I am yet to watch the film but I had great fun reading the book. It's not often that you find books that both earn your respect for their intellect and also satiate your need to be told a story in the best possible way. Flynn does a fantastic job of holding her own despite repeated attempts to guess where she's taking the story. I was stumped chapter after chapter for her masterly control of the narration and was dazed after the twist in the middle. It made me realize that a writer's primary job is to outwit the reader. Every single time.

23. Curious: I like Ian Leslie's short pieces and Curious is a good read, albeit the fact that it gets repetitive after a certain point. Leslie has a central point and he stacks it up with evidence to prove that he's right but he reveals almost nothing new after the first few pages. The entire book is used to consolidate his initial points and just that.

24. Against Interpretation and Other Essays- I'd been hearing about Sontag's seminal essay whenever the discussion spurned towards art criticism. I read Against Interpretation with stunned disbelief not just because she was making such brilliant statements and convincing me how true they were, but also because this is one of the rare events when the reputation holds up. The essay truly is a classic. Will get to the rest of the pieces in the book.

25. Action Philosophers- Great idea, to introduce the major ideas of famous philosophers in comic book format. I'm turning into an admirer of graphic novels for their power and subtlety in the hands of masters. I finished the first two books in the series.

26. The C Programming Language- I will complete K&R. I definitely will. Such great ideas, such beautiful writing.

27. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls- I'd been searching for this book since I saw it in Subhakar's bag all those years ago in Vidyaranya. Its been what, almost five years now. I recently got the ebook and started it enthusiastically. I know the story of the movie brats in broad strokes but this book fills in the details. It's just that I need to have watched these movies to really understand their significance so I'm putting it off until I find the time to read it while educating myself on the films as well.

28. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman- I think I'm developing a taste for Murakami. I was left cold by his Second bakery attack, was too apathetic to get past the beginning of Kafka on the Shore, got to about half of What I talk about when I talk about Running until he started repeating himself to the point of irritating the reader ( Geoff Dyer takes on the book in his own inimitable style ) but re-discovered him in The Newyorker recently and loved his Scheherzade, and Yesterday. And so I started off with this book and I must confess I'm beginning to like his writing. They're weird, yes, but they manage to grip the reader's attention and tell something about the human nature along the way.

29. Fooled by Randomness- A book full of ideas and other books and life philosophies and quiet musings. Loved listening to it.

I also recently read this wonderful story about a struggling writer and identified a lot with it. Moreover, reading some wonderful longform essays on The Blizzard and The Cricket Monthly.

So, that's the exhaustive list. And despite so many of these books waiting to be read, I'm going to bed now reading Budugu. 15 December was Bapu's birthday and I wanted to revisit the wonderful memories BapuRamaneeyam gave me by going through the wonderful book.

Love in the Time of Everything

When, once, asked about his legendary concentration, Rahul Dravid said, "It’s not easy to concentrate for 10 hours. You switch on and off. You push yourself. Your mind wanders, but you bring it back. You steel yourself. That’s the real beauty, when you win the battle against yourself." Increasingly, this seems to be the way I'm beginning to see relationships. Love is in the air. It's probably the age but for almost everyone I know, Love has become the fixation. People are either overwhelmed, confused, angry, resentful, depressed, optimistic or desperate and all for that one word. I've always maintained that life is like a Sine Wave. All your moods, choices, ideas, philosophies are dependent upon whether you're riding the crest or the trough. When you're riding the crest, the world can't be a better place. You love yourself, forgive people, dream big, charm the hell out of others and in moments of solitude, thank God and hope that when you fall, you don't fall too bad. On the other hand, while riding the trough, you hate yourself, are too hard at yourself and others, are too scared to dream, claim that all people are hypocrites and in moments of unnerving loneliness, pray that you get out this as soon as possible. That's life.

