Mountain of light

How many times in the recent past have I seen a Hindi movie and said to myself, gosh our movies are looking increasingly like Hollywood. Where is the India that I know and dearly love, in all these movies? I don’t know who these characters are and where do they live and breathe? Where do they get their accents? Certainly not the school I went to! Their fantasies and aspirations seems so unreal and while I allow the moviemakers the license to be creative and imaginative, this is something else. I mean at the rate some of these directors are going I might start comparing them to animated movies. They are movies about relationships, families, love gained, lost, gained again, and then lost again. More like romantic fiction maybe.

 

So, when I see a movie like Omkara, which is set in rustic UP and refreshes my Bhojpuri like nothing else, it makes me very happy. Even though this is not the best movie I have ever seen and certainly not as good as Maqbool, I would still stand up and applaud the director. Atleast someone in big Bollywood is thinking beyond the foreign locales and trying to tap the vast breath of options that this country offers and actually does justice to all of it. The music, the characters, the story and all the supporting props come together to tell the story of three local strongmen – Omkara (Ajay Devgun), Langda Tyagi (Saif Ali Khan) and Keshu Firangi (Viviek Oberoi) who work under the umbrella of the local politician Bhaisaab (Naseeruddin Shah).

 

The movie promises a lot in the first 15 minutes with a brilliant action scene and then it sort of tapers off and is not as tight as I would have wanted it to be. I am not sure if there was any need of an item number, but I am willing to grant it for commercial reasons. Bipasha Basu in that role, even with her mouthing all the Bhojpuri sweet nothings, was not the best fit for the role. Konkona Sen was as always brilliant. I am now beginning to wonder if there is any director around who can test her abilities to the limit. She always seems to perform these roles effortlessly. She is slowly easing herself into the category of Naseeruddin who pulls off another great role.

 

All in all a good movie and great music. Even though the director is capable of much better, this is an admirable effort and deserves to be applauded.

There was this recent issue of Indian blogs being banned by the ISPs and the government for some ostensibly anti-national activities. Expectedly, there has been a lot of condemnation in the media and now as I understand the ban has now been lifted as quietly as it was imposed. This got me thinking on where do we stand as a nation on censorship.

 

As far as I know, our governments have practiced various forms of implicit and explicit censorship and there is no reason for them to stop doing so. Apart from the well-known cases, censorship affects us in our day-to-day interaction with the government also. Everyday in the newspaper I see so many examples of censorship. For example, the government will announce some big public project or other and in 99.99% of the cases, there is no mention of when the project is planned to be completed. There is all the information about the size of the project, the number of jobs it will create and its proclaimed benefits but nothing on when it will be completed. Therefore, when you do not give out completion dates then there is no way that you can calculate project time overruns etc. Yes, you could argue that this is not censorship in its true sense but to me it is the same mind bent which does censorship and which suppresses information. There is also the Right to Information Act, which after the current changes taking out file notings is a shadow of its formal self.

 

Personally, I think there is too much being made out of this blog-blocking episode. I am also a little upset that I am not on blogspot and so my blog was up and running through this entire “crisis”. Obviously, blogspirit is not cool enough. Maybe its time for me to move to blogspot and hope that my blog will get blocked too and I get quoted on national TV on how my fundamental rights have been snatched away from me. Maybe I can add that to my CV.

The Mumbai bomb blasts were a nasty jolt. I was checking the web for the Srinagar blasts trying to find information about a relative who is in Srinagar for her honeymoon and then the websites picked up one blast after another in Mumbai. My first thought that these blasts were all connected to each other. My heartfelt condolences to the victims and their families. This is indeed an Intelligence failure as has been made out by most experts.

But I also think this has been an Intelligence failure of the nation at large and that includes you and me. While our country has been waging a low intensity battle in Kashmir, you and me have gone about our lives as if nothing has happened. We have gone about our lives as if such things only happen in Kashmir and they are sort of restricted to that part of the country and it will never affect us. In that spirit, we have also never bothered to question the government on what exactly it is doing to solve the Kashmir problem.

This problem has been making headlines for about 50 years now and I can’t remember this being a talking point in a single general election. It does not affect us until we see bomb blasts affect our near and dear ones and then we get all angry and want to wage a war against our western neighbour. It is very easy to blame an issue on Pakistan, but I like to ask my government on what it is doing to prevent this tragedy from happening again? We are a hugely successful economy and taking the right steps forward to claim our rightful place in the league of nations, we have an ancient civilization, rich culture, oh and also we have nuclear weapons etc. But how can we let this problem fester for more than 50 years and then allow it to take innocent lives of people who are far away from the root of the problem.

What have those poor commuters, who travel like cattle in peak hour local train, got to do with the Kashmir issue? How can the Prime Minister just turn up in Mumbai and blame Pakistan for supporting terrorism? Is it so easy, just blaming a neighbour and your job is done? What would we do tomorrow if Maoists blow up a train and kill 200 people? Who will we blame? Chairman Mao? China? Keeping in the spirit of symbolism, secretary level talks between India and Pakistan have been called off and the Indian government will try and put pressure on the Pakistan government to stop aiding terrorists. Like the government controls these terrorists, like terrorism ever stops like this?

We the people of this country, the “wheels of the economy” need to come up with a solution. The politicians have failed us and will continue to fail us.

So the World Cup is over and Italy won. What a match to cap an amazing tournament. It would have been no fun if the finals had happened without any drama. All the matches have had their share of drama with the fans adding more spice to it. Just when you thought that the final would be a tame end, Zidane decided to head butt the Italian defender. The only other head butt I saw in the tournament was in the Portugal Vs Netherlands match, where Luis Figo head butted a Dutch player (I forget who) and got away with it. I think Zidane probably thought he could get away with it too.

 

I wonder what made Zidane head butt Materazzi. I mean what could Materazzi have said that Zidane may not have heard hundreds of times before on and off the football pitch. In most countries, if you are an immigrant you have your share of racist slurs. I think that Zidane was trying to make a point and a no better stage than the World cup and that too in Germany that has had more than its share of racial abuses. Also he was the tallest player in stature in between both sides and he is already being compared to Pele and Maradona. Maybe he was trying to say that he would not take any more of the nonsense. I hope that he would one day come out with his side of the story.  I know there is a story. I just know it.  But I think the reason we want to hear it is different from the reason why he wants to tell it.

 

On a separate note, with the world cup being over I am having withdrawal symptoms. It is something else to sit in front of the telly every evening with some chilled beer and scream my lungs out at every goal. So what if India is not playing, so what if we are ranked below the armpits of Africa! This game belongs to me as much it does to Zidane, it gives me as much pleasure watching the game, as I am sure it does to someone playing it. I cannot agree with Svami Vivekananda more when he says:

“ You will be nearer to Heaven through football than through the study of Bhagwat Gita”