Now, when two people commit themselves to be together, while both of them are riding the crest, there's nothing like it. It's blissful. Squabbles? Whatever the fuck they mean. Ever heard soulmates, brother? That's right, that's us. When one of the two is hitting it pretty rough but the other one's still on a high, it'll still work out because one will pull the other up. She/ He used to love me once. She's going through a bad phase. This is going to make our bond only stronger. But there are times when both are at rock bottom. Life becomes unbearable, unworthy, too much of a pain. You start dreading the other person's company, you find faults where there are none, the fissures become almost big enough to swallow you up, you feel so much hatred that you're surprised you're capable of it; You want to breakup, to move on. You convince yourself the relationship's dead, that some things are never meant to be forever. If this goes for too long, more often than not, people breakup. But sometimes, some people get lucky. They get a second wind. They have that moment of inspiration, divine intervention, crystal clear clarity, a piece of timely advice- whatever you want to call it. And in that moment, of the tinkling laughter, or of the passionate hug, or of the expression that takes you back to those beautiful times all those years ago, you decide you're not going to let go, you're not going to let the embers fade away into darkness, you're not going to let the world teach you practicality. You remind yourself of every beautiful moment that you've spent together, you tell yourself these are tests you will pass, you summon all your energies and you decide that you will give one last shot- the last, desperate punch of a boxer who gives it his all just before he falls. 

This is where the movies end. But life doesn't. You will keep getting these moments, you will have to keep fighting them. It is impossible to maintain a relationship, either with your love, work or art, with pure passion and focused intensity. You can probably do that in slam bang T20, which is all sound and no substance, but to build a meaningful, complete Test innings, you need more than that. You need discipline, you need perseverance, you need what Cricket writers call Temperament, you need commitment, you need dedication, you need to keep reminding yourself the bigger picture, the great moments you've had before, the wonderful moments you will have in the future if only you will focus now and keep your wicket.  Like Dravid so succinctly put, the idea is not to overcome the opposition but to overcome your need to oppose. In moments of pure love, ego dissipates. You become one with the object of your desire. Like playing in the Zone. It is in search of that wonderful, elusive period that we keep playing. It is what gives the entire enterprise its meaning, and purpose. But we keep forgetting that it is so captivating precisely because it's so elusive. You have to earn the zone to experience it. You have stick together in these troubled times to reclaim the high of well-deserved happiness. Effort, for the lack of a better word, is the cornerstone of all contentment. My earlier self would have scoffed at this statement but what is life if not change; if you don't constantly realign yourself with your true feelings, doesn't it mean you have stagnated? Again, I don't mean change as in replacing all things you dislike now. No matter how much you change on the surface, the core of your being more or less remains the same. Like the monsoons only bringing new waters into the river. The river's still the same.

I have digressed much from where I started. And though I'm not sure if I've made myself clear to you, for the first time in ages, I'm clear as of what I want and where I'm heading. It's not a bad life neither is it very catchy. It's eventful if you know where to look. Sometimes, it doesn't give you too many options and at other times you're so sure of what you want, you don't want any options. It's alternatively fun, irritating, poignant, free-flowing and purposeful. And in those rare moments, extraordinarily beautiful which makes everything else worthwhile. I might as well have been talking about a test innings here.

Karthikeya review

Written on request.

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As Telugu film viewers, we generally lament at the lack of innovation in our industry. Despite being one of the richest film industries in the country and having an extremely diverse cultural heritage, it is disappointing to admit that we hardly venture into new storytelling forms that reflect our changing times. Instead, we are content to stick to the same old stories, just dabbling with them at the surface level, despite knowing that there is no surefire formula to success. In times like these, Karthikeya comes as a whiff of fresh air.

Thriller, as a film genre, is a fantastic format to transport the viewer straightaway into the realm of the film because nothing piques human interest like the smell of an unsolved mystery. By giving the viewers the chance to play detective along with the protagonist, it makes us question the actions and motivations of the characters as well as our own biases and fixations. As alluring as that may sound, it also takes good craftsmanship and an intuitive ability to grasp the viewers’ thought process to shape a good thriller. If the director reveals too less until the end, the audience feels cheated; Reveal too much straightaway and the final revelation will not be as astonishing. Give too many red herrings and the process turns boring; Too few and the stakes won’t be high enough. Predictably, it is a tightrope walk.

Debutant director Chandoo Mondeti shows both confidence and control in the way Karthikeya unravels itself. The story deals with a thousand-year old temple, whose deity until recently had been considered very powerful, but after a series of deaths within its premises, is deemed cursed and closed down. Admittedly, a very novel premise and the film obligatorily opens with the death of a person who claims he has all the answers. The film then shifts to Karthikeya ( Nikhil Siddharth ), a rationalist who believes all mysteries can be solved and has enough courage to see through most of them. Throw in a pretty girl, two sidekicks, a little kid, experts in Mythology and Science, a madman, seedy characters, some brilliant digital paintings, within a running time of two hours, and you have a film that is fun and engrossing. It could have been much more, had the filmmaker stayed longer with his prime material and taken us deeper into that part of the story, but instead of playing as a full blown, edge-of-your-seat thriller, Karthikeya’s intention is to offer family entertainment, a la Full Meals, with portions of comedy, romance and suspense to cater to all sections of audience. And that it does very well. The comedy portions with Praveen and Sathya are fun, Swathi looks pretty and fits well into her role, Tanikella Bharani, Rao Ramesh and Kishore are competent, and special mention must be made of Nikhil who, after last year’s Swamy Ra Ra and now Karthikeya, is paving a niche path for himself.

Shekhar Chandra’s tunes are melodious as always and he does a good job using sound to induce suspense. Karthik Ghattamaneni’s cinematography uses interesting angles to arouse discomfort and Karthika Srinivas’s editing is brisk, though in the end one couldn’t help but feel the film rushing by. Karthikeya is a well-made film, and though it would be easy to nitpick its little faults, like a couple of loose strands and its choice not to dwell deeper into the main story, the filmmakers must also be appreciated for experimenting with a new concept and for making a film that is not only good, clean fun but also leaves the viewer something to ponder over after walking out of the theatre. Now, what could be a bigger compliment for any film.

Dikkulu Chudaku Ramayya review

Written on request.

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The problem with Dikkulu Chudaku Ramayya is not unique but the endemic facing the Telugu Film Industry in recent times- The filmmakers’ inexplicable need to pepper every film with unrelated comedy scenes despite most of them not even managing to evoke faint smiles. When some filmmakers claim that people want entertainment and comedy, I want to tell them while that maybe true, most of what they make is not anyone’s definition of comedy. Bad, lazy filmmaking is a part of any industry and since that is a given, we too as audience have gotten used to seeing sub-standard movies week after week. The same old love stories, with a hero who has a ripped body, can dance and maybe, if we are lucky, act a little bit, a heroine who more often than not is hired as nothing more than an ornament, a mandatory item song featuring either yesteryear actresses or unsuccessful heroines, and the obligatory comedy track featuring the comedian bigwigs of the industry. The fact that most films fail to impress is not news. These days they can’t even engage an audience for the length of their duration. Inspired by television comedy skit shows, more and more filmmakers are opting to allocate more and more running time to comedians.

Thanks to this phenomenon, expectations of viewers have been dipping lower and lower when one goes to watch a Telugu film. But every once in a while a film promises to be something more, something different than the mind-numbing mundanity of weekly releases. Dikkulu Chudaku Ramayya promised to be that film. It worked on a very interesting premise, something we don’t see in Telugu cinema and it was produced by Varahi Production, who after giving us a string of well-made films, topped it all with this year’s breezy and lovely Oohalu Gusagusalade. I walked in with expectation and energy, and I walked out drained and disappointed. Not only was this film as average as other films, it also squandered a very interesting premise for the sake of a few cheap laughs.

On the page, the idea of a father and a son falling in love with the same woman is teeming with possibilities. As a serious enterprise, it can comment upon how age is not a restriction to fall in love, or show us how a father and a son can have similar likes or maybe even convince us that the claim is not as preposterous as it sounds at first. As a lighthearted comedy, it can talk about marriages in our time and age, and laugh about how men don’t want to accept that they’re growing old. Dikkulu Chudaku Ramayya, surprisingly, does nothing of that sort. Ajay stars as a man who became a father in his teens and wants to relive his teenage at the same time as his son. Though never a great actor, Ajay tries hard to bring life into this interesting character but leaves it half-baked thanks mainly to the director’s uncertain treatment. Indraja, usually a fine actress, plays the standard Telugu cinema wife-mother who alternates between crying out of happiness and sadness. It is such a cardboard character that the filmmakers could have replaced her with a whiteboard with words Happy, Sad written on it. Naga Shourya, who showed such promise in his debut, tries hard to make his character’s predicament come to life but thanks again to some overtly clichéd writing, evokes pity for his efforts. And the heroine, Sana Maqbool, is such a weak character as well as an actor that I’d rather not even talk about it. Ali’s role was pointless, Posani came in the end to garner a few laughs and the villain was immemorable. The only two actors who generated any feelings were Brahmaji, who’s comic role was a deviation from his general roles, and the kid who played the younger brother. The production values are adequate, if not excellent, and the same could be said of music composed by MM Keeravani. The writing, predictably, is the weakest link. And that for me is the saddest part because given the premise, even decently shaped characters could have had the audience care for their fates. A few scenes are catchy but mainly because of the uneven tempo and inconsistent narration, it becomes hard for the audience to really empathize with any of the characters.

There is nothing in the film that earns a trip to the movie theatre. I suggest you catch it on TV, if you really want to.

Churning the mind

It is one thing to sit home and watch Ted-like talks. A totally different experience sitting in the crowd and see such luminaries talk on the stage a few feet from you. First of all, the fact that you have made an effort to move out of the comfort of your zone and travel to the venue brings a certain importance to the proceedings. Then the fact that you are sitting among all those interested participants who listen with rapt attention and ask incisive questions excites and humbles you which the self-centric world of the internet in the isolation of your house cannot. Most importantly, seeing the speakers so close to you, eating or conversing, doing things that they do beyond the stage, breaks a huge barrier of disconnect between your world and theirs which any video medium creates. Yogendra Yadav is not some figure of mythic proportions who argues on TV but a very amiable, gentle man who smiles at strangers who stare at him and answers questions with dignity. Vandana Shiva is not the woman you've read about in The NewYorker and who fights with the likes of Monsanto but a graceful lady who tirelessly tries to educate people in what she believes in. Also, being in the physical presence of such people brings a sense of authenticity and immediacy to the content of their talks and affects you deeply.

Yesterday, I had a great time in Manthan Samvaad. Vikranth Ananthula casually mentioned it sometime last week, I looked it up and since it seemed interesting, I signed up. I had a vague idea of what the talks were going to be like and I wasn't proved wrong but I had underestimated the magnitude of the impact. Without an exception, each of the six talks basically dealt with the need for civilized debate and the need to question the mainstream.

It was a slow start. After Jaywant Naidu's rendition on the Hawaiin Guitar, and the organiser's talks, Kalpana Kannabiram spoke about the need to protect women's rights and how we as a society were faring worse at making our women feel secure. She spoke with feeling and conviction but somehow I didn't find anything new that wasn't already a part of general public discourse. One stat that stood out of all the ones she was giving was that the average age of women at marriage, which kept rising after the child marriages of the early 20th century, have been getting lower in the last couple of decades. And she said that is because of the "re-enslavement of women in the guise of Tradition, Culture and Honour". I was surprised with myself for never having realised that most social atrocities take place under the masks of upholding culture and tradition. Once she said it, it seemed obvious but when she did, it came as quite a revelation. Of the other things that I scribbled down during her talk was BR Ambedkar's Constitutional Morality and Public Morality which was prescient because similar concerns were aired during other talks.

Arun Maira started off with the dryness of a bureaucrat, out of habit I guess since he's on the Planning Commission, but he spoke with clarity and insight about the need to redesign our institutions. The basis for his argument was what's already known, that India's economic growth is neither fair nor sustainable, but his linking of the discrepancy between the rich and the poor and its relation to the government institutions was informing and his ready acceptance that he didn't really know how to fix it but that he would like to present a few 'humble' suggestions was a great gesture of a man in such a position. He spoke about the tug-of-war between the Capitalistic need of the country to increase GDP and the Socialist need to subsidize and elevate the poor to better their lives. It was an interesting talk, sprinkled with the list of books he kept referring to, and so was his analogy of repairing the aeroplane while flying it. At the end, I felt a deep respect for him.

Then came on Yogendra Yadav who spoke about Alternative Politics and his ideas for deepening the democracy of the country by getting every citizen to actively participate in Politics. He spoke with the solemnity of a Political Science professor, with his Presentation Slides which I found distracting, but he spoke with candidness about the Aam Aadmi Party's stint and instead of defending himself from its detractors, he faced them, accepted their mistakes but also made a point to tell the crowd that they were trying hard to improve but at most the Aam Aadmi party was an imperfect vehicle to carry forward the ideals of a new, thriving, alternative political movement. The Q&A session was inevitably filled with questions on the AAP's future and I marveled at his calm demeanor even when taking the flak. Here was a man who acted on his beliefs and seemed to be having a great time doing what he was doing.

I've always loved listening to Shekhar Gupta talk, mostly from his Walk the Talk interviews where he came across a man who was knowledgeable, respected and articulate, but to see him yesterday talk like that was a fantastic experience. He seemed the least prepared of all the speakers, stringing his talk with a series of anecdotes but for me it was the most eye-opening talk of the day probably because it was a topic I deeply identified with. He spoke casually, with irreverence, with honesty and feeling, with good humour and unmasked criticism. He spoke not with an agenda but with a purpose, with immense erudition that always only served the point at hand and he spoke with the frankness of a man we're not used to in public discourses. I recommend you to watch his talk because the points he brings up are very relevant- "Never switch off the Bullshit Meter"

KT Ravindran's talk was the most underwhelming because there was an overdose of information and though all that was probably important, he did not manage to bring up the levels of enthusiasm of the crowd as the other speakers had. On the other hand, Vandana Shiva can never be accused of being a dull speaker. Having probably given thousands of talks across the world all her life, she speaks with the confidence of a veteran, with the practiced dramatic pauses of a thespian and with raw emotion of anger and pity flowing alternatively through such a booming voice. It's a great experience seeing her talk and though the talk dealt with elements that I've read her talk about, I couldn't help but feel sympathy for the Indian farmer, shame at myself for letting those atrocities happen and a deep contempt for Monsanto. She does that to you. When Vandana Shiva wants you to feel something, wants you to think about something in a certain way, you damned well can think about it only that way. She's a fervent woman and spirited. It was some experience.

Having attended a few other similar events, I understand that these talks are targeted at a general audience who don't necessarily have an interest in any particular subject, are motivated by the eclecticism, but those who come with a readiness to listen and think. Which is why if you happen to know the work of the speaker beforehand, the talk can seem redundant but I suppose that's the only way they can capture the interest of the uninitiated person who when inspired by the talk will go home and delve deep into the subject. Like those audit classes in American universities I guess. I had a great time, with the delicious Biryani and all that, but more with the talks, Shekhar Gupta's especially, that reminded me to think, question and participate actively in public life. What a lot of us have been doing is consuming whatever the mainstream is feeding us. Just because something is accepted by many, doesn't make it right and you don't have to conform to it. I can air my opinions, skepticism and beliefs- I, after all, like Arun Maira succinctly pointed, am not a consumer but a citizen.

The complete talks can be viewed from this link.